Mill's Methods (of knowing cause-effect relationships) and Hume's Problem of Induction

Causality is the relationship between a cause and effect, or one event that is a consequence of the first. However many philosophers theorize that it is not the causes we see, we merely see the correlations between events. Correlation happens when two or more events are more or less likely to occur together than separately, for example I am more likely to wear shorts when it is hot hence there is a correlation between it being hot and wearing shorts. Yet, if I said "I wear shots no matter if it is hot or cold." I am illustrating that no correlation exists between it being hot and my wearing shorts because the two will occur both separately and together, the one does not depend on the other as it will be hot whether I wear shorts or not just like I will wear shorts whether or not it is hot.

Let us go back to the first example, where there was a correlation between wearing shorts and it being hot. How are the two related? For this example it is unlikely that my wearing shorts caused it to be hot, but it being hot caused me to wear shorts. Now if we look at a bigger atmospheric picture, something else caused it to be hot like the earth's proximity to the sun so actually the proximity of the earth to the sun caused both it to be hot and me to wear shorts. Yet, sometimes correlation occurs by total coincidence, for example most times I go to Starbucks Ramon is behind the counter. I am not stalking Ramon and I am pretty certain that Ramon does not make his schedule around me. I go into Starbucks infrequently and it different times of the day so it is mere coincidence that Ramon is behind the counter. I did not cause him to be there and he did not cause me to be there. It is from correlations that we can come to know about causes.

Mill's Method for knowing causes can be broken down as the following:
1. Agreement: If every time event (E) happens, the same event or events (C) always happens before (mixed in with other events (X), then C causes E.
2. Difference: If, E occurs, C happened before, but when E doesn't occur, C wasn't there before, then C causes E.
3. Joint: For all the collections of events one sees, E happens iff C occurs first, then C causes E.
4. Concomitant Variation: If variations in how the  E-event occurs match variations in the C-event, then C causes E.
5. Residues: If you have a events "X", and events "Y" occurring later, but you know from past experiences applying this method that some events in X cause others in Y, then whatever is left in X causes whatever if left in Y.

Unfortunately there are problems with Mill's Methods all of which can be summed up with Hume's Problem of induction. Mill's Methods rely on inductive reasoning as Mill's Methods assume nature and causation are stable, The Principal of the Uniformity of Nature (as induction uses the past, I have always worn shorts when it was hot, to have knowledge of the future, I will always wear shorts when it is hot). Hume would argue that just because I have always worn shorts on hot days in the past it is unreasonable to say I always will, maybe I buy a new skirt that I want to wear on a hot day. However, to be fair to Mill and induction, Hume argued that, instead of a radical skepticism in which everything beyond what we presently see or remember is in complete doubt, a kind of practical skepticism should be used. If you are supposed to pick up your friend at a bus station whom you haven't seen in a month but the last time you saw her she was 5ft tall and had short brown hair it is ridiculous to look at a 6ft tall man with long blond hair and think it might be her. Yet Hume would argue that just because she has always had short brown hair does not mean she did not dye it since you last saw her or that she is wearing a wig now...basically Hume advocates for commonsense and if commonsense includes some amount of induction than such inductive reasoning helps a human being to function. Hume's problem with induction is mainly trusting it solely for knowledge and having no doubt that the future will be like the past. Now back to Mill's Methods. If you notice that every time you water your plants with Coca Cola they wilt and they don't wilt when you water them with water Gatorade, or Snapple, then it makes sense to see a correlation exists between watering your plants with Coca Cola and their wilting, to reason that Coca Cola is the cause of their wilting and to thus know for the future that if you water your plants with Coca Cola they will probably wilt.

Fallibilism and Skepticism

Fallibilism is the theory that all claims of knowledge could be mistaken. Extreme fallibilists even argue that absolute certainty about knowledge is impossible. Fallibilism is a major part of pragmatist theory as pragmatists argue the most knowledge can hope to be is functional. While Fallibilism seems compatible with Skepticism there are fundamental differences between the two which depict the two as opposing views.

The main objection Fallibilists have against Skepticism is the Skeptic's impossibly high standards for knowledge. Skeptic says that, "I S knows p, then S is absolutely certain of p", such is The Certainty argument and as absolute certainty is impossible knowledge is impossible and thus claiming all knowledge should be rejected. The Fallibilist, in contrast, holds that knowledge merely requires very good reasons. For example, if you are standing under a tree and the lighting is good, you have no reason not to trust that your eyes are functioning properly, and you have had previous experiences of trees then, while there is some remote chance of error, you have no reason to think you are making an error, but instead excellent reasons to think you are not making an error. The Fallibilist maintains that one cannot know something that is false. If you are in fact not standing under a tree than you do not know that you are.

Skeptics also used the Possibility of Error Argument, that is a belief can be mistaken than it is not a case of knowledge. This is refuted by Fallibilists who argue that the possibility of error is compatible with knowledge. So with the tree example, you believe for excellent reasons that you are standing under a tree, and you actually are, then you have knowledge. If you are the victim of a hallucination or some other funny business and it is not a tree than you do not have knowledge. Such is closely linked to The Certainty Argument as a Skeptic may defend the Possibility of Error Argument as Feldman explains, "If you can be mistaken about something than you are not absolutely certain of it. If you are not absolutely certain than you do not know it. So if you are mistaken about something than you do not know it." However, this is promptly dismissed by Fallibilists as they have no need for absolute certainty in knowledge.

The Skeptics also argue The Introspective Indistinguishably Argument, there cannot be cases of knowledge that are introspectively indistinguishable from cases of nonknowledge, but if knowledge requires good reasons and not perfect reasons then such a theory, according to the Fallibilists is wrong. Skeptics will maintain that just because the reasons are extremely good and not perfect, then there will be other cases in which one's "extremely good" reasons lead to false beliefs and a lack of knowledge. For example if you believe you are standing under a tree because the lighting is good and you have no reason to believe your vision is failing you, but it turns out you are actually standing under a very high quality inflatable palm tree than you have no knowledge. The Skeptics hold that absolute certainty is a mental state which guarantees truth and which are introspectively distinguishable from beliefs which are not certain. Suppose you cannot tell the difference between Boston Terriers and French Bulldogs. Seeing one and seeing the other are to you indistinguishable. Analogously, a skeptic would say that you can never know if you are seeing a real dog or being tricked by a demon, your senses, or whatever into dreaming you are seeing a dog and such a state introspectively indistinguishable from seeing a real dog hence you cannot know that you are seeing a real dog.

A further objection to Fallibilism is the Knowing That You Know Argument which says if fallibilism is true than one can never tell whether or not he has knowledge. Fallibilists avoid this by saying that knowledge about knowledge is like knowledge about other things. If I know I am standing under a tree because I have a justified true belief of standing under a tree then I can have knowledge that I know the fact by having a justified true belief that I know I am standing under a tree. However, both bits of knowledge are fallible. I am not absolutely certain of standing under a tree nor am I absolutely certain for knowing I know I am standing under a tree.

The Reliability Theory of Knowledge and the KK-Principal

According to the Reliability Theory of Knowledge, knowing a proposition does not imply that you know that you know it. In contrast the KK-principal which says that if S knows that P, then S knows that he knows P. Such a theory is convenient for the skeptics who, in following the principal, do not believe they have knowledge and therefore do not have knowledge. Such an idea applied to all propositions is simply not reasonable for example, if Sam has blond hair, but he does not believe he has blond hair, therefore he does not know he has blond hair, then he does not have blond hair.

The Reliability Theory of Knowledge is so offensive to Skeptics because it largely involves externalism, the idea that one can have a justified belief without having access to the evidence for it. It is similar to the theory of Truth Tracking where people are basically thermometers and can tell the temperature, or whether the dog is in the room or the television is on, merely by sensing it (petting and smelling the dog, hearing and seeing the television) just like a thermometer senses the external temperature. However, Reliabilism (the parent of the Reliability Theory of Knowledge as it in itself focuses more on justification than knowledge) formulates a theory of justified belief as "One has a justified theory of p iff the belief is a result of a reliable process". Reliabilists agree that knowledge is justified, true, belief and also take into account the Gettier cases where it is possible to be right about something by accident, which coincides with evidentialist theories. However, Reliabilists do not care about the actual evidence. Instead Reliabilists are concerned with how the beliefs were formed and if they were formed by some reliable process so "S is justified in believing p iff S is justified in believing that S's source for p is reliable." For example, "Paul is rich if he has made money on his own or is he is the child of rich parents." The example does not deal with what rich actually is, but the concept is not circular in that the second clause of the sentence can be reformulated as "Paul is the son of rich parents" as it explicitly states a way into being rich.

Empiricism and Rationalism

What is the source of knowledge? Where do basic beliefs come from? Empiricism maintains that basic beliefs are the products of experience therefore all knowledge begins as primitive experience (ideas, imagination, intuition are all products of experience). Hence the Empiricist view as a major part of the scientific theory as hypotheses are tested against the external world rather than accepting them as a priori, or intuition. Empiricists believe that people are born with tabula rasa, or a blank slate, and it is through experience, observations of the external world, that human develop beliefs. Extreme Empiricism theorizes that all propositions should be reduced to "protocol sentences", "X at location Y at time T observed P", or "I observed Shelly in the cafeteria at noon." Such is to render a synthetic assertion genuine as it tests if or not it can be reduced to express a direct experience.

The position which contrasts with Empiricism, is Rationalism as it theorizes that truths can be known without experience, it is something innate or comes from tradition. However, to use the example of Shelly, knowing that she is a girl, or blond, or short, requires pre-existing rationalist knowledge and anything that does not require pre-existing knowledge is to primitive to be informative and therefore not knowledge at all (like a pain in my arm or an itch on my nose do not really inform me about the external world like how I got the pain or why my nose is itchy).

Pragmatism marries the two theories together with the idea that knowledge is that which works. Charles Piece, one of the fathers of the scientific method, argued that while experience is paramount to knowledge, rationalist beliefs allow one to go further with observations. Using Shelly again as an example, the sentence "Shelly was eating lunch at the cafeteria." Uses rationalist theory to deduce that Shelly was indeed eating lunch because we had the experience of observing her eating at noon, or lunchtime. If Shelly had symptoms of severe food poisoning and passed out in her bedroom, one could say "Shelly was eating lunch in the cafeteria." The observation was actually only that he saw Shelly in the cafeteria at noon, but it is from innate rationalist knowledge that he, even if he never saw Shelly in the cafeteria before and had no memory or other experience of her ever eating lunch, deduced she was eating lunch. This belief helps doctors save Shelly as they were able to go to the cafeteria and find out what they served for lunch that day. Pragmatism is one part instinct to one part experience which illustrates that it is possible for Empiricism and Rationalism to produce knowledge together it terms of knowledge being something that works.

Human Irrationality

The Naturalistic View does not makes any claims on the conditions for knowledge, instead it deals with the proper role of science in epistemology in accordance with the Standard View of knowledge.

Proponents of the Naturalistic View argue people are irrational in forming beliefs which is rooted in a survival instinct, to overestimate how many dried fish we will need to survive the winter is infinately better than underestimating. It is because of logical mistakes which draws criticism from the naturalists. How is it that we can claim to have any knowledge?

Alleged human irrationality is illustrated by the following example in which you have to rank the likelihood of the propositions about the person following an initial description. Tim is 20 years old, has a girlfriend, is shy, and intelligent. He plays football for his college.

a. Tim is a proffesional football player.
b. Tim is married.
c. Tim is married and a proffesional football player.

If you answered c., as people frequently do in examples such as this, than you are wrong because while it is nice to believe Tim is married and a proffesional football player it totally violates the rules of probability. It is much less likely for Tim to be both married and a proffesional football player than for him to be just one of the two. It is from examples such as this that it is clear people frequently give incorrect and unreasonable answers to questions which in turn makes them irrational.

Serious Relativism

The theory of absolutism says there is only one correct system for forming beliefs for all people. Serious Relativism stands in contrast to this theory by saying there are different correct systems for forming beliefs from one person to another are one group of persons to another. An example if this is two children, one went to Montessori school and the other went to regular Kindergarten, both begin 1st grade and have the fundamentals they need to be successful learning phonics and math among other things.

There are philosophers who argue rationalism has no distinction between rational belief and locally accepted "rational" belief. To the relativist no idea is without its context. Philosophers will also argue that this summation of a relativist belief is really the equivalent of and absolutist theory which states according the Feldman's Epistemology,  "It is always really rational for a person to conform to the locally accepted standards of rationality" (So if you accidentally moved into a nudest colony and cannot afford to move out it is rational to conform and become a nudest yourself). Here lies the problems for relativism. Yes, people are diverse and it is arrogant to assume one's idea's superior to another's, but this is not epistemology.

Uncontroversial Forms of Relativism

I am taking a break from Non-Evidentialism to discuss Relativism beginning with it in its most uncontroversial form, knowledge is something relative to person, time, and place. What I know now undoubtedly differs in some way from what a 19 year old in Africa knows just as what I know now differs from what I knew 10 years ago and will know 5 years from now. This same idea can apply to a society as the American experience is different from other cultural experiences and the American experience today is different from what it was in the past. The key to Relativism is the existence of secrets...different people know different things not conflicting things. It is not that I know the Earth moves around the sun while the African teenager knows the sun moves around the Earth, instead he knows what it is like to be an African teenager while I know what it is like to be an American teenager.

Causal Theory

To quote Feldman's Epistemology, Causal Theory is "...when a fact in the world leads to a belief in that fact, it is a case of knowledge (82)." The only difference between Causal Theory and TAK is the replacement of a causal connection for justification.

Objections to this theory include Knowing Generalizations, such as all men are mortal (Feldman 84) which are beliefs which stem from particular instances, as it is impossible to be familiar with every member of the human race, thus it is impossible to know in the sense of Causal Theory.

Overdertermination Cases serve as another objection to the Causal Theory. If you know deer like to eat from your garbage and wake up one morning and see your garbage can knocked over and deer standing around you assume they in fact did eat out of your garbage yet again, but in fact it was a bear which picked through the garbage. In this case the causal chain failed you.

Another objection for the Causal Theory stems from believing in a causal chain without a good reason. Again using your garbage as an example, you know that both deer and bears eat out of the garbage can. You wake up one morning and see the garbage can knocked over and food crumbs all over. You just decide it was the deer who ate the garbage, and though you are correct this time you had no good reason to discount the bear's possible hand in this situation. Yes, there is a causal connection, but it is not strong enough.

Modest Foundationalism

Modest Foundationalism is a diluted form are Cartesian Foundationalism as it attempts to remove itself from the bounds of deduction by considering things such as "There is a chair in the corner"  and  "It is raining" as justified basic beliefs. Such beliefs are not infallible, but, according to Modest Foundationalists, they are justified. Furthermore, it is with this broader sense of justified basic beliefs that additional beliefs about the external world can be deduced. Although modest foundationalism can be subdivided, in Feldman's Epistemology it is for the most part captured by the principals:

1. Basic beliefs are spontaneously formed beliefs. Typically, beliefs about the external world and inner mental states are justified and basic.

2. A spontaneously formed belief is justified provided it is a proper response to experiences and it is not defeated by other evidence the believer has.

3. Nonbasic beliefs are justified when they are supported by strong inductive inferences from justified basic beliefs.

Of course there are objections, the first being Nothing is Basic. The philosopher, BonJour, argues that basic beliefs must have a Truth Indicative Feature. If you believe your credit card is maxed out it is on the basis of what the credit card company told you, however you then believe the credit card company is telling the truth based on the fact that they have in the past. This support, TIFs. for beliefs, keeps beliefs from ever being basic. Yet, Feldman considers TIFs as extra justification not necessary justification as experiences themselves can directly justify a belief.

The second objection raises questions about proper responses to experiences. Not a direct refutation of Modest Foundationalism, this objection wishes to gain clarification. Why is "There is a chair in the corner" basic while "There is an antique chair in the corner" not basic? As I discussed in my Cartesian Foundationalism post, it all goes back to deduction. To believe something is an antique requires the additional steps of deducing it as different from modern chairs using the experiences one has of modern chairs as well as deducing it as similar to antique chairs based on the experiences one has of antique chairs.

Coherentism

How do Coherentists deal with The Infinite Regress Argument? They reject it...duh.

Coherentist theory is that every justified belief is justified by its relation to other beliefs as explained in Feldman's Epistemology. The whole thing about evidential chains and circular reasoning in The Infinite Regress Argument Argument is disregarded because coherentists maintain:

1. Only beliefs can justify other beliefs. Nothing other than a belief can contribute to justification.

2. Every justified belief depends in part on other beliefs for justification. Justified basic beliefs do not exist.

Coherentists view beliefs like a puzzle. A belief is justified when it fits in with other beliefs. Of course there are objections. The first being The Alternative Systems Objection. Their argument is one can make any belief cohere with his belief system simply by adjusting the system. This objection is pretty lame. Coherentists are not by definition unreasonable people. A single coherentist will not believe at once "Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States." and "Thomas Jefferson was not the third president of the United States." Additionally, one must ask why someone would arbitrarily alter their belief system just for the inclusion of a new belief into their belief puzzle?

The second argument is known as the Isolation Argument which highlights a whole in Coherentist Theory as it fails to account for experience. If Martha Stewart and I share the same belief system, and Martha's belief that she is baking cookies on television coheres with her system of beliefs, than my belief that I am baking cookies on television is justified...sadly I am not baking cookies on television. A more tangible example would be two people who have the same belief system and life experiences up to this point are told they will see a yellow bus drive past them. One indeed has a yellow bus drive past, but the other has an orange bus drive past. However the one who saw the orange bus has the support of her other beliefs, ie being told she would see a yellow one, so she thinks she actually did see a yellow bus.

Coherentists are plagued with so many problems, they have not formulated a formal coherentist theory, nor can they thoroughly explain what coherence is. Additionally, coherentists take too many variables into account when they sort through beliefs to distinguish them as justified or unjustified. However, much coherentist ideology makes sense. People typically do not add beliefs into their belief system unless they fit in with other beliefs, for example, one would not say they believed in God and is an atheist at the same time.

Cartesian Foundationalism

In my last post I discussed The Infinite Regress Argument which deals which amounts to only justified basic beliefs counting as knowledge. Here I will present to you the foundationalist response to that argument.

As established in Epistemology by Richard Feldman, Foundationalism can involves two claims:

1. There are justified basic beliefs.
2. All justified nonbasic beliefs are justified in virtue of their relation to justified basic beliefs.

These claims lead to the questions:

1. What are the kinds of things our justified basic beliefs are about?
2. How are these basic beliefs justified?
3. What sort of connections must a nonbasic belief have to basic beliefs in order to be justified?

Alrightie...now my man Descartes did begin his classic Meditations by doubting the existence of absolutely everything and then slowly began to justify the existence of things beginning with himself, "Cogito ergo sum." It is important to note Descartes was not a skeptic. Instead it is from his writings which this type of foundationalism is derived. Cartesian foundationalism claims all beliefs one holds about his own state of mind, feelings, thoughts, etcetera...to be basic. Cartesian foundationalism then answers the aforementioned questions, according to Feldman, as:

1. Beliefs about one's own inner states of mind and beliefs about elementary truths of logic are justified basic beliefs.
2. Justified basic beliefs are justified because we cannot be mistaken about them.
3. The rest of our justified beliefs, those about the external world, are justified because the are deduced from our own basic beliefs.

However, there are some problems with these answers. Granted, Descartes rejected the possibility of his senses deceiving him in his Meditations which was easily done back in 17th century France as he through a kind, merciful, undeceiving God into the equation to appease both his critics and the Inquisition. (Who would want to challenge the Inquisition?) Unfortunately that trick does not work quite so well anymore. Indeed, we are fallible about our own mental states which is evident in diagnosed mental illness and hypochondriac episodes just to offer a few examples. In both cases you have the sensation, a source of knowledge as mentioned in my first post, of something that is actually nonexistent or false.

Another objection to Cartesian Foundationalism stems from the rarity of beliefs about inner states. Now this objection I find to be a little ridiculous as Feldman explains people do not come to the belief there is a chair in the corner because they first said to themselves, "I see a chair looking object over in the corner." I actually think such as step does happen, but the steps are not broken down in our minds like that as identifying common things like chairs, tables,etcetera...is really common. However if you were to form the belief something you rarely come into contact with, if ever aside from pictures or descriptions, were in the corner of a room like an ancient Egyptian vase you would have to slow down the steps and say to yourself "Something that looks like the Egyptian vases I have seen in history books is in the corner of the room." Then you would infer, "There is an Egyptian vase over there." Thus, objection is not really much of lynch pin.

The final objection to Cartesian Foundationalism is the restrictiveness of deduction. (Don't tell Sherlock Holmes that!) As previously mentioned, Cartesian Foundationalists require that justified nonbasic beliefs be deduced from basic beliefs. Earlier, basic beliefs allowed us to deduce the existence of the Egyptian vase. Unfortunately Sherlock, it is not always so elementary. The external world is an imperfect place, we dream things, people lie, people misunderstand, things go unnoticed, etcetera...In short, there are no guarantees deduction will lead to knowledge.

Infinite Regress

The Infinite Regress Argument boils down to the support of proposition P_n-1 requires the support of proposition  P_n   which goes on to infinity. Why is this important? Well...the evidentialist theory of knowledge takes the position of the possession of evidence as the mark of a justified belief according to Feldman's Epistemology. An example in favor of Evidentialism would be to believe you are is going to win the Iditarod even though veteranarians have told you that your dogs are sick and near death and various sled experts have told you your sled is falling apart. There is no evidence to support your winning the Iditarod, but you enter anyway and all the dogs die, the sled falls apart and you are left to die in the frozen tundra of Alaska.

Clearly, sometimes evidence is important for a belief, especially if there is evidence to the contrary. Yet sometimes a belief is based on reasons which have no justification themselves. The infinite regress argument makes it clear that there are only justified basic beliefs, or beliefs that are not justified on the basis of any other beliefs. Furthermore, if a belief is not a justified basic belief than it is not justified as it will inevitably have an evidential chain that is circular, ends with and unjustified belief, or goes on for infinity (and no one can have an infinite series of beliefs). To accept this idea calls into question nearly everything we claim to know. Knowing something as simple as "That sock is red" requires justification from a chain of beliefs. This will ultimately lead into Descartes and his "I think therefore I am", one of the only, if not the only, basic justified beliefs.

My Man Gettier and His Problems with Justification

In my first post I discussed The Standard View, justified, true, belief, using the existence of a pot of gumbo as an example. Upon further examination, I realized Gettier's problems with justification are applicable to the scenario. As discussed in Richard Feldman's Epistemology, Gettier's problems deal with the truth of knowledge being accidental. To formulate my own Gettier style example, based on those contained in Epistemology, I will use the original gumbo example.

When the kitchen has smelled like gumbo in the past mother has indeed made a pot of gumbo. On this basis I believe.

1. When the kitchen smells like gumbo mother made gumbo.

I am hungry and craving gumbo. The kitchen smells like gumbo. Thinking that (1) is true, I conclude that:

2. It smells like gumbo thus I am justified in believing there is gumbo.

It turns out that mother had purchased the new Glade plug-in scent, Louisiana Gumbo and that is what I smelled when I walked into the kitchen. However mother has made a pot of Gumbo which is in the refrigerator.

I have a justified true belief in (2), but I do not know (2). It is a coincidence, the Gumbo in the refrigerator, that makes me right about it.

Gettier style problems showcase justification as fallible and not enough for knowledge. Yet, this belief, justification as not enough for knowledge based on past experiences where justification failed in leading to the truth, is itself justified by past experiences.

Survey of Challenges for The Standard View, The Skeptics

Speaking again as an empiricist, knowledge comes from experience. Yet what if all our experiences were illusions and everything we saw, felt, tasted, smelled, and touched was just a dream? Could we then claim to have any knowledge at all? In Richard Feldman's Epistemology Skeptics believe The Standard View to be far too self-idulgent as justification for belief is really unjustifiable itself.

Does it matter though if life is a dream? What is "real" is relative. One can describe what "really" happened in a dream. Thus, the knowledge we have of the world, which skeptics claim is unjustifiable, works to help us function in this dream. Even if I am dreaming, if I am hungry I know I need to eat food and it is the act of eating which helps make the human condition bearable on any level of reality. As a pragmatist, I believe survival is the ultimate goal for anyone so even if I am in a dream I want to survive it. I know I need to have shelter, sleep, water, food, and clothing to survive in this dream. Those are the essentials which work to sustain life in this reality and it is better for me to accept that than to take my chances with the alternative.

The Pretheoretic view ("Standard View")

Epistemology (described by Wikipedia as "The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge) asks the questions, "What is knowledge?" and "How do we know what we know?". The Standard View of knowledge attempts to answer this questions. It reflects a simpler time where knowledge derives from judgements and commonsense like "Torturing innocents in bad" or "New Jersey borders New York". According to Richard Feldman's Epistemology "We know a large variety of things in categories", as one could characterize the former example as knowledge of morality and the later example knowledge of geography. According to Feldman, sources of this kind of knowledge include...
     *Perception
     *Sensation
     *Memory
     *Testimony of others
     *Introspection
     *Reasoning or inference
     *Rational Insight

So...what actually is knowledge itself? The simple answer, what is reffered to by Feldman as the "traditional analysis of K", in accordance with The Standard View is justified, true, belief. The justification for this knowledge comes through any of the previously mentioned sources of knowledge...if one believes New Jersey borders New York he is justified by remembering a map he saw or a trip he took. For another example, if the kitchen smells like gumbo whenever mother makes gumbo and today the kitchen smells like gumbo, we are justified in believing, thus we have the knowledge justified by remembering past experiences, mother made gumbo today and unless Glade has come out with gumbo scent air freshener we are probably correct in our assumption.

As a pragmatist I see the justification for belief being if or not it works. Smelling gumbo has a good shot at actually leading me to gumbo, hence my belief is justified. If Glade actually does come up with gumbo scented air freshener but I am unaware of it and I follow a scent and I do not find gumbo, that does not make my belief unjustified, but I do not have knowlege because it is impossible to say you know something that is not true. However, if I stopped following the scent of gumbo altogether I may never find any gumbo at all. The Standard View may not be fool proof at leading us to truth (the existence of gumbo in this example), but there are many times when this justified, true, belief breeds truthful knowledge which is evident in all the times we do find that pot of gumbo.