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Analysis

The analysis of knowledge is the attempt to identify the essential components or conditions of all and only propositional knowledge states. According to the so-called traditional analysis, knowledge has three components: it is a belief that is justified and true. In the second half of the 20th century, this view was put into doubt by a series of thought experiments that aimed to show that some justified true beliefs do not amount to knowledge. In one of them, a person is unaware of all the fake barns in their area. By coincidence, they stop in front of the only real barn and form a justified true belief that it is a real barn. Many epistemologists agree that this is not knowledge because the justification is not directly relevant to the truth. More specifically, this and similar counterexamples involve some form of epistemic luck, that is, a cognitive success that results from fortuitous circumstances rather than competence.

Following these thought experiments, philosophers proposed various alternative definitions of knowledge by modifying or expanding the traditional analysis. According to one view, the known fact has to cause the belief in the right way. Another theory states that the belief is the product of a reliable belief formation process. Further approaches require that the person would not have the belief if it was false, that the belief is not inferred from a falsehood, that the justification cannot be undermined, or that the belief is infallible. There is no consensus on which of the proposed modifications and reconceptualizations is correct. Some philosophers, such as Timothy Williamson, reject the basic assumption underlying the analysis of knowledge by arguing that propositional knowledge is a unique state that cannot be dissected into simpler components.