okay so here we're going to continue our discussion about what knowledge is and different series of knowledge um and this time we're going to talk about something that a theory or a couple theories that try to address the problem that day cart had which is idea that um knowledge has to be indubitable in other words something that we don't know something unless we don't have any kind of doubt about it whats ever and we really don't treat knowledge that way in our everyday lives so these theories our attempts to capture that and get away from this idea that we only have knowledge of things that we cannot doubt at all so Fred dry was one of the people who came up with one of the most well-known theories of knowledge that tried to do this so so he says look if you go to a zoo and you see a zebra how do you know that the animal is a zebra not say a cloudly disguised mule you could come up with a lot of other possibilities for what you could be seen besides a zebra especially if you're a day cart you might say things like um well it could be a hologram or it could all be an illusion of some kind or another right um so says is look to have knowledge the zoo visitor must only be able to rule out any relevant Alternatives um and so you might think of a relative relevant alternative being that it was say a deer or a horse or something like that and presumably we can rule out those alter Alternatives usually just by looking at the animal other Alternatives he says such as the cleverly disguised mule idea or some kind of Illusion are probably not relevant to the situation so they can be ruled out just based on that fact without you having to go up and make sure that the zebra is Real by touching it or you know trying to see if there's paint on it or whatever so this seems reasonable right um and the idea that we can know a proposition P such as this is a zebra without knowing all the irrelevant Alternatives seems reasonable so normally again this is the way we act we don't think that somebody has to rule out all the irrelevant Alternatives and the strange uh counter examples that philosophers come up with so here we can see how this answer is skeptic because we don't have to have P perfect certainty then we can sort of argue that possibilities That We're Dreaming are being fooled by an evil evil demon are irrelevant Alternatives but obvious questions come up here such as like what is an alternative what counts as a relevant alternative what's an irrelevant alternative how do we need to eliminate the relevant Alternatives um and you know so you could say things like well is it enough to look at the zebra and see that it's a zebra to rule out the fact that it's not a horse so on and so forth but one of the biggest problems with this theory is the idea of closure so closure says if I know p p being a proposition and I know that P implies q and another proposition then I know that Q so here's an example I know that X is a zebra if I know X is a zebra then I know that X is not a cleverly disguised mule so by closure it follows that I know that X is not a cleverly disguised mule so again if it's a zebra that implies that it's not a cleverly disguised meal right it can't be both things at the same time so do you know this uh is counterfactual just because you know that it's a zebra so Drey says look I don't necessarily know that I'm not seeing a cleverly disguised mu when I say that I'm seeing a zebra because I don't have to Ru rule out that alternative remember I have to rule out the Alternatives that it's a horse or a deer but I don't have to rule out these strange relevant irrelevant Alternatives whatever we've determined those are to be which is a difficult question in itself but number two which was back in the previous slide um is clearly true because something can't be a m and a zebra at the same time right so we you know we know that it's not a cleverly disguised mule because it can't be a and a zebra at the same time so what jki does is he just denies closure he just says look you can know that it's a zebra without knowing that it's not a relevantly disguised or it's not a cleverly disguised mule even though P the fact that it is a mule or sorry that it is a zebra does imply Q which is that is not a cleverly disguised mule you can still know P without knowing Q some people don't really care for this answer and so some people try to keep the idea of relevant alternative the and keep closure by using different forms of contextualism I will see that means in a minute so lud Vicken Stein has this idea that um meanings of words are highly dependent on context so he calls this The langu Language game in which the word is being being used so for example if we're using the word Stone and block and the context of a building that we're creating then we might use those words differently then if we're in a kitchen where we might have a different meaning such as a block of cheese or grinding stone as opposed to stones used to build something perhaps and um this you know you can think of all sorts of examples of this right the same word might be the answer to a question it might be an exclamation a request an order so the Words May mean to refer to different things in the world or they may be used in different ways depending on what Vicken Stein calls the language game so contextualism Builds on this idea by saying look um we can attribute knowledge to somebody differently depending on the context in which the word is used the word knowledge is used so in most situations we can um claim that there's a cat on the couch just based on our sense perceptions but if we're in a room full of High real highly realistic fact simil of cats and couches we might need a stronger justification to have the attribution of knowledge so the word knowledge is going to change depending on the context so some contextualists such as Stuart Cohen use the idea of contextualism to argue that are given the given ordinary standards of knowledge like when we're talking about normal cats and cows es it's right to say that not only do I know that X is zbra I also know that X is not a globally disguised me so even though I haven't explicitly ruled out all the Alternatives according to Cohen I can still count as having knowledge that it's not a cleverly disguised meal even if I haven't gone up to the zebra and you know verified there's no paint on it or whatever so in everyday context he says the standards are low enough that I don't have to provide this kind of rigorous justification so to some up then and the many there are different versions of contextualism but generally they agree that the question whether I know I'm seen a zebra doesn't have only one answer because you might because the answer to that question is going to depend on the context so asking the question without regards to context is mistaken it's like asking what the meaning of the word stone is without um without looking at what context you're using that word in now this is where it gets a little weird and hard to understand it's not super important this this point but that um contextualism isn't a theory about knowledge it's really a theory about using language to attribute knowledge to someone and when we're when we're Justified and attributing the word using the word right um so it doesn't really answer the question what knowledge is so some philosophers say well look then it's just skepticism in Disguise because um we're just weakening the idea of knowledge so much that it really doesn't mean anything anymore for this reason some of the critics then said look let's go back to invariantism so that's the idea that knowledge is absolute and this is more deart believed right so they said they're like look let's just go back to decart um the variations about what knowledge is really have to do with the interest of the speaker what at stake this is what the invariant do say and so if more is at stake then the standards of knowledge seem to be higher here's where a couple examples are helpful um this first one is that uh suppose that Smith comes up to me and says that he left he thinks he left his jacket in the supply closet and ask if the uh door is locked and I know that someone um I know that I locked it and the chances that someone else unlocked it are small because everyone's leaving for the day do I know that that the closet is locked does that answer differ if a police officer is asking if there's exits to the office building because there's a gunman in the building and they want to know whether this person might be able to escape in this case I say yeah there's an exit behind the Supply Closet but I loost locked the supply room door and then the officer asked if I'm sure it's still locked in that case some people might think that my um even though nothing has changed except for the context that I might not know that it's closed why because the stakes seem to be higher so in a case where the stakes are higher the um requirements for knowledge might possibly be higher this is called interest relevant aism so this the traditional standards of epistemology which are truth evidence and reliability are the same in both stories I'm just as reliable in the first story as the second one the evidence I have is exactly the same whether the door is locked is either true or false in the same way but it seems like in the first scenario that I know that the door is locked but the second one I don't so this is kind of strange but the interest of and invari says it's it's because more is at stake in the second um example so this interest relevant and variant um says that the connection between knowledge and action is important here so I have knowledge in the first case but not in the second because what's at stake is different the jacket versus the gunman's Escape now here we are making a claim about how knowledge Exel works because um we're not just saying whether we can use knowledge in a particular context contextualism is making a point about how knowledge changes meaning in certain context the word knowledge but interest elevant invariantism um says that the word doesn't change but we do do or don't have knowledge depending on these PL practical considerations what is at stick so the problem with this seems to be just as odd right it seems weird to say that with the exact same justification evidence and so on and so forth in one case I know the door is locked in the other one I don't another example that people use is sandwiches um so do I know the sandwich is chicken not tuna yeah I mean I can know based on the taste of it or the way it looks or something like that but if I'm serving it to somebody with a fish allergy do I need to have stricter standards because the stakes are higher whether the person I'm serving it who just doesn't like fish or whether they're deadly allergic to it so um on strict invariantism the idea is that knowledge is determined strictly by truth evidence and other traditionally epistemologically relevant considerations rather than context this is trying to um address that worry that it seems strange to say that that I could know or not know something just based on the on who I'm talking to or some kind of contextual thing rather than the actual evidence or justification the problem is that when we get into strict invariantism then it can lead us back to academic skepticism which was what we talked about at the beginning which is remember the idea that really basically nobody can know anything because the standards end up getting just higher and higher until it seems like we can't know anything anymore so some people have tried to moderate this and split difference and argue that okay there are standards for knowledge that are that apply across context but maybe they're not as high standards as say like if somebody's life is at stake um but again then they can they still have to explain why we're doubting these things and how you can have knowledge and not have knowledge about whether their sandwiches chicken or tuna depending on the situation so again we get back into some of these same problems here so this is just a really quick overview of some of these views and um just different ways to think about knowledge we'll get uh continue with this on the next one