A Reliance on Necessary False Belief: The Salvation of The Classical Analysis of Knowledge
trivial or eliminable. Under this classification, which I will deem necessary false beliefs, the false beliefs are essential to S deriving P. Without it, S wouldn't have reasonably come to conclude P at all. While many philosophers have argued that such a categorization is plagued by insurmountable ambiguity, I propose a straightforward test to determine whether an agent’s false belief is, in fact, necessary: The necessary test. To determine if an agent relies on necessary false beliefs, we probe the following prompt: If the individual did not rely on the false belief, would he still reasonably reach his purported conclusion? Simply put, is his reliance on the stated belief necessary ? If the answer to the former question is yes, the belief is considered eliminable, and the agent may still achieve knowledge. If the answer is no, the false belief is cemented as necessary, precluding the agent from attaining knowledge altogether. To demonstrate an application of the test, let us refer to Nagel’s Gettier case involving the man and the broken clock. To test if the subject relied upon a necessary false belief, we ask ourselves if the false evidence depended upon was necessary for the subject to reach his conclusion. In this case, the answer is clear: without the man relying on the false belief that the clock was fully functioning, there would be no other way for him to infer that the time was 1:17 pm. His assumption that the clock was working was required for him to conclude that the time was indeed 1:17 pm, affirming this false belief as necessary. This distinction between eliminable and necessary false beliefs is imperative to assessing what constitutes knowing. If S consults eliminable false beliefs in coming to P, it very well remains possible that S knows P. However, upon S’s reliance on a
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