You are reading Code’s “What Can She Know?” for this week. Your task for this assignment is to develop an outline for the entire article (4.5 pages) that shows its main ideas. The outline should go paragraph by paragraph presenting the main idea of each paragraph in order. Please number your outlines so that the number on your outline corresponds to the paragraph number of the article. These complete outlines are due by by the end of the day Friday.
Grading will be done in accordance with the generic rubric. Please write in clear, complete sentences to express the main ideas of each paragraph of the Code article. A single sentence will suffice. You may even find that a single sentence in the paragraph conveys the main idea of that paragraph. It is okay to paraphrase or to put it into your own words, while keeping the main idea of the original. No works cited page is needed for this assignment.
Discussion:
This week you’re looking at several good articles on epistemology. The Gettier article challenges a longstanding view in epistemology, namely, the view that knowledge is justified true belief. How does he do this? Here is a hint:
If someone thinks that knowledge is justified true belief and I disagree, one way I could go would be to try to find examples of justified true belief that don’t quite qualify as knowledge.
Goldman is offering a theory of justification. Whatever you think about knowledge, almost everyone agrees that knowledge is some kind of justified true belief (even if we have to add more to avoid Gettier type problems). So, we could talk about belief. Or, we could talk about truth. Goldman focuses only on the justification part. What is justification? Goldman tries to offer a theory of what beliefs have when we call them justified. I added a reading quiz to help with the Goldman article. Make sure you do it! It’s just for practice!
Now, what do you think of the Gettier article? What do you think of Goldman’s theory of justification? Let’s try really to understand their respective arguments and views. Yes, they can be challenging. These are tough topics. But the question is, why does Gettier think he has refuted the knowledge as justified true belief theory of knowledge? Why does Goldman think he has a good theory of justification? How does justification work for Goldman? Is that how it really works? I’m looking forward to your comments.
Last, Code is looking at epistemology from a slightly different perspective. She isn’t offering a theory of justification (as Goldman is) or challenging a view of knowledge (as Gettier is). Code is, rather, arguing that epistemology isn’t as pure or unbiased a discipline as we may have thought. For starters, many philosophers and maybe even non-philosophers would say that whether someone knows a fact does not depend on who that person is. I can know that 2+2=4 and youc an know that. How could my socioeconomic status be relevant? How could my age? Sex? Gender? Religion? And so on. Knowledge is thought to be objective and if it is objective, then anyone ought to be capable of it. However, there are other beliefs related to objectivity and knowledge that might make it the case that some knowledge is not universally available to would-be knowers. Philosophers say or imply one thing in one place but say or imply something different in another. The result could be a biased view of knowledge. Code looks at that with specific examples.
