The Tripartite View

Good to know:

You could get asked a 3, 5, 12 or 25 marker on the Tripartite View.

The best way to answer a 3 or 5 marker on the Tripartite View would be to define it as it is in red on the other side of the page.

This is another view on how to define what knowledge is. This definition comes from Plato, he wrote about it in his dialogue Theaetetus.

It holds that propositional knowledge is true justified belief:

S knows P if (if and only if):

P is true
S believes P
S has justification for believing P
These three criteria (truth, belief and justification) together are equivalent to knowledge.
They are individually necessary, meaning that each one is essential for knowledge. If we lack any one of those criteria, we could not have knowledge.
They are jointly sufficient, meaning that if you have all three, you have knowledge, nothing more is needed.

What do each of the criteria mean?

Good to know:

AQA love definitions, you'll want to be confident that you know how to define all the words you come across.

The advice I give to my students for this is to make little flashcards with 5 mark definition answers on the back.

Truth

Truth is a necessary condition of knowledge because, as Zagzebski argues, knowledge is a specific kind of mental contact with reality. Since reality consists of what is true, knowledge must therefore involve truth.

Belief

The idea of the mind connecting with reality also supports the criterion of belief. Without belief, the mind cannot be said to make contact with reality or have mental content genuinely connected to it.

Justification

Justification is the reason or warrant for a belief. Reasons, and so justifications, can be good or bad. Seeing something with your eyes is a good reason, and so justification, for belief in it. Seeing something within a dream is not. There are a variety of types of bad justification such as irrationality, mistakes, logical errors & ignorance.

Problems with the Tripartite View

With every single topic in A-Level Philosophy, you have to be able to criticise it - even if you agree with it. What makes a good Philosopher (according to AQA) is the ability to balance arguments on all sides and come to a conclusion based on the available evidence

Problem 1: The Criteria of the Tripartite View are not Sufficient

You can have knowledge without Truth:
Scientific knowledge is what we have the strongest reason to believe based on current evidence, making it provisional and subject to change as new evidence emerges. This raises the possibility that scientific knowledge might be false, suggesting it could be seen as justified belief rather than knowledge, where the justification is the scientific method.

You can have knowledge without Belief:
EG: A student may recall a forgotten answer during an exam without realising its source and, unsure of its correctness, choose to write it down. In this case, they have the information but do not believe it is true, suggesting knowledge without belief. Arguably, to truly know something, you must also know that you know it.

You can have knowledge without Justification:
Immediate perceptual knowledge is knowledge of our current experience, such as seeing a red object. While claiming that a red object exists in the external world requires justification, simply knowing that I am experiencing redness requires no reasoning, as it is directly given. However, if my own existence can be doubted (as in criticisms of the cogito), this would also cast doubt on the claim to know my immediate perceptual awareness.

What exactly are these criticisms attacking?

They are saying that the criteria as laid out in the Tripartite View is NOT sufficient.

Being able to say exactly how a criticism attacks a theory is integration, and you need to be able to do this for 12 and 25 markers.

The Gettier Cases:

The Gettier cases show that you can have a justified true belief due to epistemic luck (you just got lucky).

Such cases challenge the idea that this counts as knowledge, since knowledge should not depend on luck.

Therefore, the tripartite view is incorrect, as having all three does not guarantee that one truly knows a proposition.

Edmund Gettier

Smith and Jones are applying for a job. Smith has strong evidence for the belief: “Jones will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.” Smith sees Jones counting ten coins and the employer tells him Jones will get the job. Based on this, Smith forms the belief: “The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.”

However, it turns out that Smith actually gets the job. Coincidentally, Smith also has ten coins in his pocket. So, the belief “The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket” is true and justified, but Smith believed it for the wrong reasons.

The Point: Smith had a justified true belief, but most would hesitate to call it knowledge because the truth of the belief depended partly on luck.

The Second Gettier Case:

Smith has strong evidence for the belief: “Jones owns a Ford.” Smith forms the belief that either:

Jones owns a Ford, or
Brown is in Barcelona.

(Smith doesn’t know where Brown is, but the “or” statement will be true if either part is true.)

It turns out:

Jones does not own a Ford.
But by sheer coincidence, Brown is in Barcelona.

So the statement “Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona” is true, and Smith was justified in believing it.

But again, his belief is true by luck, not because his reasoning about Jones was correct.

Point: Smith has a justified true belief, but intuitively we would not call it knowledge, showing that justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge.

How can we fix the problem of knowledge?

So, we now see that the Tripartite View is not good enough as a definition of knowledge. This is because the criteria aren't necessary as you can have knowledge without one of the parts, and also because they're not enough.

In an attempt to fix this, we are left with trying to make the Tripartite View even better and stronger.

Fix 1: Infallibilism

Infallibilism strengthens the justification criterion of the tripartite definition of knowledge to indubitable justification.
Not any sort of justification will do. There must be no possibility of failure of the support it provides to the truth of the belief. The result is that knowledge must be certain.
Smith’s justification for his belief was not infallible because the president could have been wrong, lying, or a hallucination.
BUT: This could lead to complete scepticism. This is too restrictive and opens the door for knowledge being impossible as we will never be able to meet the justification criteria.

Fix 2: No False Lemmas

The no false lemmas theory proposes adding a fourth criterion to the tripartite view. A false lemma is a false belief or step in reasoning.
This view of knowledge is that s knows p if and only if:
P is true
S believes p
S has justification for p
S has not inferred their belief in p from any false lemmas
This can solve Gettier problems because it requires that we analyse the process involved in coming to believe a proposition. It allows us to make sure there are no false beliefs or invalid steps in reasoning involved.
Smith’s belief that the person who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket was inferred from his belief that jones will get the job. That was a false belief and therefore a false lemma.

Criticism of No False Lemmas:

The No false lemmas theory assumes that all cases of epistemic luck leading to a justified true belief involve false lemmas.
Zagzebski creates a Gettier case which she claims involves epistemic luck but no false lemmas:
Dr Jones has very good inductive evidence (symptoms and lab test) that their patient Smith has virus X. This provides justification on the basis of which Dr Jones forms the belief ‘Smith has virus X’. However, Smith’s symptoms and the lab results are due to an unknown virus Y. But, due to luck, after the lab tests were taken but before Dr Jones formed her justified belief, Smith caught virus X. This means that Dr Jones’ justified belief is true.

Zagzebski is indicating that Dr Jones did not infer their justified true belief from a false belief. So the no false lemmas condition has been satisfied. Dr Jones has a justified true belief with no false lemmas. Yet, only because of luck. So, the no false lemmas condition cannot say that Dr Jones does not have knowledge.

Fix 3: Virtue Epistemology

Ernest Sosa’s Virtue epistemology replaces the justification criterion with ‘virtuously formed’.
This involves intellectual ‘traits/virtues’ such as intellectual courage, attention to detail and desire for truth as virtuous in that they enable us to achieve knowledge.
S knows p if and only if:
P is true
S believes p
S believes p because of the exercise of intellectual virtue
You have knowledge if you have truth, belief and the belief resulted from intellectual virtues
Sosa creates an analogy to explain his theory of an archer shooting an arrow at a target

The Archer Analogy:

Accuracy: An arrow hitting the target represents a true belief. But accuracy alone isn’t enough for knowledge, since the hit could be due to luck (as Gettier shows).

Adroitness: An arrow shot skillfully represents intellectual virtue. Even a skillful, accurate shot doesn’t eliminate luck—for example, the arrow could be blown off course and then back on target.

Aptness: Knowledge requires aptness—the arrow hits the target because it was shot skillfully. Similarly, a true belief counts as knowledge only if it results from intellectual virtue, not luck.

BUT: Does this rule out the possibility of young children having knowledge since they have not developed these virtues yet?