Knowledge As Truth-Tracking

This video outlines Robert Nozick's truth-tracking account of knowledge and examines how it deals with the challenge of skepticism.

0:00 - Introduction
0:29 - What is knowledge?
2:30 - Nozick's tracking theory
16:21 - Answering the skeptic
23:36 - Do I know that I'm not a brain in a vat?
27:23 - Epistemic closure
35:03 - Abominable conjunctions
40:53 - Inductive knowledge
44:56 - What is the closest possible world?

[Kreeshawn]

"Abominable Conjunctions" has to be my new favorite term. Fascinating video as always, thanks for your hard work Kane!

[gruppo_filosofia]

Your channel is really a gold mine for people who are interested in philosophy. We're trying to do something similar in our italian channel, since in Italy there is almost no one who talks about contemporary philosophy (especially analytical philosophy) on Youtube. You are a great inspiration to us.

P.S. I hope you'll do a video about Pritchard's anti-luck epistemology :)

[HerrEinzige]

Knowledge can be tracked even better via likes and comments, like the ones I gave this video.

[ismailkaya]

got a presentation on nozick next tuesday man this was a massive help, thanks

[joe]

Thanks for the video. Always appreciated. These are high quality videos.

[MrBOUNCER]

It's ontologically good to like and subscribe to this channel

[TheCoffeeHater]

My top philosophy youtuber. No nonsense :)

[Billyclar]

Really loving your channel! Makes a great companion to what im learning in lectures!

[tonyd]

Showing my support with a like and comment! Thank you for your videos.

[bread]

leaving a comment for the algorithm, great video and great channel!

[stefangruber]

I fail to see a problem with Nozick's concession that his truth-tracking does not apply to sceptical scenarios.
Shouldn't we all end all of our statements with "unless I'm a brain in a vat" for the sake of accuracy?

I believe that this video I just saw made me come up with this argument - unless I'm a brain in a vat.
(in which case I didn't see what I believe to be a video and the vat-controller is to blame- in fact, there may not actually be such a thing as a video in the controller's world, they just thought it was a straightforward method of putting thoughts into brains)

[marcmaticas]

At 10:30, I don’t see how necessary truths pose any thread. The third condition for necessary truths is trivially true as, in every possible world where P is not true (which there are none), anything can happen (like with the elements of the empty set). To put it in another way, the third condition can be stated as “~P(W) ⇒ ~P(S)” which is trivially true for necessary truths as ~P(W) is always false and falsehoods can imply anything.

[darrellee]

Obviously, the problem is with the first premise (16:21).
If we take knowledge to be an intensional stance, then the vat-person knows they have hands. Even if we take knowledge to be a relation between the agent and the arena. The vat-person still has hands and knows it. I may not know that I have hands, but the vat-person certainly does, and since I could be a vat-person, I may know that I have hands.

Actually the skeptic's argument really amounts to, "if you don't know there's an external world, then you don't know there's an external world. A tautalogy. But since we can't know anything, how can we know that? But since we do know that tautologies are always true. The skeptic must be doubly wrong.

[rickybloss]

Closest world seems to relate to a latent space, a concept from machine learning. Which is a space where every point is a complete object but you can blend between any of the objects by taking the shortest distance between them in the space.

[ElenaLabutina-uv]

So, given that it uses closeness of possible worlds, in steelman vervion, it should be formulated like "knowledge is when:
1) one has a sufficiently low expected false-positive and false-negative error rates evaluating truth value of statement P ignorring cases when one's uncertain (some arbitrary theshold or fuzziness is implicit; It's unclear which background knowledge we should use for calculating error rates, it seems that we should not include direct evidence for/against P. In any case, closeness of possible worlds is inherently not an external criterion)
2) one correctly believes that P is true or correctly believes that P is false"

[dummyaccount.k]

the way you said The Water Is Safe To Drink had me slightly concerned

[haph]

Who is this S person? The only hypothetical people I know are Sydney and Verity.

[devos]

Is there any studies looking at thinking so philosophically deep on these topics and worsening mental health?

[mileskeller]

I reject the premise that skeptics are affirming anything. The skeptics position can always be "I don't know, we don't know but maybe we will one day". Note that none of those are an affirmative statement accepting or rejecting a claim. I dont know is also the most intellectually honest position one can take. Furthermore, I tend to not be a pragmatist but whether or not we are a brain in a vat does us absolutely no good. If that were true then there is still nothing we could do about it. It gets us nowhere, it's a non sequitur. Yes while our senses are fallible the scientific method is still the best methodology by which we can test these hypothesis.

[drdca]

I wonder (setting aside the other issues such as “what are the nearest possible worlds s.t. P?”), are there conditions under which some form of closure would apply under Nozick’s theory of knowledge?

Like, “the nearest worlds such that P” and “the nearest worlds such that Q” may be different even when P entails Q, but, it seems like there must be some relationship between them?
If in all worlds in which P, it holds that Q, then in the nearest worlds such that P, it holds that Q. So, the closest worlds such that Q, is at least as close as the nearest worlds such that P.
Does this give us anything?

Are there any more mundane situations, not involving skeptical hypotheses like BIV, which demonstrate/illustrate the lack of closure in Nozick’s formulation of knowledge?

Perhaps it would be fitting to split the knowledge condition into two weaker forms of it, one which has the first two conditions and the third condition, and another which also has the first two conditions, and has the fourth condition. I feel like this *might* fit more nicely with implication.

Suppose that the set of all possible worlds is a metric space (or, maybe something a bit more general than a metric space, but let’s keep things simple, say it is a metric space).
Then, “the closest possible worlds such that P” is, the intersection of “the set of worlds such that P” with the sphere (not the punctured ball), centered at the actual world, with radius the minimum radius such that this intersection is non-empty.
Uh... I guess there might not be any such minimum radius...
... let’s disregard that, by assuming that the metric takes only natural number values.

Hmm... I suppose some kind of assumption about how beliefs of propositions, varies across worlds, would be necessary?


Ah, but hm!
If instead of using spheres centered at the actual world, we instead used *punctured balls*,
Then something being true in all of the punctured ball centered around the actual world, of some larger radius, then it is also true in all worlds in the punctured ball (centered at the actual world) of any smaller radius.
And, this also is true when you intersect both balls with some set, before quantifying over worlds in it.

So, if r < r’, and if in all worlds such that P and with distance at most r’ from the actual world, are such that M,
Then all worlds such that P with distance at most r from the actual world, are such that M.