Liam

What is Knowledge?

WVU Guest Philosopher
April 3-9, 2006

This week's guest philosopher, Liam, is a 4 th grader at Mountainview Elementary School in Morgantown , WV . While at school, Liam is especially fond of recess, gym, and art. After school, he likes playing basketball, video games (especially Ultimate Spiderman and Midnight Club 3), Yugio cards, and playing with his friends in his clubhouse in the woods

Liam is playful, intelligent, interesting, and funny, so our interview was a purely delightful experience for me! From a long list of gripping questions, Liam chose one of the most fundamental questions in philosophy: What is Knowledge?

To begin his search for an answer to the question, Liam looked around the Blue Moose Café, smiling, and thinking about what he knew. He spotted his reflection in a glass frame, encasing a photograph on the wall. He noticed a checkerboard painted on the tabletop of our table, and he enjoyed an invigorating display of color throughout the café. On the basis of this thoughtful scan of the room, Liam claimed that he knew:

1. I see my reflection in the glass.
2. I see a checkerboard painted on the tabletop in front of me.
3. The Blue Moose Café is a colorful place.

I asked him to give me some examples of things he did not know. He listed the following:

1. The private thoughts of other people.
2. What it would look like if he had an earthworm's perspective from under the earth on a rainy day.
3. What it would seem like to be only one inch tall.
4. What cod (the fish) tastes like. (Liam hates fish and has never eaten cod.)
5. How it would feel to be a character in a video game.

After that refreshing list was compiled, I asked Liam to reflect upon his examples and try to put the concept of knowledge in a nutshell. He came up with the following on his first try:

(K1) A person knows x when the person has experience backing up his or her answer.

This is a nice start. His belief that there was a checkerboard painted on the table top, his belief that he could see his reflection in the glass, and his belief that there is a lot of color in the Blue Moose Café were all based on his visual experiences. Since he does not have first hand experience of what the earth looks like from an earthworm's perspective, what it would be like to be one inch tall, what cod tastes like, how it would feel to be in a video game, or about what other people's private thoughts are, he does not know those things. K1 works very nicely with Liam's list of examples.

I asked Liam to put his first theory, K1, to the test of philosophy. That is, I asked him to think hard about whether there are any objections, or counterexamples, to K1. After a quiet moment of reflection, Liam grinned at me and gave me a counterexample to K1. He said, “Well, in school, we do a lot of long division. We have lots and lots of experience, but sometimes, despite my experience, I do not know the answer!” :-D On the basis of this counterexample to K1, Liam revised his theory of knowledge to:

( K2 ) A person knows x when the person has experience and understanding backing up his or her answer.

K2 is even better than K1. It works well with all of Liam's original examples. It also works with the long division counterexample. Liam does not know the answer when he does not have understanding as well as experience.

There is one little problem with K2 . Liam was drinking a strawberry Snapple during the interview. I asked him if he would have knowledge that there was a strawberry Snapple in front of him if his mom had switched the Snapple with flavored water when we were not looking. He said he would not know in that case, and he revised his theory to:

(K3) A person knows x when the person has experience and understanding backing up his or her answer and his or her answer is correct.

Liam had no further objections, and K3 is Liam's Theory of Knowledge. It is a strong theory. If you have comments on Liam's Theory of Knowledge, send them to us at Philosophy@mail.wvu.edu .

Once he had a theory he felt satisfied with, I challenged him with the shoe shaking threat of skepticism! I asked him to go back to any of the things he claimed to know. I asked Liam whether he REALLY knew any of these things. After all, I asked him, “Can you be sure that you are not just dreaming this? Couldn't this all be an illusion? Maybe this all feels real, but it is not? How do you know things are really the way they seem to be?” Liam looked at me, threw his hands into his curly, blonde hair, and put his head down on the table. Head down, he turned to me and smiled the biggest smile I've ever seen. His mom chimed in, “He thinks about this a lot!”

Since he had already thought about this, I demanded an answer from my young philosopher. He answered. “I can pinch myself and I feel it. I must be here and awake.” I responded, “But you could be dreaming that you are pinching yourself.” “Right” he said and smiled some more. “Well, I might be dreaming now, but I have to eventually wake up, and I will know when that happens. I'll look around the room just when I feel myself waking up, and I will see if there is a checkerboard on the table. Then, I'll know.” I was not satisfied. After all I challenged, “Maybe you are just dreaming that you woke up. And, maybe you are always dreaming and always in a world of illusions. How do you know that's not the way things really are and there is no table, no café, and no real me talking to you right now?” Liam had an answer. “Well, I would die if I were always asleep. I have to eat to stay alive and I can't eat if I am sleeping. So, I cannot be sleeping all the time.” Liam also maintained that dreams feel significantly different, and less clear and realistic, than the experiences we have when we are awake.

Is it possible that we don't even have bodies and that all of our experiences are misleading? Is it possible that reality is quite different than what we think? If so, do we really know anything?