Knowledge

Is it possible for somebody to know nothing?

Comments

It depends on your theory of knowledge, but several theories would support the idea that someone with ordinary cognitive capacities could actually know nothing. Obviously the most important such theory is the one known as "global skepticism," which holds that absolutely everyone knows nothing! We might have justified beliefs, even justified true beliefs, according to this theory, but never justified enough to qualify as knowledge.

Other theories might hold that a person would know nothing if that person's cognitive capacities were sufficiently damaged or defective. So a "reliabilist" about knowledge is one who thinks that we have knowledge only if we have a true belief that is generated or sustained in a way that reliably produced true beliefs. This obviously requires that the knower have the capacity to produce true beliefs reliably, so one who did not have such a capacity could never know anything (even if he or she might still sometimes have true beliefs). Obviously, this would have to be an extreme case of cognitive defect, however. Other cases, according to different theories, can be concocted, but most would be either rare or purely theoretical possibilities. Most theories of knowledge hold that all or nearly all of us (other than extremely defective cases) have plenty of knowledge.

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