Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction by Jennifer Nagel

Author:Jennifer Nagel [Nagel, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Epistemology, Philosophy, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780199661268
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2014-08-31T23:00:00+00:00

The tracking theory has some tricky problems of its own. One problem concerns the methods we employ to gain knowledge. Nozick himself realized that there are situations in which the truth of a belief is awkwardly entangled with the method that we use to form that belief. His example runs as follows. Imagine Granny is in hospital, and her darling grandson comes to visit her. As he stands at her bedside, Granny looks at him and forms the true belief that he is well (or at least well enough to visit her). However, we can imagine that the family is so concerned about Granny that they would not let her find out if the grandson were not well (in that case, they’d tell her he was fine, so as not to worry her). So, if the proposition Granny believes (that her grandson is well) were actually false, Granny would be none the wiser: she’d go on believing he was well, violating condition (3) of the tracking theory of knowledge. Somehow it doesn’t seem that this secret family plan about what to do if the grandson is ill should stop Granny from knowing that he is actually well enough to visit, as long as he is actually well and standing right there by her bedside. To deal with this problem, Nozick proposed an amendment of the tracking theory to include reference to a ‘method of belief formation’. What the Granny case shows is not that there is any problem with Granny’s method of belief formation (looking at her grandson at her bedside); the circumstances in which the grandson is ill are not circumstances in which her method would fail to deliver the truth, but circumstances in which she would no longer be in a position to use this method (she’d be using another method, trusting the testimony of her caring but deceptive family).

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