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True Belief (true + belief)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences83%

Selected Abstracts

Young children have difficulty ascribing true beliefs

DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2005
Kevin J. Riggs
Using the format of a false belief task (Wimmer & Perner, 1983), we investigated the ability of 88 3- and 4-year-olds to ascribe a previously held true belief to a story protagonist. In an unexpected transfer task, children found true belief ascription as difficult as false belief ascription even though they could answer memory questions about story details. Results are discussed in relation to theoretical accounts of theory of mind development that stress the importance of understanding the falsity of belief, and those accounts that stress the importance of information or executive processes. [source]

THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE PURSUIT OF SURVIVAL

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2010
SHERRILYN ROUSH
Abstract: Knowledge requires more than mere true belief, and we also tend to think it is more valuable. I explain the added value that knowledge contributes if its extra ingredient beyond true belief is tracking. I show that the tracking conditions are the unique conditions on knowledge that achieve for those who fulfill them a strict Nash Equilibrium and an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy in what I call the True Belief Game. The added value of these properties, intuitively, includes preparedness and an expectation of survival advantage. On this view knowledge is valuable not because knowledge persists but because it makes the bearer more likely to maintain an appropriate belief state,possibly nonbelief,through time and changing circumstances. When Socrates concluded that knowledge of the road to Larissa was no more valuable than true belief for the purpose of getting to Larissa, he did not take into account that one might want to be prepared for a possible meeting with a misleading sophist along the way, or for the possibility of road work. [source]

The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 1-2 2003
Linda Zagzebski
Knowledge has almost always been treated as good, better than mere true belief, but it is remarkably difficult to explain what it is about knowledge that makes it better. I call this "the value problem." I have previously argued that most forms of reliabilism cannot handle the value problem. In this article I argue that the value problem is more general than a problem for reliabilism, infecting a host of different theories, including some that are internalist. An additional problem is that not all instances of true belief seem to be good on balance, so even if a given instance of knowing p is better than merely truly believing p, not all instances of knowing will be good enough to explain why knowledge has received so much attention in the history of philosophy. The article aims to answer two questions: (1) What makes knowingp better than merely truly believing p? The answer involves an exploration of the connection between believing and the agency of the knower. Knowing is an act in which the knower gets credit for achieving truth. (2) What makes some instances of knowing good enough to make the investigation of knowledge worthy of so much attention? The answer involves the connection between the good of believing truths of certain kinds and a good life. In the best kinds of knowing, the knower not only gets credit for getting the truth but also gets credit for getting a desirable truth. The kind of value that makes knowledge a fitting object of extensive philosophical inquiry is not independent of moral value and the wider values of a good life. [source]

The Pursuit of Epistemic Good

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 1-2 2003
Philip Percival
PaceZagzebski, there is no route from the value of knowledge to a non,reliabilist virtue,theoretic epistemology. Her discussion of the value problem is marred by an uncritical and confused employment of the notion of a "state" of knowledge, an uncritical acceptance of a "knowledge,belief" identity thesis, and an incoherent presumption that the widely held thought that knowledge is more valuable than true belief amounts to the view that knowledge is a state of true belief having an intrinsic property which a state of ,mere" true belief lacks. Her arguments against a "machine,product" conception of knowledge are undermined by these flaws, while the alternative "agent,act" model she recommends is unattractive, at odds with the knowledge,belief identity thesis she favours, and no solution to the problem of the value of knowledge she poses. I end with the observation that her version of virtue,theoretic epistemology points in the direction of cognitive decision,theoretic norms, and I briefly discuss the bearing of this fact upon her viewpoint. [source]

Infallibilism and Gettier's Legacy

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2003
DANIEL
Infallibilism is the view that a belief cannot be at once warranted and false. In this essay we assess three nonpartisan arguments for infallibilism, arguments that do not depend on a prior commitment to some substantive theory of warrant. Three premises, one from each argument, are most significant: (1) if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then the Gettier Problem cannot be solved; (2) if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then its warrant can be transferred to an accidentally true belief: (3) if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then it can be warranted and accidentally true. We argue that each of these is either false or no more plausible than its denial. Along the way, we offer a solution to the Gettier Problem that is compatible with fallibilism. [source]

Reliability and the Value of Knowledge,

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2002
WAYNE D. RIGGS
Reliabilism has come under recent attack for its alleged inability to account for the value we typically ascribe to knowledge. It is charged that a reliably-produced true belief has no more value than does the true belief alone. I reply to these charges on behalf of reliabilism; not because I think reliabilism is the correct theory of knowledge, but rather because being reliably-produced does add value of a sort to true beliefs. The added value stems from the fact that a reliably-held belief is non-accidental in a particular way. While it is widely acknowledged that accidentally true beliefs cannot count as knowledge, it is rarely questioned why this should be so. An answer to this question emerges from the discussion of the value of reliability; an answer that holds interesting implications for the value and nature of knowledge. [source]

A CLOSER LOOK AT CLOSURE SCEPTICISM

PROCEEDINGS OF THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY (HARDBACK), Issue 1 2006
Michael Blome-Tillmann
ABSTRACT The paper argues that there is no valid closure principle that can be used to infer sceptical conclusions. My argument exploits the Gettier Intuition that knowledge is incompatible with accidentally true belief. This intuition is interpreted as placing a constraint on beliefs that can count as knowledge: only beliefs which are based on reasons that are relevantly linked to the beliefs' truth can qualify as knowledge. I argue that closure principles are to reflect this constraint by accommodating the requirement that a subject's belief p needs to be based on her competent derivation of p from a known q. The emerging account is finally argued to reconcile Dretske's anti-closure intuitions with the intuition that we can extend knowledge by deduction, while simultaneously blocking closure arguments for scepticism about the external world. [source]

Young children have difficulty ascribing true beliefs

DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2005
Kevin J. Riggs
Using the format of a false belief task (Wimmer & Perner, 1983), we investigated the ability of 88 3- and 4-year-olds to ascribe a previously held true belief to a story protagonist. In an unexpected transfer task, children found true belief ascription as difficult as false belief ascription even though they could answer memory questions about story details. Results are discussed in relation to theoretical accounts of theory of mind development that stress the importance of understanding the falsity of belief, and those accounts that stress the importance of information or executive processes. [source]

Reliability and the Value of Knowledge,

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2002
WAYNE D. RIGGS
Reliabilism has come under recent attack for its alleged inability to account for the value we typically ascribe to knowledge. It is charged that a reliably-produced true belief has no more value than does the true belief alone. I reply to these charges on behalf of reliabilism; not because I think reliabilism is the correct theory of knowledge, but rather because being reliably-produced does add value of a sort to true beliefs. The added value stems from the fact that a reliably-held belief is non-accidental in a particular way. While it is widely acknowledged that accidentally true beliefs cannot count as knowledge, it is rarely questioned why this should be so. An answer to this question emerges from the discussion of the value of reliability; an answer that holds interesting implications for the value and nature of knowledge. [source]

Why Anti-Realism Breaks up Relationships

THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 1 2002
Christopher J. Insole
Some theologians are inclined to regard realism with hostility or indifference. I do not present an argument for realism, but for why realism matters, and what is at stake. First of all, I separate the heart of realism from gratuitous doctrines which are too often associated with it. Religious realism is the claim that truth is independent of our beliefs about truth, and that we can in principle hope to have true beliefs about God. Realism is not intrinsically concerned with the existence of ,objects', with natural theology or rational justification. I then show that even thinkers who are hostile or indifferent to religious realism so defined, usually make an implicit appeal to a similar realism in the sphere of ethics. To establish that realism matters in religion as well as ethics I draw an analogy with realism/anti-realism about persons, to show that anti-realism makes mutually risk-taking and courageous relationships impossible. I go on to argue that far from it being a realist who is obsessed with rational certainty, this is one of the worst vices of the anti-realist, who cannot bear there to be a gap between her beliefs and reality. I conclude that the most vital feature of religious realism is not certainty of belief, but the opposite , the acknowledged risk that all our hope could be in vain. In closing the possibility on this risk, the anti-realist demonstrates an unfaithful and uncourageous movement of thought. [source]