Knowledge and justification
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Counterexample, exposing a fallacy
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The main way to expose an argument as a fallacy is to offer a counterexample – that is, to show that it is possible for both the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. This is what we have done so far. So we have not only illustrated that there is some kind of distinction between believing and knowing, but we have also explained what a valid argument is, and how to demonstrate that an argument is a fallacy. However, another point has to be made. The use of the symbol X in our statement of the argument indicates that the argument is not really about cars or any other statement about the world. It is an argument about the meaning of the term "I believe". Hence the whole discussion is really an example of what we call philosophical analysis – that branch of philosophy that deals with meanings, and analyses what words and terms mean. When we say we believe something, do we mean the same thing as saying that we know something? So far we seem to have drawn a distinction between the two. However, before we explore this further, let us consider another point about belief.
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Contents of
Knowledge and justification
1 The distinction between knowledge and belief
2 Unsound, invalid, possible world and fallacy
3 Counterexample, exposing a fallacy
4 Belief and doubt
5 Believing that and knowing that
6 Knowledge and certainty - the tripartite definition of knowledge
7 True, justified belief
8 Plato: The Theaetetus
9 Plato: Forms
10 The possibility of scepticism and categories of belief
11 Global scepticism
12 The Argument from Authority
13 Valid argument, inference and justification
14 Chain of deductive inferences, self-evident truths
15 Sense experience, empiricism
16 The dialectic method, thesis and antithesis
17 Rationalism and empiricism; the Discourse on the Method
18 The Cogito, Reason and Rational Insight
19 Bertrand Russell, Acquaintance
20 Universals, Forms
21 Scepticism, Existentialism and Faith
22 The evil genius argument
23 Existentialism
24 Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling - the Absurd
25 Foundation for Knowledge
26 Theory of Knowledge, Epistemology and Metaphysics
27 Rationalism, Mathematics and Logic, Innateness
28 Innate Ideas
29 The a priori
30 Truth by convention, Hume and the Method of Doubt
31 Hume and the distinction between belief and knowledge
32 Hume and the definition of belief
33 Truth as a logical operator on sentences
34 The correspondence theory of truth
35 Wittgenstein: On Certainty
36 Wittgenstein and the coherence theory of truth
37 William James and Pragmatism
38 W.V.O. Quine, pragmatism and the Two Dogmas of Empiricism
39 Postivism and pragmatism
40 Pragmatism and utilitarianism
41 Pragmatism and religiion
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