Teaching Theory of Knowledge

Using Popular Fiction

CONTRIBUTOR: Jaakko Hintikka.

      Instructors looking for interesting ways to motivate discussions of epistemological problems might consider using popular fiction. In an unpublished paper, "But Did Lady Astwell Know It? Popular Fiction as a Source of Epistemological Insights," Jaakko Hintikka reports that the following questions can be uncovered in Agatha Christie's short Story, "The Under Dog":

whether knowledge is true belief, and how that definition fails;

whether there is a special internal state of knowing (a la Prichard, in Knowledge and Perception);

what counts as evidence, and how much is required to justify a knowledge claim;

whether a knower must always be conscious of his/her grounds for knowledge;

whether knowledge is justified true belief, and how that definition fails; (Hintikka suggests that "The Under Dog" offers a "more vivid and more fully delineated example" which challenges the traditional JTB account of knowledge in much the same way as the famous counter-example produced by Edmund Gettier in 1963);

whether intuition should be considered a source of knowledge;

what the relation is between knowledge and proof, and between the justification and the acquisition of belief; and

what the difference is between ordinary usage and the philosopher's use of 'know'.

      According to Hintikka, one of the central issues raised by contemporary fiction is the question of what should be considered the "proper" sense of knowing. Since recent epistemologists claim that their theories and analyses are based upon "intuitions," Hintikka argues, perhaps they should enrich that base by considering the intuitions of non-philosophers. Doing so may produce two salutary effects:

1. since the intuitions of non-philosophers are not contaminated by theory or bias, they should yield less suspect grounds for philosophical analysis than the intuitions of epistemologists;

2. any epistemological theory that takes these intuitions into account will thereby accord with ordinary usage: a decided pedagogical advantage even if it is a disputed philosophical one.

Hintikka also suggests that the Christie story illustrates another interesting issue: whether the epistemologist's evaluation of evidence should include methods used to select that evidence from the total information potentially available. He has argued elsewhere that the process of activating tacit knowledge is subject to rational evaluation, and further, that in many important respects it is similar to paradigmatic processes of knowledge-seeking.

It is his view that epistemologists have unnecessarily narrowed their focus to problems of justifying knowledge-claims when there is important work to be done in examining methods of knowledge acquisition. His recent work begins that examination, using questioning as a paradigm.

Hintikka, J. "Questioning as a Philosophical Method." In Fetzer, J. H. (ed.), Principles of Philosophical Reasoning. Totowa, N. J.: Rowman & Allenheld, 1984, 25-43.

Hintikka, J. "The Logic of Science as a Model-Oriented Logic. In Asquith, P. and Kitcher, P. (eds.), PSA 1984. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, 1984, 177-85.

Hintikka, J. "A Spectrum of Logics of Questioning." Philosophica 35 (1985), 135-50.

Hintikka. J. "On the Logic of an Interrogative Model of Scientific Inauire." Synthese 48 (1981), 69-83.

Hintikka, J. and Hintikka, Merrill B. "Sherlock Holmes Confronts Modern Logic: Towards A Theory of Information Seeking Through Questioning." In Barth, E. M. and Martens J. L. (eds.), Argumentation: Approaches to Theory Formation, Amsterdam: Beniamins. 1982. 55-76.