Is Knowledge Impossible?

Some people have thought that knowledge is impossible. It might seem implausible to think knowledge is impossible, but there are important philosophical concerns we can have about knowledge and challenges to the possibility of knowledge can be illuminating. First, I will discuss what “knowledge” means and suggest three different definitions: (a) justified true belief, (b) certainty, and (c) a deep understanding. Second, I will discuss that the belief that “knowledge is impossible” seems to be self-defeating. Third, I will discuss an argument against the possibility of knowledge known as the “Münchhausen Trilemma” and explain where it might go wrong. The argument supposedly shows how unsatisfying any proof is in order to show that none of our beliefs are proven—and knowledge is impossible. I reject the Trilemma because it is too demanding about what counts as a “justified belief.” Proof or evidence is not always necessary to have a “justified belief.”

1. What is knowledge?

We all know what knowledge means to some extent already. We use the word in everyday discourse and we can often spot when someone uses the word wrong. We ask a child if she knows she has hands and she is supposed to say, “Yes” or we worry that she doesn’t know what “know” means. We ask a child if she knows what planets in the universe contain intelligent life and the answer, “No” seems like the correct response here. At some point we have an intuitive understanding of what “knowledge” means. This intuitive understanding is based on how people actually use the word, but it is fallible. There can be mistakes made when a person uses the word.

Philosophers can give technical definitions to the word “knowledge” in an attempt to help us understand and correct our intuitive understanding of the word. The technical definitions must be based on our intuitive use of the word, or we aren’t even talking about knowledge anymore. We would be talking about something else. The intuitive use of the word should be sensitive to what ordinary practice says are examples of knowledge. If the police take me down to the station for questioning and ask me if I know that George is the killer, I’m not supposed to respond saying, “It’s impossible to know if a person is a killer.” The police will not be amused by this statement and are likely to respond, “You know what we mean. Just answer the question.”

I don’t think the word “knowledge” necessarily has only one meaning. It can be used in different ways in different contexts. I suggest the following definitions:

1. Justified true belief.
2. Certainty.
3. A deep understanding.

We could say that the word “knowledge” actually stands for at least three different words that are related and sound alike. This is likely to cause some confusion and equivocations, which can help explain why we sometimes make mistakes with the word. People might have arguments using a concept of knowledge starting with one concept and ending with another. For example:

1. I don’t know that I have two hands because I can’t disprove that I’m in a dream world.
2. Therefore, my belief that I have two hands is unjustified.

This argument starts with the word “knowledge” as “certainty.” It is true that I am at least marginally uncertain that I have two hands because the belief could be false if I am in a dream world. Then the conclusion shifts the word “knowledge” to mean “justified true belief.” If we find out that I don’t have a justified true belief that I have two hands because there is no reason to believe I do, then we find out that I don’t have a justified belief. However, the argument didn’t prove there is no reason to think I have two hands, it only proved that I’m not absolutely certain that I have two hands.

I will discuss the three suggested different definitions of knowledge.

(a) Justified true belief

Justified true belief is a modest sort of knowledge. A belief can be justified without being proven. As long as we have more reason to have a belief given our limited information than not, the belief seems to fulfill the need of being justified. A justified belief is a belief that is reasonable to have. It seems plausible to think that beliefs can be justified even when no argument is given for them at all because a belief could be reasonable as long as it’s not unreasonable—as long as we don’t keep a belief that we have reason to reject. For example, I think we all know that “1+1=2” even though we can’t all give an argument for it. This modest use of the word “know” does not require an argument, a justification, certainty, or a deep understanding.

The word “true” is where justified true belief becomes problematic. It might be that none of our beliefs are true. It’s hard to say when a belief is true if it ever is. For this reason I am more interested in justifications than truth. That’s not to say that I’m not interested in truth. There’s a sense in which justified beliefs are more likely to be true than unreasonable ones.

The word “true” often refers to a correspondence. If a statement corresponds to reality in the appropriate way, then it’s true. We can say that true beliefs correspond to “facts,” and “facts” are the reality that beliefs could correspond to.

We might worry that none of our beliefs perfectly correspond to reality. Newtan’s theory of physics seemed very useful and accurate, but it does not correspond to reality perfectly. Einstein’s theory of physics did a better job. Perhaps Einstein’s theory is also imperfect. Both theories attempt to model or represent reality, and do so pretty well, but they might both be imperfect models. We could say that both theories might be false, but there is also a sense that both theories are true to some extent. We might say that they are both relatively accurate theories, even if they aren’t entirely true.

That the word “true” itself is ambiguous, but we should often prefer to use the word to mean something like “accurate” that allows for degrees of truth. This is one motivation behind fuzzy logic and multiple truth values, and it seems to capture how we use the word “true” in everyday discourse pretty well. A person can say that they believe that Einstein’s theory of physics is true without implying that they think it maps onto reality perfectly.

I don’t want to suggest it really is impossible to say something that turns out to be absolutely true, but that isn’t generally a requirement of our knowledge of the “justified true belief” variety. General statements seem to be strong contenders for being absolutely true. Perhaps the statement that “something exists” is so general that we can know that it is absolutely true.

I think our use of the word “knowledge” usually refers to something like “justified true belief” and this is how I usually use the word.

(b) Certainty

We often say that we don’t know something when we are speculating, even though our speculations could be justified true beliefs. We might not be certain (sufficiently know) that someone is a murderer even when we witness that person commit the crime because our mind plays tricks on us, we might worry that the person has an evil twin, and so on. At least some certainty is required before we satisfactorily know that someone is guilty of murder. What we call “reasonable doubt” is enough to find someone to be “not guilty.”

When we are certain that a belief is true, it is also a justified true belief. However, the demand for certainty is a more demanding form of knowledge.

Some people equate “certainty” with “infallibility.” However, there can be degrees of certainty. This is what many call “degrees of confidence.” If something is absolutely certain, then there is no possibility of error. This is the highest degree of justification conceivable. However, not all justification provides a high level of confidence.

(c) A deep understanding

Sometimes we think a belief isn’t justified or that we don’t know something if our understanding is too limited. Good examples can be found in what is now called the Gettier Problem. For example, I might see a cow in a meadow and believe that there’s a cow over there. However, I might be looking at a cardboard cutout of a cow while there is really a cow over there hiding behind the cardboard cutout. I have a justification to believe that there’s a cow over there and it’s true that there’s a cow over there, but there’s a sense that I don’t know that there’s a cow over there. This sense seems to be that I don’t have the deep understanding of what it means for the cow to be over there.

Some people have said that beliefs must be causally tied to reality in the right way for us to have knowledge. This is a more demanding kind of knowledge than mere justified true belief. Either that kind of justification provides us with more certainty or it provides us with a deeper understanding. Either way, I don’t find it to be a particularly impressive requirement for knowledge in everyday life because we have no way of knowing for certain when our beliefs are causally tied to reality in the right way. We would just beg the question when we say, “My belief is causally tied to reality in the right way.” Of course, some speculation involving how our belief seems to be causally tied to reality could provide us with the deeper understanding that we would like to have.

Similarly, we might prefer to have arguments and justifications for our beliefs, even though it can be perfectly reasonable to have some beliefs even when no argument or justification is attained.

Philosophers are interested in having a deep understanding of our beliefs. We want to know how our beliefs are causally tied to reality, we want justifications for our beliefs, and we want arguments for them. However, it seems wrong to say that a deep understanding is always required. Even philosophers commonly rely on axiomatic assumptions. Such assumptions might be defensible, and they might have to be something we could reject on the basis of comparison—we might need to be able to decide one belief is better than an alternative for it to be justified.

2. What if knowledge is impossible?

Let’s say that knowledge is impossible—of the modest justified true belief variety. In that case we can’t know that knowledge is impossible. We would still be forced to have opinions and find some way to explain why some opinions are better than others. In the long run we would still say we have justified beliefs and that we know many things based on the ordinary use of the word “know.”

Can we know that knowledge is impossible? No. If knowledge is impossible, then we have no way of knowing that. We would have no way to persuade anyone that it’s true. It wouldn’t even be reasonable to try to do so. It would be strange to expect anyone to believe it or agree with it.

What if it’s impossible to have true beliefs? We can have justified beliefs, even if none of them are true. It might be that no beliefs are absolutely true, but that is not the requirement of the modest sort of knowledge that I’ve discussed. There are different degrees of truth.

What about knowledge as certainty or deep understanding? It might be possible to have knowledge in the sense of having some degree of certainty or deep understanding, but it might be impossible to have absolute certainty or absolutely deep understanding. Those extreme kinds of knowledge could be impossible.

3. The Münchhausen Trilemma

Here is what wikipedia has to say about the Münchhausen Trilemma:

If we ask of any knowledge: “How do I know that it’s true?”, we may provide proof; yet that same question can be asked of the proof, and any subsequent proof. The Münchhausen Trilemma is that we have only three options when providing proof in this situation:

1. The circular argument, in which theory and proof support each other (i.e. we repeat ourselves at some point)
2. The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof, ad infinitum (i.e. we just keep giving proofs, presumably forever)
3. The axiomatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts (i.e. we reach some bedrock assumption or certainty)

The first two methods of reasoning are fundamentally weak, and because the Greek skeptics advocated deep questioning of all accepted values they refused to accept proofs of the third sort. The trilemma, then, is the decision among the three equally unsatisfying options. In contemporary epistemology, advocates of coherentism are supposed to be accepting the “circular” horn of the trilemma; foundationalists are relying on the axiomatic argument. Not as popular, views that accept (perhaps reluctantly) the infinite regress are branded infinitism.

The skeptics wanted to argue that (a) all knowledge relies on argumentation; (b) all arguments are ultimately circular, regressive, or axiomatic; those sorts of arguments can’t provide us with justification; therefore (c) there is no knowledge.

Let’s assume that “knowledge” here is the modest sort—justified true belief. Why do I reject this argument? First, because the conclusion that “there is no knowledge” seems to be self-defeating. If there is no knowledge, then how can we know that there’s no knowledge?

Second, because the conclusion is so counterintuitive. Our everyday discourse requires that a modest use of the word “knowledge” refers to certain things or we just don’t think the person even knows what knowledge means. In other words, the trilemma can be taken to be a reductio ad absurdum—the conclusion is absurd to the point that we’ve proven that something is probably wrong with the argument. Either the argument is invalid or at least one premise is false. People who take the argument to be a real proof that knowledge is impossible seem to miss the point.

Third, because the argument is overly ambitious. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The conclusion is counterintuitive and the premises are not obvious. The premises could be false and need a great deal of justification, but I have never seen a satisfying justification for the premises.(In fact, the argument requires that the premises couldn’t be satisfactorily justified.) That’s not to say that I know for certain which premise is false. Any of the premises could be false and the argument gives us reason to question them.

Fourth, the premise that knowledge requires arguments seems unjustified and I think it’s probably false. (a) The belief that all justified beliefs must be justified through sound argumentation could be self-defeating if there is no argument for it, and I haven’t heard of any sound arguments for it. (b) We seem to know some things even though we don’t know how to provide sound arguments in support our knowledge. I know that “1+1=2” even though I can’t give an argument for it. This was already discussed in detail above. This implies that beliefs can be justified even when no sound argument can be given for accepting it.

When a justified belief is in need of an argument, then the trilemma will apply (assuming that these are our only options) and we will have to decide what route to go. Historically, arguments have been axiomatic and I think that’s a good way to justify our arguments in general. There are beliefs we don’t need to justify. We take them to be something like a “working hypothesis” and we keep such beliefs until we have a good reason to reject them. We find them plausible, in part, insofar as no alternative belief is more plausible. That’s not to say that justifying our axioms isn’t helpful nor is it to say that circular reasoning can’t help justify our axioms.

Perhaps the dilemma isn’t meant to disprove knowledge of the modest sort. Perhaps it can be used to disprove that we can be absolutely certain that something is true.

Conclusion

A modest definition for “knowledge” is all that seems needed in most everyday contexts and it is the most important kind of knowledge in general. It tells me if I can wake up in the morning, if I can type out an essay, and if I can think anything worth putting on paper. This modest definition is compatible with our quest for truth, certainty, and deep understanding; but not all of our knowledge is absolutely certain to be true nor is all of our knowledge a deep understanding.

Once we accept the modest definition we will find the claim that “knowledge is impossible” self-defeating and the Münchhausen Trilemma to be implausible. It’s possible that the Münchhausen Trilemma is sound, but we have no reason to think so given our limited information.

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