- 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
Instability and Knowledge
Instability and Knowledge
- Chapter:
- (p.91) Chapter 18 Instability and Knowledge
- Source:
- When Is True Belief Knowledge?
- Author(s):
Richard Foley
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
This chapter explores how the possession of true beliefs for a brief duration can (or cannot) be counted as knowledge. In everyday situations, if one has true but unstable beliefs and is unaware of the source of the instability, this gap in one's information can be used to explain why one lacks knowledge. Demon and brain-in-the-vat hypotheses typically make use of the familiar narrative technique in which the audience is given information that the characters of the story lack. The audience is aware that the characters are being massively deceived, but the characters themselves are not. The chapter, however, takes a new spin on the demon hypothesis to raise further questions about what counts as knowledge in scenarios were the character does not lack information about their situation that is available to the audience.
Keywords: knowledge, instability, demon hypothesis, true beliefs, unstable beliefs, deception
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- 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
