Concept of gradable knowledge
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Date
29/11/2019Author
Lai, Changsheng
Metadata
Abstract
An orthodox view in epistemology holds that propositional knowledge is an
absolute ‘yes or no’ affair, viz, propositional knowledge is ungradable. Call
this view epistemic absolutism. This thesis purports to challenge this
absolutist orthodoxy and develop an underexplored position—epistemic
gradualism, which was initially proposed by Stephen Hetherington. As
opposed to epistemic absolutism, epistemic gradualism argues that
propositional knowledge can come in degrees.
This thesis will examine motivations for endorsing absolutism and then,
drawing on Hetherington’s original objections to absolutism, prove that
absolutism is ill-grounded. In particular, I will explain why the primary ground
for insisting absolutism, to wit, linguistic evidence from ordinary English
language, fails to entail that knowledge-that is an ungradable concept. After
that, I will revisit Hetherington’s two versions of gradualist theories—both will
be revealed to be defective. Moreover, the current model of the debate
between absolutism and gradualism constructed by Hetherington will give
rise to an equivocal attitude towards the gradability of knowledge. That is,
there is a prevailing equivocal view which agrees that knowledge can be
improved by virtue of better justification but denies that knowledge is, by and
large, a gradable concept.
This thesis proposes to remodel the debate between absolutism and
gradualism by basing it on a dispute about whether knowledge has a cut-off
point distinguishing knowledge from everything that falls short of knowledge.
Succinctly put, whether propositional knowledge has a threshold. It will be
argued that gradualism, so interpreted, should deny that knowledge has a
threshold, and treat knowledge as a spectrum concept analogous to ‘red’,
‘warm’, and so forth.
The theoretical merits of this new model of the debate and the reconstructed
gradualism will be shown. With a better-constructed gradualist account of
knowledge in play, I will demonstrate how gradualism enjoys advantages
over absolutism by illustrating gradualism’s potential applications in solving
epistemological issues that absolutism finds difficult to address. For example,
issues related to epistemic luck, faultless disagreements, scepticism, and the
relationship between different types of knowledge.