Summary
Highlights
Jennifer Nagel introduces the philosophical concept of knowledge, highlighting humanity's natural drive to acquire it and the difficulty in precisely defining it. This series aims to explore the problems and philosophical solutions related to understanding what knowledge is, with this video focusing on its basic features.
The English verb 'to know' has multiple uses (knowing a person, place, or language). The series will specifically focus on 'knowing-a-fact,' where 'knows that' or 'knows when/where' refers to being 'latched on to a fact.' This fact-grabbing sense of 'to know' is globally popular and frequently used in many languages.
The video compares knowing with merely believing. A key differentiator is truth: while beliefs can be true or false, what we truly 'know' must be factual. It sounds illogical to say someone 'knows' something that isn't true, highlighting that truth is intrinsic to the meaning of 'knows-that'.
Beyond truth, confidence is another feature of knowledge. If someone 'knows' something, they are confident in it. However, the video questions whether confident belief in a truth is sufficient for knowledge, suggesting there's more to consider.
The example of Pierre, who is confidently pessimistic and happens to be right about the rain by chance, illustrates that confident belief in a truth is not enough for knowledge. A judgment needs a 'good basis' to count as knowledge. The nature of this 'good basis' is a controversial question, which will be explored in future videos.
Before defining what constitutes a good basis for knowledge, the series will tackle a more fundamental problem: is knowledge even possible? The video introduces the problem of skepticism, posing the question of whether we can truly know anything, even in seemingly certain situations, and announces that this will be the focus of the next video.