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Knowledge as a thick concept: explaining why the Gettier problem arises

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Abstract

The Gettier problem has stymied epistemologists. But, whether or not this problem is resolvable, we still must face an important question: Why does the Gettier problem arise in the first place? So far, philosophers have seen it as either a problem peculiar to the concept of knowledge, or else an instance of a general problem about conceptual analysis. But I would like to steer a middle course. I argue that the Gettier problem arises because knowledge is a thick concept, and a Gettier-like problem is just what we should expect from attempts at analyzing a thick concept. Section 2 is devoted to establishing the controversial claim that knowledge is thick, and, in Sect. 3, I show that there is a general problem for analyzing thick concepts of which the Gettier problem is a special instance. I do not take a stand on whether the Gettier problem, or its general counterpart, is resolvable. My primary aim is to bring these problems into better focus.

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Notes

  1. See Shope (1983, 2004) for a survey of responses.

  2. For example, see Greco (2003). Pritchard (2005) also seems to provide an analysis in the traditional sense.

  3. This is strongly suggested by the way in which epistemologists tend to approach the Gettier problem. See Shope (1983, 2004) for a survey. No one, as far as I know, has suggested that very similar problems might arise for a broader class of concepts of which knowledge is a member.

  4. For this type of suggestion, see Laurence and Margolis (1999, p. 15) and Williamson (2000, pp. 30–33).

  5. Throughout this paper, whenever I refer to a concept rather than, say, a term or a property, I italicize the relevant expression.

  6. I use the label ‘evaluative’ broadly enough to include, not only concepts like good, but also normative concepts like ought. It should be noted, however, that my usage of this label does not presuppose any particular way of drawing the distinction between evaluative and non-evaluative contents. For example, I remain neutral on whether theories like expressivism and prescriptivism provide adequate accounts of the evaluative.

  7. Some theorists (such as Elgin (2008, p. 372) and Simmons (1997, p. 148)) allow wholly non-evaluative concepts like red, grass, and green to count as thin. Their view diverges from the primary usage of ‘thin concept’, where the thin is taken to be a subclass of the evaluative. I shall use the notion of a thin concept in the latter way, as picking out a subclass of evaluative concepts.

  8. Why have they classified knowledge as thin? I am ultimately unsure, but here are three possibilities. One is that they have latched on to the generality of thin concepts and, thinking that knowledge is more general than, say, intelligent, they have thereby classified the former as thin and the latter as thick. Still, these claims about relative generality do not guarantee the correct verdict. A concept might be more general than other thick concepts, and yet still be thick. (By analogy, a person might have greater height than other short people, and still be short.) A second possibility is that they have accepted the characterization of thin concepts noted in footnote 7 and they have also assumed that knowledge is wholly non-evaluative. If this is their view, then we’ll see more directly why they are mistaken in Sect. 2.2. A third possibility is that they do not think that knowledge has enough non-evaluative content for it to count as thick. If this is their thought, then I address that too in Sect. 2.2.

  9. These two views might aptly be classified as semantic theories of the relation between thick terms and their evaluative contents. For a defense of a semantic view, see Kyle (2011, Ch. 1). Some people reject semantic theories and instead hold that the evaluative contents are only pragmatically associated with thick terms (e.g. see Väyrynen (2009)). However, although an attempt of including these pragmatic theories would be too cumbersome in this paper, I believe it is possible to adapt the main points of this paper to a pragmatic view. Doing so would require formulating (c1) so as to allow for a pragmatic connection between thick terms and their evaluative contents. This would in turn lead to other changes to certain claims in this paper, but none of these changes, to my knowledge, would obstruct the main theses advanced herein.

  10. Those who accept the analyzability of thick concepts include Gibbard (1992), Hurka and Elstein (2009), Tappolet (2004), Burton (1992), and Payne (2005). Those who reject it include Dancy (1995), Platts (1979, p. 244), Elgin (2008, pp. 372–373), and Brewer (2009, p. 187). Also, Elgin (2005, p. 343) seems to interpret Bernard Williams as rejecting the analyzability of thick concepts.

  11. See Boghossian (1997, p. 334), and see Williamson (2007b, Ch. 4) for a recent critical survey. In this paper, I assume broadly an epistemic view of conceptual entailment, although nothing of substance hangs on the assumption.

  12. For example, an accounting-for relation is employed by Susan Hurley in a similar context. On Hurley’s view, in order to account for X in terms of Y we must provide “a conceptual account” framed in terms of Y “of what we mean, understand, and intend ourselves to be talking or thinking about, when we talk or think about X” (1989, p. 10). Although her formulation is rough, the view I go on to propose might be equivalent in extension to what Hurley has in mind. Also, on Hurley’s view the accounting-for relation does not necessarily involve conceptual analysis, conceptual priority, or conceptual independence. I also intend to avoid these commitments for my version of the accounting-for relation.

  13. Wiggins (1987) has a similar view.

  14. Of course, the account in question can be informative, even if circular. Dancy’s method certainly requires us to say interesting things about each thick concept—lewdness concerns the way sexuality is displayed, and courage “concerns fear and danger” (1995, p. 277). But, in connection with this, it should be made explicit that the accounting-for relation need not involve conceptual priority or asymmetrical dependence. On Dancy’s view, for instance, the “right way” associated with lewd is neither prior to nor independent of lewd. To borrow a term from Susan Hurley (1989, p. 11), we might say these two notions are “interdependent.”.

  15. For a recent challenge to the knowledge-truth entailment see Hazlett (2010). For a challenge to the knowledge-belief entailment, see Lewis (1996, p. 556). The most controversial is the entailment from knowledge to justification. For dissenters, see Audi (1995 and 2001), Kornblith (2009), and Alston (1989). It’s worth pointing out that these latter dissenters must face an important challenge presented by Williamson (2007a, pp. 111–112).

  16. The argument also assumes the traditional view that knowledge is accounted for in terms of belief. But Timothy Williamson has proposed that we should understand belief in terms of knowledge. On his view, “to believe p is to treat p as if one knew p” (2000, p. 46). But this is not a problem for my assumption of the traditional view. First, Williamson does not think that belief is to be accounted for in terms of knowledge in my sense of “accounting for,” because he does not think that belief entails knowledge. And second, Williamson’s view is not incompatible with my assumption that knowledge is accounted for in terms of belief. Williamson is concerned to explain the entailment from knowledge to belief, and he does so by elucidating the concept of belief. But it is nonetheless compatible with his view that the entailment from knowledge to belief plays a role in the best explanation of knowledge. And that’s all I’m assuming.

  17. Of course, the terms ‘justified’, ‘good’, ‘permissible’, ‘okay’, ‘better’, and ‘adequate’ are likely to be context sensitive. They may express different concepts in an ethics conversation from what they would express in an epistemology conversation. Still, this fact does not preclude the rather intuitive claim that I’m making. It’s plausible that the various concepts expressed within each context are thin evaluative concepts, whether ethical, epistemic, legal, etc. It is hard to see how this claim can be rejected. One source of opposition may come from those who distinguish thick from thin by virtue of their relative specificity and generality. Such theorists might claim that epistemically justified is not thin because it is more specific than concepts like all things considered justified. But, as I already mentioned in footnote 8, these claims about relative specificity do not guarantee the correct verdict. A concept might be more specific than other thin concepts, and yet still be thin.

  18. Goldman (1986, pp. 22–27) believes that justification supervenes on facts about reliability. See Conee and Feldman (2001) for the view on which justification supervenes on internalist factors.

  19. Fumerton (2001) argues, by process of elimination, that there isn’t any interesting sense in which justification is evaluative (or, rather, normative). Without going into detail, let me note that Fumerton (2001, p. 52) seems to think that a certain form of noncognitivism about value judgments could uphold the view that justification is normative. The problem, as he correctly notes, is that few epistemologists would happily accept the view that claims about justification are not truth-apt. However, Fumerton fails to recognize a possibility that has recently attracted many meta-ethicists, known as “hybrid expressivism” (e.g. see Copp 2001). Very roughly, these theorists accept that value claims are truth-apt but they appropriate certain features of traditional expressivism, such as its explanation of moral motivation and its response to the Open Question argument. If one was a hybrid expressivist and explained the normativity of justification in terms of hybrid expressivism, then such a view would avoid the above problem, since it can allow claims about justification to be truth-apt. I am not claiming that hybrid expressivism is correct (see Schroeder 2009 for critical discussion), but only that Fumerton’s argument overlooks this viable possibility.

  20. Of course, my claim here is compatible with the widely accepted view that true beliefs are highly valuable. Consider an analogy: the concept diamond is non-evaluative, even though diamonds are highly valuable.

  21. For the most straightforward use of a significance qualifier, see Väyrynen (2008, pp. 390–391, 2009, p. 439). Some theorists worry that paradigmatic thin terms (e.g. ‘ought’) have non-evaluative content and that these would mistakenly count as thick unless we add the significance qualifier. For instance, if ought conceptually entails can, then we might worry that ought is going to count as thick. But the significance qualifier would allow us to say that ‘ought’ does not have enough non-evaluative content, and that’s why it doesn’t count as thick. To my mind, however, this worry does not adequately motivate the significance-qualifier. I’ve claimed that a distinguishing feature of thick concepts is that they are to be accounted for in terms of a non-evaluative content. But, whatever the relation is between ought and can, it’s not at all clear that ought is to be accounted for in terms of can. And this is required for ‘ought’ to satisfy (c2). Thus, I think more needs to be said to motivate this significance-qualifier.

  22. See Väyrynen (2008, p. 391). Williams (1995, p. 234) and Brewer (2009, pp. 185–186) appear to have a similar type of view in mind. The basic idea behind the continuum view most likely originates in Scheffler (1987, p. 417).

  23. There are two points to make here. First off, if one thinks the non-evaluative content of murder should be built up to something more substantial, like deliberate human killing, then it should also be noted that there are cases to be made for building up the non-evaluative content of knowledge to something like reliable true belief, safe belief, or sensitive belief.

    And second, one might think that deflationism about the truth-predicate threatens to reduce the amount of content of true belief. But I don’t see why we should accept this claim. Consider that ‘true belief’, as I’m construing it, need not be defined by using the truth-predicate: S has a true belief that p just in case S has a belief that p and it is the case that p. Alternatively, “it is the case that” could drop out of the definition without problems. Either way, it’s not at all clear why this would mean that true belief lacks a sufficient amount of content.

  24. Note that terms expressing mere conjunctions of thick concepts with wholly non-evaluative concepts are not ad hoc conjunctions in the relevant sense. For example, if ‘monrageous’ expresses the concept courageous and born on a Monday, this expression would not count as an ad hoc conjunction.

    I believe that terms like ‘monrageous’ should count as expressing thick concepts. Intuitively speaking, a thick concept is supposed to involve an evaluative content and a non-evaluative content that are appropriately related to one another. “Appropriately related” is admittedly vague, but we need not specify this before we can see that ‘monrageous’ will meet this intuitive requirement.  Since ‘monrageous’ has a thick concept built into it, it will satisfy this intuitive requirement by virtue of its “in built” thick concept—that is, ‘monrageous’ has an evaluative and a non-evaluative content that are appropriately related by virtue of containing the thick concept courage.  The mere fact that ‘monrageous’ also has some extra non-evaluative content does not, to my mind, disqualify it from counting as thick. None of this can be said for ad hoc conjunctions, since they do not have an “in built” thick concept. The condition I go on to propose will allow for the inclusion of ‘monrageous’ with the thick.

  25. Hurka and Elstein (2009) have a view like this. Tappolet (2004) and Burton (1992) use the ‘in virtue of’ relation. Payne (2005) oscillates between ‘in virtue of’ and ‘is a reason for’. Blackburn (1984, p. 148) provides the ‘on account of’ relation, though he is talking mainly about pejoratives, and it is not clear whether this can be extended to an account of thick terms. Gibbard’s view (1992) is more complicated than these others, but the same claim will apply to his view as well.

  26. There are two other options. One is to state a disjunctive condition as necessary for thickness, where each of the above positions is represented in one of the disjuncts. But this option is clearly unattractive, as it does not provide a unified condition on thickness. The second is to require that a thick concept’s evaluative content obtain in virtue of the non-evaluative content. This could be claimed without holding that thick concepts are analyzable. But I find this view problematic because it looks like it will lead to the emptiness of many intuitively non-empty thick concepts. For a detailed discussion on this, see Kyle (2011, Ch. 3).

  27. Here I’m conjecturing based on how he accounts for lewd. See Dancy (1995, pp. 275–276).

  28. If there is more than one such thin concept, then let Tn stand for their conjunction.

  29. The following examples are merely provisional, but minor alterations will make little difference to what I go on to say. Dancy, for example, would most likely wish to change each Tn to a concept like merit or appropriate, but that wouldn’t make any important difference to my main claims.

  30. The additional concept C must also be internally consistent. Otherwise ad hoc conjunctions would satisfy (c3) (e.g. ‘gred’ could have good, red, and not red as its concept C, which would satisfy clauses (i)-(iii)). There is good reason to require that C be internally consistent. After all, the main reason for focusing on concept C is that C applies within certain possible cases where N and Tn apply without Tk. But if C is internally inconsistent then there will be no such possible case.

  31. Here is a proof showing that ad hoc conjunctions don’t satisfy (c3). (For ease of formulation, I’ll slide over the difference between concepts and terms). Let ‘A’ be an ad hoc conjunction expressing the conjunction of a thin concept Tn and a non-evaluative concept N. Thus, we can assume the following:

    1. (1)

      For any x, x is A if and only if x is N and x is Tn.

      Now suppose for reductio that ‘A’ satisfies condition (c3). That is, suppose there’s a concept C such that,

    2. (2)

      C is logically stronger than N, compatible with Tn, but incompatible with A.

      From these claims, we get a contradiction. Given (2), and assuming C is internally consistent, we’re entitled to assume that we have a possible case in which

    3. (3)

      b is C and b is Tn.

    Moreover,

    1. (4)

      For any x, if x is C, then x is N. [from (2)]

    2. (5)

      For any x, if x is C, then x is not A. [from (2)]

    3. (6)

      b is not A. [from (3) and (5)]

    4. (7)

      b is N. [from (3) and (4)]

    5. (8)

      b is not Tn. [from (1), (6), and (7)]

    6. (9)

      b is Tn. [from (3)]

    Since (8) and (9) contradict each other, we can reject (2). That is, we can reject the claim that the ad hoc conjunction ‘A’ satisfies condition (c3). Ad hoc conjunctions do not satisfy the condition in question.

  32. One might object that in each case I have misidentified the relevant N. Perhaps the above considerations just go to show that the negation of a part of C should be integrated into N. For example, one might claim that inducement of pain not aimed at helping the recipient is actually the appropriate N corresponding to cruel. There are two things to say in response to this kind of maneuver. First, even if the expanded content is the appropriate N, this does not mean that there is no C as described by condition (c3). Rather, it only means that my particular example does not work. But perhaps other examples could be provided. But second, this objection will most likely require that we stretch the accounting-for relation too far. Recall that N is supposed to exhaust the non-evaluative portion of the account of Tk. And this objection claims that the negation of the part of C additional to N is part of that account. In many cases, however, it will seem counterintuitive that Tk is to be accounted for in terms of this expanded content. In fact, I find it dubious that cruel is to be accounted for in terms of inducement of pain not aimed at helping the recipient.

  33. Dancy (1995, p. 264) and Gibbard (2003, pp. 300–301) suggest that thick concepts ought to be distinguished from pejorative expressions (e.g., ‘kraut’, ‘tart’, etc.). Hare (1963, pp. 188–189), on the other hand, tends to lump them in with the thick. Payne (2005, p. 91) claims that ‘obligation to repay twenty dollars’ and ‘good human being’ do not count as thick. I should note that I don’t see good reason to exclude ‘good human being’ from the thick. Payne attempts to exclude it by claiming that its evaluative content does not obtain in virtue of the obtaining non-evaluative content: “A good human being is not good in virtue of being a human being, but in virtue of being a particular kind of human being” (Payne (2005, pp. 91–93)). However, a similar claim can be made for many paradigmatic thick terms. Recall that ‘murder’ seems to express the evaluative content wrong and the non-evaluative content deliberate killing. Now consider an analogous claim to what Payne makes above: A murder is not wrong in virtue of being a deliberate killing, but in virtue of being a particular kind of deliberate killing (e.g. a deliberate killing not done out of self-defense, etc.). This seems just as plausibly true as Payne’s claim. Just as there are many human beings who are not good, there are also many deliberate killings that are not wrong (e.g. killings out of self-defense). Thus, if Payne’s requirement is successful in excluding ‘good human being’, then it’s unclear how the requirement won’t end up excluding many paradigmatic thick terms. We should be open to the possibility that, in at least some contexts of utterance, ‘good human being’ does express a thick concept.

  34. The name comes from Mylan Engel (1992, p. 59) and has been adopted recently by Pritchard (2005, p. 145).

  35. Pritchard (2005, p. 146) and Engel (1992, p. 67). It should be noted that Engel includes a reference to the subject’s “evidential situation” in his definition, but it’s not clear how this makes his view importantly different from the one I’ve mentioned here.

  36. Of course, the platitude needs to be restricted. As Pritchard and Engel have each pointed out, some forms of luck are not excluded by knowledge. But they do think veritic luck is the main form that is excluded.

  37. This way of construing Gettier cases is also suggested by Pritchard (2005, p. 148), Engel (1992, p. 72), and Matthias Steup (2008). Consider a quote from Steup: “The role of the justification condition is to ensure that the analysans does not mistakenly identify as knowledge a belief that is true because of epistemic luck. The lesson to be learned from the Gettier problem is that the justification condition by itself cannot ensure this.”

  38. Goldman (1976) originally used the barn façade example to motivate his relevant alternatives account of knowledge, which he understands to involve a form of reliability (although different from how I defined ‘reliability’). I do not address this view here because the distinction between relevant and irrelevant alternatives is widely seen as unclear and problematic. See Vogel (1999, pp. 163–168) for discussion.

  39. I’m assuming that defeasibility theories of knowledge (such as from Ginet (1988) and Klein (1971)) do not provide a potential substitute for N (in addition to true belief). The reason is that their fourth condition would not be wholly non-evaluative, given that these conditions incorporate justification.

  40. The view under consideration here should not be confused with Peter Unger’s early view according to which a person knows p only if it’s “not at all accidental that the man is right about its being the case that p” (1968, p. 161). Despite its initial appearance, Unger’s view is actually more of a reliability type view, since this condition amounts to there being something in one’s situation that guarantees, or makes it highly probable, that one wouldn’t be wrong.

  41. Here we can understand ‘pain’ in the broad sense—not merely a raw physical sensation, but also a broader form of distress including psychological and emotional pain.

  42. One might claim that the non-evaluative content of cruel (i.e. clause (i)) has been misidentified. Not merely does a cruel act knowingly induce pain, but it must be intended to induce pain. But this condition is surely too strong to be a feasible candidate for N. Children can act cruelly to one another without intending to induce pain. Their intentions might be less malicious. Perhaps they aim to attain popularity or improve self-image, while being indifferent to the pain that’s induced. Still, these treatments of one another are often cruel without the intention to induce pain.

  43. For this sort of characterization, see Sturgeon (1993, p. 157). Ginet (1988, p. 105) also classifies it this way, only without the reference to Gettier-style cases. Shope (2004, p. 289) mentions this as one of the two main ways the Gettier Problem has been understood.

  44. For example, see Pritchard (2005, p. 148) and Plantinga (1993, p. 33). Of course, for Russell’s case to count as a Gettier-style example we must assume that the subject in this case has a justified belief. And that would be additional to what Russell himself claims.

  45. For a discussion on this, see Laurence and Margolis (1999, pp. 14–16).

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Acknowledgements

An early version of this paper was distributed within a dissertation writing group at Cornell University; many thanks to its participants for their feedback—Scott O’Connor, Kristen Inglis, Colin McLear, and Andrew Alwood. My gratitude especially goes to Matti Eklund for his advice, comments, and willingness to discuss many different versions of this paper. I am also indebted to Nicholas Silins, Carl Ginet, Leonard Kahn, Michelle Kosch, Karen Bennett, Kent Dunnington, Nicholas Sturgeon, and an anonymous referee for their helpful feedback.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, United States Air Force Academy, 2354 Fairchild Drive, USAF Academy, CO, 80840, USA

    Brent G. Kyle

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Kyle, B.G. Knowledge as a thick concept: explaining why the Gettier problem arises. Philos Stud 165, 1–27 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9919-2

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