What is knowledge

• Epistemology


  What is knowledge?
• Tripartite view

  Knowledge as justified, true belief
• Knowledge

  A person knows something if they have a belief that is true and that has good justification.
• Tripartite definition of knowledge

  Knowledge is justified true belief. It claims that someone (S), knows some proposition (P), if and only if: S believes that P (the belief condition), P is true (the truth condition), S is justified in believing P (the evidence condition).
• Necessary condition

  A condition which, if taken away, would prevent you from having the thing in question.
• Sufficient conditions

  When having certain necessary conditions always guarantees having the thing in question.
• Knowledge and justified true belief are the same thing. Justified true belief is necessary for knowledge (you can't have knowledge without it), but it is also sufficient for knowledge (you don't need anything else).
• It is not possible to know something which is false, as reality is described or comprised by what is true, not what is false.
• Taking a proposition to be true is to believe it.
• Justification separates true belief from knowledge.
• Some philosophers have thought that another condition of Knowledge is that it must be certain.
• To say that a belief is justified is not to say that it's certain, so the tripartite theory is not claiming certainty. It is possible to have justified false belief – many scientific theories turn out to be false. But as soon as we discover falsity, the proposition no longer satisfies the three conditions and so is no longer knowledge.