Knowledge as Evidence

It is argued that a subject's evidence consists of all and only the propositions that the subject knows. I Tradition has it that the main problems of philosophy include the nature of knowledge. But, in recent decades, questions of knowledge seem to have been marginalized by questions of justification. Thus, according to Crispin Wright, … knowledge is not really the proper central concern of episte-mologico-sceptical enquiry. […] We can live with the concession that we do not, strictly, know some of the things we believed ourselves to know, provided we can retain the thought that we are fully justified in accepting them. (1991, p. 88; Wright's italics) Similarly, John Earman argues that accounts of knowledge are irrelevant to the philosophy of science, because in it … the main concern is rarely whether or not a scientist " knows " that some theory is true but rather whether or not she is justified in believing it. (1993, p. 37) 1 Once Gettier showed in 1963 that justified true belief is insufficient for knowledge, and therefore that knowledge is unnecessary for justified true belief, it became natural to ask: if you can have justified true beliefs, why bother with knowledge? 2 There is a lacuna in the case for the unimportance of knowledge. Grant, for the sake of argument, that knowledge is important only if it is some-1 Earman is discussing externalist accounts of knowledge, but the quoted comment would clearly apply to internalist accounts too. Earman's further point, that " because science is a community enterprise the only forms of justification that are scientifically relevant are those which are stateable and open to public scrutiny " , may be most relevant to externalist accounts. See also Craig (1990, p. 272). For the contrary view that scepticism about knowledge entails scepticism about ratio-nality and justification see Unger (1975, pp. 197–249). 2 Kaplan (1985) argues along similar lines.