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Nathanael Tekalign's avatar

UPDATE: unfortunately, you have fallen for the same confusion as the other proponents of your theory. You’re confusing the input of algorithm with the algorithm itself. The context affects the INPUT of the algorithm, without affecting the ALGORITHM itself. However, you haven’t gave much detail beyond “the output depends on the input.”. The problem is that there is cluelessness about the algorithm itself IN ADDITION to cluelessness about its inputs. The connectedness requirement looks less like an independent vindication of our epistemic intuitions about particular cases, and looks more like an attempt (successful or otherwise) to reverse engineer a general principle to accommodate our epistemic intuitions about particular cases. As a result, I would NOT be surprised if justified true belief really is sufficient for knowledge, despite of all our ( and Edmund Gettier’s) epistemic intuitions about particular cases to the contrary. As a result, I want to suspend judgment (at least temporarily) about which theory of knowledge is true.

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Nathanael Tekalign's avatar

There’s a trilemma regarding the relation between a belief being true on one hand, and being connected to the truth Eiither being true is:

Horn #1: SUFFICENT to be connected to the truth, in which case we’ve returned to the justified true belief theory of knowledge, or

Horn #2: UNNECESSARY to be connected to the truth, in which case a justified false belief could (at least in principle) count as knowledge, or

Horn #3: NECESSARY but INSUFFICIENT to be connected to truth, in which case it is hard to distinguish justified true belief without knowledge from unjustified true belief.

Also, some proponents of your theory of knowledge (possibly but not necessarily including you) insist that whether or not a justified true belief is connected to the truth depends on context. However, those proponents of your theory of knowledge (other than you) confused the input of the algorithm with the algorithm itself. For example, for the vast majority of those algorithms that have input, the output of the algorithm depends on the input of the algorithm. Nonetheless, if the algorithm itself is known, then any remaining cluelessness about the output of the algorithm would be reducible without residue to cluelessness about the input of algorithm. Unfortunately, those other proponents of your theory of knowledge haven’t gave any additional information about the algorithm itself. I’ll check your article to see if you do any better.

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