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Stephen Kearns, In praise of folly: a reply to Blome-Tillmann, Analysis, Volume 67, Issue 3, 1 July 2007, Pages 219–222, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/67.3.219
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Extract
In ‘The folly of trying to define knowledge’ Michael Blome-Tillmann argues that warrant1 entails both truth and belief. He concludes from thisthat ‘the project of analysing the concept of knowledge must be doomed to failure’ (Blome-Tillmann 2007). His reasoning is this: if warrant entails both truth and belief, then warrant entails knowledge. Knowledge clearly entails warrant. Therefore, knowledge and warrant are the same thing. There is no third condition distinct from knowledge that turns true belief into knowledge. Therefore, knowledge is unanalysable. In this short note, I will show that the fact (if it is a fact) that warrant entails truth and belief does not show that knowledge is unanalysable.
Consider the following two analyses of knowledge: (A) knowledge is non-accidentally true belief2 and (B) knowledge is true belief caused by the truth that is believed.3 We may write such analyses as follows:
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Both (A) and (B) have the usual truth and belief conditions on knowledge. Given this, we may ask the following question. What, according to these analyses, is warrant? That is, what more, according to (A) and (B), must be added to a true belief that p in order to get knowledge that p? The answers (A) and (B) give to this question are specified by their third conditions. (A) says that a true belief that p must be non-accidentally true. (B) says that a true belief that p must be caused by the fact that p. The third conditions of (A) and (B) express what warrant is according to (A) and (B).
