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Tracking Theory of Knowledge, Part I

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This will be the first item in a three part series about the tracking theory of knowledge. I'll be talking about it in the form given it by Robert Nozick, in Philosophical Explanations (1981) though Nozick owed a considerable debt to Fred Dretske.

According to Robert Nozick's tracking theory of knowledge, I know p (some proposition) if:

1) p is true
2) I believe p
3) If p were not true I would not believe it, and
4) if p were true I would believe it.

The fourth point seems oddly worded, because of course the first point already said that p IS true for purposes of our further discussion, so why the hypothetical language by the time we move to the fourth?

Well, the awkward language is necessary to resolve certain hypotheticals that bothered Nozick, and because combining (3) and (4) helps fix in our minds the underlying metaphor of tracking.

One common example: a lottery ticket. I don't remember if Nozick himself invoked lottery tickets or if I encountered this example else, but it doesn't matter. The point is that Nozick wants to say that we don't acquire knowledge simply by following the odds. My friend bought a lottery ticket. I know there are a million of these tickets sold for every winner. Based on my knowledge of the odds, I tell him, "You've bought a losing ticket." My lottery playing friend will surely tell me "you don't know that."

Given one plausible view, he is right: I don't know that. If the lottery is fairly run, no one knows the winner until the actual drawing is held. More pertinent to Nozick's formulations: if he happens to be the lucky anomaly who holds the winning ticket, I wouldn't believe it because my disbelief is based on the probabilities, and this would be an improbable event. Yet improbable events do happen. There are lottery winners, so there are instances in which someone held the winning ticket the previous day. Thus, Nozick's fourth condition, listed above, makes it clear that probability is not enough for tracking. If the improbable event were true, I have to be in a position to grasp that it is true before I can call my view on p knowledge.

We can understand this if we understand what Nozick was trying not to say. He didn't want to say that knowledge is simply "justified true belief," because the Gettier counter-examples had spooked him. He also didn't want to say that knowledge is true belief caused by the object of the belief. There are lots of problems with that formulation, including problems with underlying notions of cause and effect themselves. So ... he said that knowledge is true belief that tracks its object, and we have propositions (3) and (4) to explain the tracking, while (1) and (2) are a more straightforward nod to lexicography.

More tomorrow.


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