On There Being No Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Knowledge

Mind Association

On There Being No Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for KnowledgeAuthor(s): J. KellenbergerSource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 80, No. 320 (Oct., 1971), pp. 599-602Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2252531 .

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ON THERE BEING NO NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT CONDITIONS FOR KNOWLEDGE

RECENTLY among philosophers ther has been a renewed concern with the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge, that is, knowing that. The set of conditions that has been considered a lead- ing candidate is:

(i) P is the case. (ii) S believes that P.

(iii) S is justified in believing that P.' While an alternative and runner-up set of conditions is:

(i) That what one is said to know be true. (ii) That one be sure of it.

(iii) That one have the right to be sure.2 There have been efforts to show that the conditions of neither set

are in fact necessary and sufficient for knowledge. These efforts consist primarily in offering counterexamples. Consequently they leave open the possibility that some other set of conditions, if not the set under scrutiny, is necessary and sufficient for knowledge.

In what follows I endeavour to show that regardless of the set of conditions it cannot possibly be a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge. It can be seen that there cannot be such conditions for knowledge through considerations that have to do with their application, or what would be their application if there were any. These considerations may be got at in terms of one who can predict the weather and two questions that we might ask about him.

The first question. My friend Edward, I tell an acquaintance, can most often predict the weather. He has lived in the area many years, I explain, and has developed an ability to predict changes in the weather up to several days in advance. Mildly curious, my acquaintance asks me, " Did he know this storm we now have would blow in?" I reply that he did, that he said thattwodaysbefore it struck there would be a storm. The point of his question " Did he know this storm we now have would blow in?" is to find out if Edward predicted the storm. Thus I can reply either " He did (know)" or " He said a storm would blow in " or " He predicted this storm ". Any of these answers his question. This is not to say that " know " means only " predict " or " say "; it is to say, however, that given this question, in indicating that Edward predicted the storm I indicate he knew it would blow in. (Similarly, while " pro- mise " does not mean " say ", in certain circumstances I can indicate

I Edmund L. Gettier, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" Analysis, vol. 23 (1963), pp. 121-123, reprinted in Knowledge and Belief, edited by A. Phillips Griffiths (Oxford, 1967).

2 A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge, p. 35. A third set of conditions held to be necessary and sufficient by R. M. Chisholm and cited by Gettier, op. cit. is: (i) S accepts P, (ii) 5 has adequate evidence for P (iii) P is true.

599



600 J. KELLENBERGER:

that someone promised to do X by indicating that he said he would do X.)

The second question might arise in this way. My acquaintance discovers that he has need of an expert weather forecaster. He remembers what I told him about Edward and decides to ask me some more questions about him. His concern in asking these further questions is different from his concern in asking the- first question. In asking the first question my acquaintance wanted to know if Edward had in fact predicted the storm, whatever the nature of his acquired ability to predict the weather. Now he is concerned with the nature of that ability. He is concerned with its reliability and with whether it is based on guesswork. So one question he asks is this: " Did Edward know this storm would blow in or was it an educated guess on his part?" This question is not the first question, and even though the first question was answered in the affirmative, this one might not be. It will be if I know Edward to have some sort of meteorological expertise: it will not be if his prediction was only generally reliable guesswork.

One thing that should be made clear is that it is not the case that the first question is " Did Edward know the storm would blow in?" while the second question is " Did Edward really know the storm would blow in?" The second question could be asked by asking, " Did Edward really know the storm would blow in?" But the first question could also. If my acquaintance thought that I was joking when I said that Edward knew that there would be a storm, his question " Did Edward really know the storm would blow in?" would come to " Did he really predict this storm, or are you joking?"

The important point, and the consideration crucial for necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge, is this: if " Did he know?" is the first question the answer could be affirmative, while if it is the second question the answer could be negative. But if there were necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge, each and every instance that fulfils these conditions, and only such an instance, should be an instance of knowing that. It should not be that, according to which question is asked, something is or is not an instance of knowledge. It cannot be that according to one application something meets the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and according to another it does not.

The argument can be cast in terms of other examples as well. All that is essential is that two questions can be distinguished, two questions that might have different answers regarding one's knowing that something. We can again bring out two such questions regarding the following case.

The first question. Charles who lives in a tough neighbourhood one evening surprises some of the roughest fellows of the neighbourhood assembled in an alley. They are intently discussing something. At his approach they disperse, furtively and rapidly. Charles tells his wife of the incident and adds, " I know that they're planning



CONDITIONS FOR KNOWLEDGE 601

something ". "I doubt it ", she says. That night they break into and rob a store. " I knew it," Charles says. Later what is here the first question arises. Charles' wife is asked by a friend if anyone knew that the gang was going to rob the store. She answers that Charles knew that they were planning something.

The second question is one the police would be interested in asking Charles. Did he know the gang was planning something, and if he knew why did he not inform them (the police)? Asked this by the police what Charles replies is that he suspected they were planning something, but he had no way to be sure. And when the police put it to him that he did not know in that case, he admits that he did not: he was not able to present any evidence to show that the gang was planning something. However, this admission does not impugn his wife's earlier comment; his not knowing that they were planning something does not impugn his knowing that they were planning something.

Again, then, if the question is the first question the answer could be affirmative (indicating that Charles did know that something), while if the question is the second question the answer could be negative, and again this could not be so if there were necessary and sufficient conditions for knowing that, for it cannot be that one instance both does and does not meet the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge.

One who believes that there are necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge might reply to my argument in several ways. I would like to note three.

(1) It might be said that there are different meanings of " knowledge ", that I have equivocated on several of these and that what is sought are the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge in only one sense of " knowledge ".

If this reply is made, it must be borne in mind that we have been considering knowledge that is already explicitly limited to knowing that. Knowing about and knowing someone's face, for instance, have already been excluded. Thus, this first reply is, in effect, that "knowing that " has different meanings.

(2) It might be replied that sometimes, and perhaps quite often, we conclude that someone knows that something when we should not; we reach such mistaken conclusions because we have the wrong or a loose concept of knowledge.

The gist of this reply is that very much that we call by the name "knowledge " should not be so dignified. The original concern, however, was with what knowledge is, not with what it should be. Socrates asked " What is knowledge?" in the Theaetetus. Ayer thought of his conditions as representing a discovery of what knowledge is. Of course one might want to tighten the concept of knowledge in a quasi-legal fashion. But to do so is, for reasons good or bad, to cease to count as knowledge all that is knowledge, that is, knowing that.



602 J. KELLENBERGER: CONDITIONS FOR KNOWLEDGE

(3) Finally it might be replied that the necessary and sufficient conditions being sought are for a pure or special notion of knowledge.' If nothing qualifies as knowledge in this special sense, then that is to be accepted.

If this reply is made then it is frankly admitted that the concern is no longer with knowledge, but with a special concept of some sort.

Even in the light of those replies, then, if what we mean by "knowledge " is knowledge, or even if what we mean by " knowledge " is only knowing that, we should think neither that we need necessary and sufficient conditions to determine if someone knows something nor that there are such conditions for knowledge.

San Fernando Valley State College J. KELLENBERGER

1 Cf. W. W. Rozenboom, " Why I know So Much More Than You Do ", American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 4 (1967), pp. 281-290.



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On There Being No Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Knowledge