The meaning of "knowledge"

[ptc24]

Hypothetical:

In Town X, a burglary is reported to the police. They investigate, and their investigation leads to Bob, who has previous convictions for that sort of thing. They find the stolen goods at Bob's house, Bob is questioned, he confesses, it goes to trial, Bob pleads guilty, the jury is convinced by the evidence, and Bob is sentenced accordingly.

In fact, Bob had not committed the burglary. In fact, he had a provable alibi - he was out committing another burglary (of equivalent severity) elsewhere in town at the time. The original burglary was done by a friend of his, and he was just storing the goods at his house. Given that demonstrating his alibi wouldn't have saved him any prison time, and would have involved fingering his accomplices (which would have damaged his standing in the criminal underworld), he felt that the simplest thing to do was to take the rap for the original burglary.

This is all to illustrate a philosophical point about the word "know" (and "knowledge" etc). A poll:

(ETA Note that the previous convictions don't count when I'm asking whether the legal system knew Bob had committed burglary... I meant to ask "...committed burglary on that day" or something similar. This ETA is before anyone but me has answered this, so all the results reflect this ETA)

Poll #10225

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

View Respondents

Did the legal system know that Bob had committed burglary?

View Answers

Yes
1 (12.5%)

No
7 (87.5%)

Was the outcome just?

View Answers

Yes - Bob committed a burglary and served a sentence for burglary, your point?
4 (57.1%)

No - Bob was punished for a crime he did not commit.
2 (28.6%)

I don't believe in punishing people for burglary anyway, so No
1 (14.3%)

Furthermore

View Answers

This is a completely ridiculous hypothetical and the legal system wouldn't have acted that way
0 (0.0%)

This is reasonably realistic, at least in terms of how the legal system acted
2 (25.0%)

Ummmm...
6 (75.0%)

Comments

[simont]

Of course the legal system doesn't know that Bob committed this burglary. It thinks he did, but it has been misled, because he lied to it!

I want to say that the outcome was not just, but not for the reason written beside the 'No' radio button. It is unjust because Bob's friend who did commit this burglary has not gone down for it, and presumably will not do so in future because the police think the crime is solved. That seems to me a much more convincing argument for injustice than hairsplitting about whether it's just for Bob to serve the right length of sentence despite the wrong things being said about it in court.

(Meanwhile, the poor police are off on a wild-goose chase for the perpetrator of the burglary that Bob really committed, since the actual culprit now has what appears to be an ironclad alibi!)

[liv]

I think the thing that's wrong with your hypothetical is that if Bob's alibi were "I was committing another crime at the time", he wouldn't go to prison for that other crime, because you're only on trial for what you're actually on trial for, even if some other criminal activity comes up in the evidence. However I'm not completely certain this is the case, and Bob may well still care more about his standing in the criminal underworld than he does about staying out of prison.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

I think the application of "know" to a system is a bit problematic. Not to mention that part of what the legal system does is make rulings as to what is and is not a "fact" for legal purposes.

(Is the underlying question about "knowledge" that isn't actually true and may be falsified, despite following best practice to be sure of that knowledge?)

[rochvelleth]

It seems realistic to me, but my knowledge of the legal system, wrt matters of this sort, is based more on TV than experience, so judge of that what you will :)

The reason I chose 'no' to the question about it being just is that Bob had a strategy, admitting to the crime he didn't commit in part to maintain his standing in the criminal underworld. Also, he deliberately prevented his friend from being arrested for a crime he committed (which might have been the result of further investigation if he had not confessed, even if he had not said 'My friend did it'), which is in itself a crime that he hasn't been put on trial for.

But as you can see, all my quibbles are about justness, not about knowledge, so I should stop there :)

[jack]

I've heard brief mentions of the discussion of what it means to "know" something.

However, to me, the mistake seems to be assuming that because we have a word "know", that it maps cleanly to a relevant philosophical concept (that fulfils all the expectations of "something you can reason with", "something you have good reason to think true", etc, etc). It seems more likely that there is (at best) a number of overlapping concepts that "know" describes well when they coincide, but people would disagree about when they don't.

So I realise this is one of the edge cases, but I'm not sure the answer is "yes" or "no"... :)

[jack]

Was it just? I'd say, more or less. As in, in this isolated incident, a satisfactory outcome was achieved, which is just. But it's still indicative that the system as a whole isn't just, because there's evidence that more probably other, similar mistakes are made that include guilty people being free and innocent people being punished. But it doesn't seem urgent whether or not that counts as "just", only whether we should care if it happens or not.

[rochvelleth]

P.S. In Greek, 'I know' is 'oida'. Although this is semantically present 'tense', its form is that of the perfect 'tense' of the verb 'to see'. So in Greek, 'I know' explicitly means 'I have seen'.

There you go, that was more fun for a discussion of knowledge as a concept :)

(Scare quotes for 'tense' because it's a complex concept!)

[simont]

It seems to me that when we combine your hypothetical here, my one (and the one in the comments) in the old LJ post I linked to, and Gettier's ones in the Wikipedia page you link to, the common thread is that all of them have a true belief of the form "One of the following set of possibilities is true", with a justification "Specifically, I have reason to believe it's this one". In fact it then turns out that the thing asserted in the justification is false in spite of looking plausible, but fortunately one of the other possibilities in the set is true, and thus the originally stated belief manages to be true despite the justification being wonky.

Are there any examples of this phenomenon which don't have that form?

[(Anonymous)]

I'd say the basic fact is correct (Bob commited a burglary) but the causality chain is wrong.