epistemic minimalism

Epistemic minimalism is the epistemological thesis that mere true belief is sufficient for knowledge. That is, the ''meaning'' of "Smith knows that it rained today" is accurately and completely analyzed by these two conditions:

# Smith believes that it rained today.
# It is true that it rained today.

The thesis is called ''minimalist'' by way of contrast with the competing accounts, which more or less universally require that true belief is necessary but insufficient for knowledge—that is, that a belief needs to be true in order to count as knowledge, but that truth alone is not enough—that ''something else'' is needed. Traditionally, that something else was held to be evidential justification; today it is usually held to be either justification ''and also'' some other condition, or else some other condition ''instead of'' justification, which will avoid the Gettier problem.

Whatever the analysis, though, the standard view (both pre-Gettier and post-Gettier) pushes for ''narrower'' analyses of knowledge than mere true belief. Epistemic minimalism turns in exactly the opposite direction, and argues for a much more ''inclusive'' analysis--one which includes even Gettier cases, lucky guesses, and completely unjustified beliefs, as long as they happen to be true. The thesis is a ''minimalism'' in the sense that it eschews the additional requirements piled on top of true belief and argues that the intuitive reasons given for the justified true belief (JTB) analysis and its descendants are either misleading or misunderstood.

The most famous (or infamous) proponent of epistemic minimalism is Crispin Sartwell (1991). The view has been criticized by many epistemologists, with an influential criticism being delivered by William Lycan (1994).

References

*
*
*

Minimalism

{{epistemology-stub