Knowing That P Without Believing That P

Nous, 47 (2013), 371-384.

Abstract:  The standard view in contemporary epistemology is that knowledge entails belief.  Proponents of this claim rarely offer a positive argument in support of it.  Rather, they tend to treat the view as obvious, and if anything, support the view by arguing that there are no convincing counterexamples.  We find this strategy to be problematic.  In particular, we do not think the standard view is obvious, and moreover, we think there are cases in which a subject can know some proposition P without (or at least without determinately) believing that P.  In accordance with this, we present four plausible examples of knowledge without belief, and we provide empirical evidence which suggests that our intuitions about these scenarios are by no means atypical.

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