Is justification a necessary condition for the concept of knowledge? (A draft)

What has Sartwell asserted?

Suppose that the agent believes that p and p is true. Is that sufficient to assert that p is knowledge? Sartwell has asserted (“Why knowledge is merely true belief”, 1991) that it is so. According to him, the knowledge is epistemic goal in the generation of propositional belief. If the knowledge is epistemic goal, the way to reach it is inquiry. So, the knowledge is telos of inquiry. The inquiry includes methods as pathways to knowledge. Rationality and wisdom are wider epistemic goals than knowledge. (Indeed, inductive reasoning does not lead us to knowledge, but it can enable us to acquire reasonable beliefs, e.g.).

This (Sartwell’s) approach is based on a normative understanding, assuming an overlap between the concept of knowledge and the goal (telos) to be achieved. In it, however, the traditional normative epistemology's notion of justification, which relates belief to value, was removed from its conception of knowledge. In the traditional understanding, justified belief is the result of correct inquiry methods. For this reason, what is meant by justified belief is to be positively evaluated by the agent. Even so it seems that the normative epistemology is possible without accepting the knowledge as justified true belief. In other words, contrary to descriptive epistemology, in this aprproach, the question “how should we form beliefs or which rule should we follow for reach to knowledge/goal” guides for agent.

What can two attidues in ethics, the deontological and teleological approaches, give us about knowledge? The deontological approach, in other words prescriptive or duty morality, requires following the rule as the moral goal. That is, the one which follows the rule that is considered good or positive, is the standard. In teleological ethics, action is morally good if it serves a purpose. That is, what is good or evaluated positively is functional.

From this point of view, there are two types of normative epistemology. The first is that which sets the standards for forming beliefs (which ways are allowed?) and the second is that which sets the goals and confirms every way that leads to these goals. Sartwell, who called the knowledge as goal of inquiry, holds the second view and asserts that deontological normative epistemology is implausible. According to him this is because the source of our obligations are ambiguous in epistemology, just as in the moral theory. What is meant by this ambiguity is that it is unknowable that who has the authority to set epistemic standards or where does it come to the agent?

According to Sartwell, a justification theory which presupposes epistemic standards in question is only a means fort the agent who wants to obtain knowledge. For this reason aiming for truth by justification means recognizing the knowledge as epistemic telos. The justification is not a logically necessary condition of knowledge, it is only a means/or criterion which we make a distinction by it about truth: does truth exist in a proposition, or does it not? Shortly, if the justification has only a intrumental value about reaching the truth–indeed BonJour clearly states that-we cannot both hold that the knowledge is a epistemic goal and the justification is a necessary condition of knowledge. If justification is a necessary part of epistemic goal, it is the telos, not the means. If it is a means, then it is not necessary for knowledge. Therefore knowledge can only be called "true belief" because it is the epistemic goal (telos) to be achieved through inquiry.

Resource of third condition

Some problems showing up here:

(a) Main problem is whether justification is necessary condition for knowledge.

We have to keep in mind that the notion justification refers to good reason the agent has for believing a particular proposition. If I have good reason(s) to believe a proposition, my belief in that proposition is justified.

What are the necessary and sufficient reasons for knowing a proposition? For knowing a proposition, the (objective) property that the proposition must have is truth. Since knowledge can be for an agent, the knowing agent must also have some characteristics. Accordingly, an epistemic agent; 1) have to accept or believe that the proposition is true, 2) have good reasons to believe that the proposition is true. Then, in order for us to call a proposition as knowledge, there are three necessary conditions adopted in traditional epistemology.

Are these three conditions sufficient for us to regard a proposition as knowledge? The Gettier Problem arises here, and it turns out that the three conditions are not sufficient.

However Sartwell objects that justification is a necessary condition. In order to answer this objection, it is necessary to identify the second problem posed by him:

(b) What is the source of the epistemic obligation? In other words, who sets the norms like "You should believe it"?

The notion of justification is why our concept of knowledge is normative. Justifiedness means that the agent has rational accounts to believe a proposition. Having rational accounts to believe guides the agent to make a choice in the judicial process of making a decision. So some propositions are more preferable to believe than other propositions. These are the reasons that determine the preferences. The epistemic norm points out to a rule that guides and tells us what is preferable to believe a proposition. Then, it is necessary to look at the agent (and the reasoning processes of the agent) for the source of epistemic norms (obligations).

In short, epistemic standards—just as moral norms—do not come from God, the state, or any other authority. So where does it come from? The answer to this question, in my opinion, is rationality: The standard that the agent observes to whether or not to believe a proposition is a derivative of the standard of rationality regarding what the agent finds rational or not. This implies a relativism about what truth and knowledge are.The rationality of a belief is about using proper methods to acquire that belief.

If p is an empirical proposition, I need reasons to support an empirical proposition to believe that p (experiment, observation etc.). By proper method, then, is the way of connecting proposition and cause (let me note that I am advocating an internalist epistemology). So what is knowledge is relative to epistemic standards that the followers find different methods "proper" to believe.

The conclusion

Consequently, the fact that I believe that p and that p is true is not enough to consider p as knowledge. For example, additionally the agent's reasons for believing that p must be accessible to the agent (by certain standards), while the link between p and the reason for believing it (method) must exist. The norms mentioned here provide justification for belief.

In my opinion, the attitude that Sartwell describes as deontological (requiring following a rule) normative epistemology and which he calls implausible, also offers the opportunity to see the pragmatist character of the (second) attitude he advocates. On the contrary, he characterizes the initial attitude as utilitarian, implying that it is the pragmatic: If justification is considered only as a means to achieving an end, this means taking into account its practical usefulness. Whereas, justification is one of the three parts of a necessity rather than a means in terms of practical or use-value.