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Pritchard, D. (2014). What is this thing called knowledge? *3rd Edition; Routledge.

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The following Venn Diagram represents the enlightening idea Pritchard presents on knowledge being the overlap between what propositions we believe in, and the truth of those propositions.

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trīˈpärˌtīt/

adjective

1. shared by or involving three parties.

2. "a tripartite coalition government"

consisting of three parts.

"a tripartite classification"

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Galina Culpechina writes:

This exercise of explaining what knowledge is in my own words revealed my own knowledge gap. I thought defining it will be easy.  However, I realized that my knowledge about knowledge is not clear.

Brenda Spehar writes:

What do we know for sure?  It’s a tricky question and after reading all the posts here before constructing my own and am thinking I know nothing for sure!

Claudia Marchessault writes:

I spent a lot of time today thinking about how to go about answering this question 'What is Knowledge?'. For some reason, every attempt I made to articulate exactly what I thought knowledge was, felt (and still feels...) incomplete.

In Chapter 3, Pritchard emphasizes that the difficulty many of us had in providing an accurate definition of knowledge is not one that is unique. In fact, the very problem of where to begin with such a definition is one that has confounded epistemologists for ages. The overarching debate in the field, known as the problem of the criterion, pivots on the type of critical assumption one has to make to define knowledge. As Pritchard puts it, "[one] must either assume that [they] can independently know what the criteria for knowledge are in order to identify instances of knowledge, or else [one] must assume that [they] can identify instances of knowledge in order to determine what the criteria for knowledge are." (p. 21) No wonder so many of us were stumped -- it is the veritable ccatch-22 of defining knowledge!

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Paul Parungao writes:

It may be Nietzschean to write this, but knowledge could also be seen as getting or displaying power, or imposing one's will upon nature or others. The old adage "knowledge is power" comes to mind.

When exploring the value of knowledge, Pritchard calls attention to the fact that most knowledge is of instrumental value to us because it enables us to achieve our goals (p.17). Insofar as knowledge is perceived to be more stable, and therefore more reliable, than simply a belief (even if that belief happens to be true), knowledge allows us to more confidently make decisions and take action which can help us reach a desired objective.

Can you think of any examples where the reverse is true?  Where, instead, knowledge is counterproductive to one's goals?

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The 'Tripartite' : Justified True Belief 

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The 'Tripartite' : Justified True Belief 

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Jason Wong writes:

You may ask, what about knowledge that is not experienced first hand?  A simple example: historical event?  How does one gain knowledge of something that happened in the past that can not be experienced first hand. One can gain knowledge of the event by learning through the experience of others.  By reading accounts of the events, learning what happened before and after such an event or watching footage of the event does a person start to gain second hand experience.  How the person frames the historic event is very person as all the accounts are then filtered through the lens of one’s own experience, biases and perspective.

As Pritchard points out, the classical account of knowledge fundamentally asserts that knowledge is simply a justified true belief (p. 23). As Jason notes above, there are some things which we can verify for ourselves through first-hand experience (cotton is soft, ice is cold, sugar is sweet, etc.), but there are others, like historical events, for which we cannot possibly satisfy ourselves and must rely on the word of others as sufficient justification.  With this in mind, it seems that 'trust' then becomes a matter of concern insofar as the biases, perceptions, and interpretations become embedded into these sources of knowledge.

To what extent do we factor the notion of 'trust' into our ideas of knowledge?

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Galina Culpechina writes:

I remember from my previous courses that there are two types of knowledge: conceptual knowledge - concepts/ideas and connections between them - and  procedural knowledge - skills and knowledge how to do things.

It is apparent that many of us see there are different types of knowledge and different ways of knowing, or coming to know, things about the world. Pritchard highlights the distinction between ability knowledge, or physical knowledge of how to do things (eg. how to swim), and propositional knowledge, which is "knowledge asserted by a sentence which says that something is the case" (p.3).  Pritchard asserts that ability knowledge is common among many creatures, whereas propositional knowledge is reserved for "only relatively sophisticated creatures like humans" (p. 4).

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Belief and Truth: The Two Prerequisites of Knowledge

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Belief and Truth: The Two Prerequisites of Knowledge

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Jordan McCuaig writes:

...we must also acknowledge that truth exists beyond observation. The proverbial tree falls in the woods whether we hear it or not. This is where I think the distinction between truth or facts and knowledge exists. There are objective facts of the physical world whether we observe them or not, and knowledge is only created through observation and agreement.

The two most-widely agreed upon requirements for possessing knowledge, as Pritchard points out, includes a belief in the relevant proposition, and that that belief must be true.  As such, it would follow that if we believe that the proverbial tree in the woods has fallen, and the tree has in fact fallen, whether or not we actually observe the tree falling in the woods is a moot point.