Justified True Belief Theory Of Knowledge

There are 3 different types of knowledge: acquaintance knowledge (I know Auckland well), skillful knowledge (I know how to ride a bike), and propositional knowledge (I know that snakes are reptiles). The first two forms of knowledge are interesting, but we are only concerned with the third, what it is to know some proposition, ‘p’. We automatically note a difference between belief and knowledge. Individuals can believe propositions that are not true; but if you know that ‘p’, then ‘p’ must be true. You cannot know something incorrect; if it is incorrect, then you do not know it. You have made an error, thinking it to be true when it is not. For example, if you claim that Auckland is the capital of New Zealand, and you think you know this, you …show more content…
Some philosophers argue that a complete study of a thought, such as propositional knowledge, must state conditions that are together ‘equal’ to knowledge. In other words, if someone knows some proposition, they should achieve exactly those conditions that the study of knowledge states. (ref) The ‘justified true belief’ theory of knowledge is like this. It claims that to know that p involves exactly these three things: (a) the proposition p is true; 
(b) you believe that p; 
(c) your belief that p is justified. (ref) It claims these are the ‘necessary and sufficient conditions’ for knowledge. Necessary and sufficient conditions are connected to conditional accounts, which take the form ‘if x, then y’. Such statements relate the truth of two propositions, for example ‘it is raining’ and ‘I am getting wet’, or ‘If it is raining, I am getting wet’. The conditional states that if the first account is correct, then the second account is also correct. Presuming the conditional is correct: if it is raining, I am getting wet. It shows that if the antecedent is accurate (it is raining), then the consequent is accurate (I’m getting wet). It also shows that if the consequent is incorrect (I am not getting wet), then the antecedent is incorrect (it is not …show more content…
However if you know that ‘p’, then you have a justified true belief that ‘p’, there is no other way to know that ‘p’, no other study of knowledge. It claims each of the three conditions is necessary. So the concept has two conditionals: if all three conditions are fulfilled, then you know that ‘p’; and if you know that ‘p’, then all three conditions are fulfilled. This means whenever you have one, you have the other. And so, the theory claims, we can say that knowledge and justified true belief is the same thing. (ref) Justified true belief is necessary for knowledge (you cannot have knowledge without it), but it is also sufficient for knowledge (you do not need anything