奎因哲学词条：知识

（奎因《短文集：一本不拘泥于分类学标准的哲学词典》，译者：翟玉章）

【“知识”的传统定义：有正当理由的真信念。但这个定义，正如盖梯尔表明的那样，还是太宽泛了。一个真信念即使有正当的理由，但仍不配称为知识，如果这个正当理由碰巧不成立的话。此外，知识这个概念的边界也是模糊的。我们最好把“知识”看成一个糟糕的概念并抛弃之，而只保留构成知识的各个独立的要素。知道如何（knowing how）和知道那（knowing that）之间的区别和联系。】

本文提到的词条：知识、谓词逻辑

Knowledge

知识

What counts as knowing something? First, one must believe it. Second, it must be true. Knowledge is true belief. However, as is often pointed out, not all true belief is knowledge. If something is believed for the wrong reason but just happens to be true, it does not qualify as knowledge. Knowledge has accordingly been described more specifically as justified true belief.

一个人怎样才算知道了一件事？首先，他必须相信它。第二，它必须是真的。知识是真信念。然而，正如人们经常所指出的那样，并非所有真信念都是知识。如果某人出于错误的理由而相信一件事，而这件事碰巧是真的，那么这件事对他而言就不能算做知识。知识因而被更具体地描述为有正当理由的真信念。

But this definition is still not narrow enough, as Edmund Gettier pointed out. The justification underlying a belief can be as reasonable and conclusive as you please and yet be contravened by some circumstance that nobody could reasonably have suspected. If this happens, and if by coincidence the belief is nevertheless true for other and independent reasons, then it is a justified true belief but still is undeserving of the name of knowledge. It is believed for the wrong reason.

但正如埃德蒙•盖梯尔所指出的，这个定义的范围仍然不够狭窄。支持某个信念的理由可以如你所希望的那样合理和确凿无疑，但这理由却由于没有人能够合理地想到的某个情况而是假的。如果这个情况出现了，而且这个信念仍然是真的，只是所根据的是其他独立的理由，那么该信念是不配称为知识的，尽管它是一个有正当理由的信念。它是出于错误的理由而被相信的。

An example is afforded by tabloids that appeared in the streets on November 7, 1918, mistakenly announcing an armistice. Two sportsmen set sail from Boston in their little sloop that day, with the newspaper on board and certainly no radio. They landed in Bermuda four days later in the well-founded belief that the war was over. They were right, too; it had just ended. But their belief was not knowledge, for its grounds, though reasonable, were wrong.

1918 年 11 月 7 日出现在大街上的一些小报提供了一个例子。它们发布的一战已经结束这一消息是假的。那天，两名运动员乘坐他们的小单桅帆船从波士顿出发。船上有当天的报纸，但当然没有收音机。他们四天后在百慕大登陆，有充分的理由相信战争已经结束。他们的信念是正确的，战争确实刚刚结束。但他们的信念不是知识，因为他们持有这个信念的理由，尽管是合理的，但却是错误的[1]。

The notion of knowledge is beset also by a less subtle difficulty: a vagueness of boundary. Knowledge connotes certainty; what shall we count as certain? Even if one holds that some things are absolutely certain, and is prepared to specify a boundary between absolute certainty and the next best thing, still one would hesitate to limit knowledge to the absolutely certain. That would do violence to both the usage and the utility of the word.

知识这一概念还受到一个相比而言更易察觉到的困难的困扰：边界的模糊性。知识意味着确实性；但确实性的标准是什么呢？即使一个人认为有些事情是绝对确实的，并且愿意在绝对确实性和次一个等级的确实性之间划定界限，但他拿不准是不是要把知识的范围仅限于绝对确实的信念。这样做对于这个词的用法和实用性都是一种损害。

We do better to accept the word 'know' on a par with 'big', as a matter of degree. It applies only to true beliefs, and only to pretty firm ones, but just how firm or certain they have to be is a question, like how big something has to be to qualify as big.

我们最好将“知识”和“大”相提并论，它们都有一个程度问题。知识适用于真信念，而且只适用于理由相当可靠的真信念。至于知识应该有多可靠或确实？这和下面的问题是一样的：一个物体应该有多大才能算得上大？

There is no place in science for bigness, because of this lack of boundary; but there is a place for the relation of biggerness. Here we see the familiar and widely applicable rectification of vagueness: disclaim the vague positive and cleave to the precise comparative. But it is inapplicable to the verb 'know', even grammatically. Verbs have no comparative and superlative inflections, sequitissimurto the contrary notwithstanding (see PREDICATE LOGIC). I think that for scientific or philosophical purposes the best we can do is give up the notion of knowledge as a bad job and make do rather with its separate ingredients. We can still speak of a belief as true, and of one belief as firmer or more certain, to the believer's mind, than another. There is also the element of justification, but we saw its limitations.

由于缺乏边界，科学中没有“……是大的”的位置；但科学中有“……比——大”的位置。我们在这里看到了人们熟悉的、适用性很广的一种对模糊性的纠正方法：放弃模糊的绝对，而转向精确的相对。但这一方法并不能用来处理动词“知道”，即使在语法上也行不通。动词并没有比较级和最高级的语形变化，尽管叮当弟的口中的动词sequitissimur有（见谓词逻辑）。我认为，为了科学或哲学的目的，我们最好把“知识”看成一个糟糕的概念并抛弃之，而只保留构成知识的各个独立的要素。我们仍然可以说一个信念是真的，也可以说某人的一个信念比他的另一个信念更可靠或更确实。这里也有为信念辩护的一席之地，尽管我们知道它是有局限性的。

These reflections perhaps belong in their rudimentary way to the branch of philosophy known as epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. Rejection of the very concept of knowledge is thus oddly ironical.

以上这些初步的反思也许属于被称为认识论或知识论的哲学分支。因此，拒绝“知识”这一概念显得异常讽刺。

It is not skepticism. Skeptics accept the concept of knowledge and deny its applications. What we are concluding rather is that the term does not meet scientific and philosophical standards of coherence and precision. The term retains its rough utility in the vernacular, like 'big', and, contrary to what the skeptic claims, there is plenty to which it then most emphatically applies.

这不是怀疑主义。怀疑主义者接受知识这一概念，但否定它有适用的东西。我们的结论毋宁是：这个术语达不到科学和哲学提出的融贯性和精确性的标准。当然，在日常交流的层面上，这个术语可以像“大”一样，继续发挥其大致的实用价值。与怀疑主义者的观点相反，明显有大量的信念可以被称为知识。

The limitations of the concept have had insidious effects, however, even apart from philosophical contexts. Creationists challenge the evolutionists, who, being scientists, scruple to claim absolute certainty. The creationists then respond that the theory of evolution is therefore not known to be true, and hence that creationism should get equal time. Religious apologists and occultists on other fronts take heart in similar fashion. Sometimes also an unscrupulous criminal lawyer sees his way to exploiting the scientist's honest avowal of fallibility: it is not utterly and unequivocally known that the accused was in full possession of his faculties at the time of the atrocity. Beyond a reasonable doubt, perhaps? That, if justice is to prevail, is where the contest is resumed.

即使在哲学领域之外，这个概念的局限性也有潜在的恶果。进化论者，作为科学家，不会声称自己的学说具有绝对的确实性。神创论者抓住这一点提出挑战；既然人们并不确实地知道进化论是真的，因此就应该给神创论以同等的机会。其他领域的宗教辩护者和神秘主义者也如法炮制地得到了鼓舞。有时，科学家对可错性的坦率承认，会被毫无底线的刑事律师所利用：我们并不完全明确地知道被告在犯下暴行时处于完全清醒的状态这一点。也许，这已超出了合理的怀疑了吧？如果正义要得到伸张，争论在这里就应该继续。

In closing I should acknowledge that there are two kinds of knowing: knowing how, as in swimming and bicycling, and knowing that. It is only the latter that has been exercising us here. Knowing how is a matter rather of what, thanks to one's training or insight, one can do. So in French; on peut faire is interchangeable, half the time, with on sait faire. Indeed our own knowand can are ultimately the same word; compare the kn of knowand the cn of can. In German, more obviously, we have kennenand konnen. The Greek and Latin gno- of gnostic and ignorantis the same thing again.

最后，我应该承认有两种“知道”：一是知道如何（knowing how），例如知道如何游泳和知道如何骑自行车，二是知道那（knowing that）。我们在这里讨论的只是后者。知道如何毋宁是关于一个人（由于培训或洞见）会做什么的问题。这两者是有关系的。在法语中，“on peut faire”（我们会做）和“on sait faire”（我们知道如何做）在一半的情形中是可以互换的。事实上，英语中的“know”（知道）和“can”（会）最终是同一个词；比较“know”中的kn和“can”中的cn。德语中，“kennen”（知道）和“können”（会）的同源性则更加明显。在希腊语和拉丁语中，“gnostic”（知识）和“ignorant”（无知）中的词根gno-则同时具有“知道”和“会”两个意思。

This last recalls a witty coinage by the biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi, told to me by the biochemist John Edsall. The substance concerned was not yet wholly identified, but had to be in the sugar family along with sucrose, glucose, dextrose, levulose. He called it ignose, after considering and rejecting godnose. Our admiring chuckle is followed by wonder at the triple play: ignorant, knows, and the sugary –osee. But the first pair, we now see, is no accident.

最后提到的词根让我想起一个由生物化学家阿尔伯特·圣捷尔吉所造的一个俏皮的术语，这是生物化学家约翰·埃德索尔告诉我的。正在研究的那种物质尚未完全弄清楚，但应该与蔗糖、葡萄糖、右旋糖、左旋糖一样，属于糖家族。他考虑过“神糖”这一名字，但放弃了，最后将它命名为无知糖。我们先是这个俏皮的术语报以钦佩的一笑，接着又对这个涉及到三个词（无知、知道、无知糖））的语词游戏感到惊奇。但正如我们现在所看到的，这三个词中的前两个成为一对，这是用不着惊奇的。

[1]这一段并不完全是虚构的。以下是《奎因自传》中的一个相关段落。We were still at Ellan Vannin on November 7. It was my father’s thirty-seventh birthday, but distant steam whistles began blowing for some other reason. Could the war be over? My mother and Bob and I rowed over to Myers’s grocery {25}to find out. Sure enough! Here was the tabloid, the Akron Press, with the screaming headline “Huns quit! War over!” it was a near miss. The armistice was signed four days later.

11月7日，我们仍在埃伦·瓦宁。这一天是我父亲的37岁的生日，但从遥远处传来的汽笛声却是与此无关的。战争会结束吗？我母亲带着鲍勃和我，划船到了迈尔斯家的杂货店看个究竟。{25}果然！一份名叫“阿克伦新闻”的小报印着刺眼的大字标题：“德国佬走了，战争结束了！”这个标题其实并不确切，因为停战协议是四天后才签署的。——译者注

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