Abstract

To know is to believe but to believe is not necessarily to know. The latter, unfortunate fact gives rise quite naturally to the question: How can we distinguish between those beliefs that qualify as items of knowledge and those that do not? The standard reply given to this question by philosophers is that knowledge is justified belief. Although the reply sounds eminently reasonable it does not really answer the question. Rather than settling the issue it succeeds instead in stirring up a host of philosophical problems of the most thorny and baffling kind. So difficult do these problems become that they have driven many philosophers to the skeptical conclusion that it is impossible to provide any justification for our beliefs at all. My main object in this paper will be to pursue what seems to me to be the most important and difficult of these problems and to examine some of the recent solutions that philosophers have offered for it. Before beginning this task, however, it might be well to clarify the notion of knowledge a bit more fully. Just what qualifies a belief as a justified belief and thus as an item of knowledge?