Is Knowledge a Mental State?

Abstract

In this chapter, we will compare and contrast two rival accounts of the nature of knowing. According to the first, arguably presupposed by the JTB account of knowledge and by attempts to repair or replace it in the post-Gettier literature, knowing is a metaphysical alloy which, at least in principle, can be ‘factored’ into mental components (such as believing) and non-mental components (such as the truth of the proposition known). This account of the nature of knowing isn’t immediately incompatible with the claim that knowledge is a mental state, if the latter claim is suitably domesticated. One might propose that knowing is a species of believing — to know is to have a belief that meets further conditions — and so counts as a mental state in a derivative sense. This claim enjoys some initial plausibility, not shared by parallel claims about other metaphysical alloys. As Nagel (2013: 281) points out, a murder is a metaphysical alloy, involving mental components (certain intentions) and a decidedly nonmental component (the death of the victim). She notes that there’s no plausibility at all in the suggestion that a murder is a mental event, even though it involves a mental component, namely the relevant ill intentions. However, there’s also no plausibility whatsoever in the suggestion that murder is a species of intention; it’s much more natural to think of a homicide first and foremost as a death, one distinguished from other kinds of deaths in having been brought about intentionally.