The absence of any reference to belief in my statements on knowledge and knowing will be immediately noticed. The absence is intended, and though rare today in discussions of knowledge it is by no means unique in the history of the theory of knowledge.14 Even such a resolute Naturalist as Roy Wood Sellars specifies the nature of knowledge without reference to belief.15
Belief I understand to be some degree of readiness to act as if such and such (the content believed) were the case. Everyone concedes that one can believe where one does not know. But it is now widely assumed that you cannot know what you do not believe. Hence the well known analysis of knowledge as "justified, true belief." But this seems to me, as it has to numerous others, to be a mistake. Belief is, as Hume correctly held, a passion. It is something that happens to us. Thought, observation and testing, even knowledge itself, can be sources of belief, and indeed should be. But one may actually know (dispositionally, occurrently) without believing what one knows.
Whether or not one believes what one represents truly and has an appropriate basis for so representing, depends on factors that are irrelevant to truth, understanding and evidence. It depends, one might simply say, on how rational one is. Now I do not think that this point about belief in relation to knowledge is essential to the rest of this paper, but I mention it to indicate that the absence of any reference to belief in my general description of knowledge is not an oversight. Belief is not, I think, a necessary component of knowledge, though one would like to believe that knowledge would have some influence upon belief, and no doubt it often does.
In addition, it seems to me that specification of knowledge in terms of belief is a harmfully tendentious characterization, favoring the naturalization of knowledge. This is because belief has an essential tie to action, and is therefore easily located in the natural world--say as a mere tendency of the physical organism to behave in certain ways. I suspect that it is the almost overwhelming Empiricist--and in that sense Naturalist--tendency of thought in our time that has created the general presumption that knowledge must be some kind of belief. Hence we must here at least question that presumption; and, I believe, when questioned it will not prove to be obvious or, finally, sustainable.
I am not sure how deep the Pieper-Willard similarity on this topic runs, but it is worth exploring. One caveat: Willard above agrees with Hume that belief is a passion, "something that happens to us." This does not appear to comport with Pieper's doxastic voluntarism.
I am also puzzled by this sentence of Willard's: "But one may actually know (dispositionally, occurrently) without believing what one knows." The dispositional and the occurrent are opposites. Why does Willard bracket them together? Furthermore, if I actually know something, if my knowing is 'in act' as a Scholastic might put it, then my knowing is occurrent, and there is nothing potential or dispositional about it. Finally, what would be an example of Willard's point?
I can sort of see how one might dispositionally know something without believing it (a Papua New Guinean tribesman, prior to hearing the Gospel, who subsequently recognizes it immediately upon having it related to him?), but I have trouble envisioning the occurrent variety. Maybe the idea is that anything that can be dispositionally known can also be occurrently known?
Earlier you suggested that it might be a matter of stipulative definition. But is it a matter of stipulative definition that hens (female chickens)give birth by laying eggs and that female cats do not? No.
Similarly, with belief, knowledge, desire, will, etc. Take 'know.' Can this word be used any old way one pleases? No. It is of the essence of knowledge that anything known is true. That is not a matter of how we choose to use our terms. Our use of terms needs to be brought in line with the way things are independently of language.
Similarly with belief. Does knowledge include belief or does knowledge exclude belief? That is a substantive question.
Suppose someone were to say: By 'knowledge' I mean true belief. I would say he is misusing the word 'knowledge.' Knowledge cannot possibly be identified with true belief, even if knowledge includes belief. For I could have a true belief without having knowledge. I don't know where you live. Suppose I guess that you live in Prague, and you do live there. Then I have a true belief without having knowledge.
I fear the following is too trivial, but I can't help.
1. "Take 'know.' Can this word be used any old way one pleases? No."
Agreed; still, the word can, in principle, be used in several different ways. Especially in different contexts of different philosophical traditions in different eras. And all sides can, in principle, be right.
2. Even if one picks some improper and misleading words for expressing his belief (or the respective proposition), the belief can be true.
3. So, why, according to you, are the points (1) and (2) irrelevant for the claim that the difference between Pieper's (Willard's) definition of knowledge and TJB-definition of knowledge is not a mere quibble or an instance of cross purposes? (TJB: true justified belief, or true justified + ... belief).
I would have to write a separate post to sort this out. But I do agree that 'know' is used in different ways. For example, the following are different: knowing a person or place, knowing how to do something, and knowing a proposition. One might know all sorts of facts about guitars, or even every fact about every guitar in existence, without knowing how to play the guitar.
I'm a little late jumping into this conversation, but I've been doing some thinking on this lately. I understand the definition of "belief" being used by Willard here to be the so-called dispositional view, contra the state-object view. I see a problem with Willard's presentation, however, and wanted to bounce this off of you to see if I'm on the right track or not.
The problem I see has to do with how Willard defines "belief" here:
It seems he uses the definition of "belief" in the state-object view (that a belief is an accepting or affirming mental state directed at a proposition) to then define "belief" in a dispositional sense, and so seems to be equivocating. If he says, "Belief [let's call this B1] I understand to be some degree of readiness to act as if such and such (the content believed [B2]) were the case," his B1 relies on B2 and thus can't be the same thing as B2. In other words, he is saying that there is propositional content that one can believe (i.e., mentally affirm, using B2), but it is one's readiness to act such a belief (B2) is what he is calling "belief" (B1).
This tells me that B2 is the more basic definition of "belief" and that B1 is something different altogether.
Am I missing something here, or am I on to something?
Yes, there is a distinction between dispositional and occurrent belief. I can be said have to beliefs even when I am in a dreamless sleep in the sense that, were you to wake me up and ask me, say, whether coyotes use GPS devices, I would say no. This example seems to show that we have beliefs that we never actually 'enact.'
The quotation from Willard suggests to me that he thinks of beliefs as purely dispositional. But I don't know since I haven't read enough of his work. Note that there can be a content believd even if there is no occurrent mental act trained upon the content. When I am sleeping dreamlessly or drugged or under anaesthesia the beliefs I have have the same content as when I am awake and 'enacting' them. I don't have time now to be really clear, but maybe this helps.
In other words, if Willard is thinking of beliefs as purely dispositional he can still ascribe content to them without getting into the trouble you mention.