- Title Pages
-
Chapter 1 An Observation -
Chapter 2 Post-Gettier Accounts of Knowledge -
Chapter 3 Knowledge Stories -
Chapter 4 Intuitions about Knowledge -
Chapter 5 Important Truths -
Chapter 6 Maximally Accurate and Comprehensive Beliefs -
Chapter 7 The Beetle in the Box -
Chapter 8 Knowledge Blocks -
Chapter 9 The Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Justified Belief -
Chapter 10 The Value of True Belief -
Chapter 11 The Value of Knowledge -
Chapter 12 The Lottery and Preface -
Chapter 13 Reverse Lottery Stories -
Chapter 14 Lucky Knowledge -
Chapter 15 Closure and Skepticism -
Chapter 16 Disjunctions -
Chapter 17 Fixedness and Knowledge -
Chapter 18 Instability and Knowledge -
Chapter 19 Misleading Defeaters -
Chapter 20 Believing That I Don’t Know -
Chapter 21 Introspective Knowledge -
Chapter 22 Perceptual Knowledge -
Chapter 23 A Priori Knowledge -
Chapter 24 Collective Knowledge -
Chapter 25 A Look Back -
Chapter 26 Epistemology within a General Theory of Rationality -
Chapter 27 The Core Concepts of Epistemology - Index
The Beetle in the Box
The Beetle in the Box
- Chapter:
- (p.41) Chapter 7 The Beetle in the Box
- Source:
- When Is True Belief Knowledge?
- Author(s):
Richard Foley
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
This chapter looks at how people know many things without having observed their truth firsthand. To illustrate this and related points, the chapter tells the story of the beetle in the box. An individual S comes into a room and sees a small, sealed box on the table. She looks at the outside of the box from all angles but cannot see into it. There is nothing unusual about its weight. Nor does it make a special sound when shaken. Relative to what she is able to observe, there might be nothing at all inside, or there might be a coin wrapped in cloth so as to make no noise, or perhaps a marble or a key. S, however, believes that there is a beetle in the box, and she is correct. There is in fact a beetle inside, but she does not know this to be the case.
Keywords: truth, knowledge, tests, counterfactual truths, intuitions
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
- Title Pages
-
Chapter 1 An Observation -
Chapter 2 Post-Gettier Accounts of Knowledge -
Chapter 3 Knowledge Stories -
Chapter 4 Intuitions about Knowledge -
Chapter 5 Important Truths -
Chapter 6 Maximally Accurate and Comprehensive Beliefs -
Chapter 7 The Beetle in the Box -
Chapter 8 Knowledge Blocks -
Chapter 9 The Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Justified Belief -
Chapter 10 The Value of True Belief -
Chapter 11 The Value of Knowledge -
Chapter 12 The Lottery and Preface -
Chapter 13 Reverse Lottery Stories -
Chapter 14 Lucky Knowledge -
Chapter 15 Closure and Skepticism -
Chapter 16 Disjunctions -
Chapter 17 Fixedness and Knowledge -
Chapter 18 Instability and Knowledge -
Chapter 19 Misleading Defeaters -
Chapter 20 Believing That I Don’t Know -
Chapter 21 Introspective Knowledge -
Chapter 22 Perceptual Knowledge -
Chapter 23 A Priori Knowledge -
Chapter 24 Collective Knowledge -
Chapter 25 A Look Back -
Chapter 26 Epistemology within a General Theory of Rationality -
Chapter 27 The Core Concepts of Epistemology - Index
