Inferring and Explaining

24 InferrIng and exPlaInIng made my knowledge claim true is unconnected to the spaghetti sauce that provided the justif- cation for my belief. It is odd in the extreme to claim that I had knowledge of the pot of spa- ghetti sitting on my table. It is pure serendipity that my belief turned out to be true. A lot of contemporary epistemology has been concerned with ruling out these kinds of “Guido” cases (actually, they are called Gettier examples, afer the philosopher who frst made them famous). Many philosophers have sug- gested that some fourth or ffh or sixth and so on condition must be added to our analysis of knowledge. I am not sure whether I personally agree. To be on the safe side, however, I will be content with the above transformed analysis. Te epistemic action in this little book will focus on condition iii anyway. What the heck is it to have evidence or good evidence or exceedingly good evidence for something? exerCIses 1. What is the myth of defnition? Does it show that the traditional philosophical quest of defning terms (analyzing them) is unnecessary? Why, or why not? 2. Explain why having a true belief that something is the case is not good enough for claiming to know that it is the case. 3. What does the “Guido” example show us about knowledge? QuIz three Here’s something I claim to know: climate change (global warming) is very real and very dan- gerous. How would the epistemological skeptic respond to this? Given the view of knowledge defended in this chapter, what would need to be true if my knowledge claim is correct? Notes 1 Plato, “Teatetus,” in Plato: Te Collected Dialogues , trans. F. M. Cornford (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1961), 909.