Theory of Knowledge

Hilary Kornblith’s main argument in her article “knowledge needs no justification” (2009) is reinstating her opinion that the formula for knowledge does not necessarily have to contain “justified” true belief. That is to say that justification is not a required condition to say one has knowledge. Although Kornblith does recognize justifications importance to epistemological study and that “failure to meet justification is evidence that one does not know”(124), she suggests that it does not in the same sense mean that it is entrenched in the definition of knowledge, nor that it should be.

      She begins first by discussing the internalist’s versus the externalist’s justified belief. Internalism refers to justified belief based on mental states or through introspection, such as reflection in Plato Meno (1976). In contrast externalism is unrestricted, not to be simply within the individual, but also from outside forces. Kornblith (2009) gives the example of reliabilism, and how it is justified true belief in that it is arrived at using a reliable method. An integral theorist, Alvin Goldman, Kornblith (2009) states, also was known to leave justification out of his causal theory of knowledge. In a later adaptation of his theory, Goldman included a reliability clause of justification of true belief, but Kornblith (2009) excuses this saying that he never explicitly explained this change of mind and suggests that he merely did it to adapt to the standard views of knowledge.

      Kornblith (2009) goes on to evaluate different epistemologists’ accounts of justification. Roderick Chisholm’s Socratic questioning, and Richard Foley’s reflection, through strict internalism, she argues are means of justification that are likely to be subject to individual bias, leaning in favour of the individuals beliefs. What the author calls “arguments on paper” (Kornblith, 2009, 117) refers to Laurence Bonjour’s suggested need, for the subject of the proposition of knowledge, for... [continues]

Read full essay