Aspects of epistemology

Aspects of epistemology

Aspects of epistemology

The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of UnderstandingJonathan L. Kvanvig,Cambridge University Press,Cambridge2003216 pp.,ISBN 0-521-82713-2,

Alfred Tarski: Life and LogicAnita Burdman Feferman and Solomon Feferman,Cambridge University Press,Cambridge2004425 pp.,ISBN 0-521-80240-7

Keywords: Knowledge management, Epistemology, Branches of philosophy, Information science

Both of these books, though from different perspectives and with different purposes, deal with knowledge: how we know when our knowledge is true, and what its value and use may be. Kvanvig does so directly, proposing some new ways of dealing with these issues. The Fefermans do so indirectly, giving an account of the life and work of a philosopher who made one of the most significant advances in understanding of them to the present day.

These are not topics which catch the interest of most practitioners of the information sciences, nor indeed most academics who study them. This relative lack of interest in the foundational aspects of the subject may be changing, as evidenced by the special issues of Journal of Documentation (2005, Vol. 61 No. 1), and of Library Trends (2004, Vol. 52 No. 3), devoted to philosophical aspects of library and information science. It is to be hoped that this will result in an increased involvement of LIS academics and students (one hesitates to suggest practitioners) with relevant aspects of philosophy. These two books, though they do not offer an easy read, are good examples of where to start.

Kvanvig addresses the fundamental problem of the value of knowledge: why, and how, is it better to be knowledgeable than to be ignorant. The answers most often given – that, for example, knowledge is valuable for its own sake, possessing a special virtue, or that it is valuable because it is useful, enabling its possessors to do things which could not be done without the knowledge – he finds wanting from a rigorous philosophical viewpoint. He therefore reviews the many attempts which have been made to give a convincing answer to this question, finding none of them fully convincing. His argument is that any valid theory of knowledge must contain an account of its value.

In the usual philosophical tradition, Kvanvig treats knowledge as “justified true belief” (JTB). This is the traditional approach, treating knowledge as what is believed by a particular person in a particular context, provided that there is some rational justification for believing it, and that it also happens to be true. This is the approach criticised by Karl Popper, who preferred the idea of “objective knowledge” – “knowledge without a knowing subject” – which has been regarded by some commentators as a better way of understanding the kind of knowledge with which libraries and information services deal. Nonetheless, JTB is still preferred by most philosophers as the way to think about knowledge.

This allows philosophers to play what seems be an amusing private game of constructing situations – often rather forced and unlikely – in which someone thinks they have knowledge, but do not. Kvanvig offers numerous examples of these, in which he queries whether the value of knowledge resides in belief, justification or truth, and whether one can have knowledge while lacking one of the three. In particular, he describes “Gettier problems”, originally devised by the philosopher of that name. The “fake barn case”, which I state informally here, serves as a good example of the genre:

Henry is driving through the countryside, pointing out various things to his young son: “that’s a tractor”, “that’s a sheep”, and so on. Passing a barn, he naturally says “that’s a barn”. He believes it to be a barn, and is justified in his belief since he has a clear view of it, and knows what a barn looks like. And, indeed, it is a barn, so we might assume that Henry has knowledge, in the JTB sense. Not so fast. This is, in fact, the only barn in this part of the country. The other entities which look like barns are actually painted fakes, without back walls or interiors, presumably erected by the locals to confuse passing philosophers. Henry does not realise this, and would have identified any of the fakes equally confidently as a barn. Justification is lacking, and he does not have knowledge.

The artificiality of this example, as well as its remoteness from the typical concerns of library/information practitioners, may make one doubt the point of such discussion. But Kvanvig shows how such problems lie at the basis of all attribution of value to knowledge, at least as it is viewed by the philosophical community.

His approach to a solution is to suggest speaking of “understanding”, rather than knowledge. This is something similar to knowledge, but distinct from JTB, involving “an internal seeing or appreciating of explanatory and other coherence-inducing relationships in a body of information” (p. 198), and is generally concerned with bodies of knowledge, rather than isolated facts or propositions. Although it still focuses on a personal understanding, unlike Popper’s objective knowledge, it seems rather more appropriate to an LS setting than the JTB paradigm. Crucially, it allows for the assimilation of contradictory views and inconsistencies in a knowledge base, rather than considering only the truth of single propositions.

The concept of “truth” is also at the core of the work of Alfred Tarksi, the twentieth century’s leading exponent of philosophical logic. Born in Poland, Tarski was one of the many Central European refugees from the Nazi threat to settle in America, where he founded a world-renowned centre for the study of logic at Berkeley. He exerted a remarkable influence over the philosophical world of his time. Karl Popper, never one to praise other scholars unnecessarily, felt that “from Tarski, I learned, more, I think, than from anyone else” (Popper, 1992, p. 88).

In essence, Tarski rehabilitated the common sense idea of truth, which philosophers term the “correspondence theory”; a statement is true to the extent that it corresponds to the facts of the world. However, this is very much an essence. Tarksi’s work, which now forms the basis for most of what is regarded as standard formal logic, is rather technical, giving a very precise version of the correspondence theory in certain formal logical languages. Solomon and Anita Federman manage to get this, and other complex ideas, across relatively painlessly, in series of “Interludes” dealing with the details of Tarski’s work. These are interposed into a lively and detailed biography, which deals with the darker aspects of Tarski’s personal life, as well as with his intellectual achievements, and the historical and cultural background to his life. In this respect, it is a model biography, and may command the attention of a readership for whom an intellectual biography in such an esoteric subject as formal logic would have little appeal. It can certainly be recommended to any LIS scholars seeking an insight into the further reaches of the philosophical foundations of the idea of knowledge.

David BawdenCity University London, London, UK