No False Grounds is consistent with the Standard View


 The text puts forward a modification of the Traditional Analysis
 of Knowledge defended by Michael Clark (Chapter 3, Section III, Part
 A, pp 26) called the `No False Grounds Theory'.  This theory adds an
 additional condition to the Traditional Analysis of Knowledge, which
 might be stated as ``S knows that p when all of S's grounds for
 believing p are true.''  (in addition to the normal Traditional
 Analysis of Knowledge criteria, of course).  The difficulties of
 Gettier-style examples are avoided, because those examples depend on
 falsehoods.

 An argument is put forward, accredited to Alvin Goldman, John Turk
 Saunders, and Narayan Champawat, called ``The Lucky Ford Owner''.  It
 goes something like this:

      Smith believes that Jones owns a Ford because Brown, who is
      honest and reliable, has told him that Jones owns a Ford, he has
      seen Smith driving a Ford, etc.  All these reasons, or grounds,
      are true.  But just an hour ago, Jones sold his Ford.  And just
      half an hour ago, Jones won a Ford in a lottery.

 Smith's grounds are all true, seemingly satisfying the `No False
 Grounds' criteria; however, critics claim that Smith does not *know*
 that Jones owns a Ford, because, as is typical of Gettier-style
 examples, Smith's belief is only coincidentally true.  Thus, the
 claim goes, the `No False Grounds' modification does not seem to have
 resolved our Gettier problems.

 This claim -- that Smith does not know that Jones owns a Ford --
 certainly seems reasonable, especially given the similarity to other
 Gettier-style arguments against the Traditional Analysis of
 Knowledge.  Given the Standard View definitions of knowledge,
 however, this seems unfair.  As described in Chapter 2, Section 3,
 Part A2, when considering the sorts of knowledge suggested by the
 Standard View, we must be careful about the proposition in question.
 In one example from the text, the propositions ``It is snowing.'' and
 ``It is not snowing.'' are both examined to see how the Standard View
 accommodates simultaneous justified, true belief in each (in the
 example, one proposition is advanced in Maine, the other in Florida).
 In another example, perhaps more directly related to the `Lucky Ford
 Owner', to the example proposition ``I am more then 30 years old.''
 This poses no trouble, even though it is varyingly true or false even
 when advanced by the same person, if it is advanced more than once,
 at different `enough' points in time.

 It seems that me that the Lucky Ford Owner example is unfairly
 refusing to give Smith's justified, grounded, true belief the same
 leeway.  In the same light as ``I am more than 30 years old.'', we
 might examine ``Jones owns a Ford.'', and find that it is just a
 qualified for the moniker `knowledge' as many other items that the
 Standard View holds to be `common sense' -- at a certain point in
 time, it is justified, grounded true belief - Jones does own a Ford -
 and thus is knowledge.  At a later point in time, the circumstances
 have changed, and Jones no longer owns a Ford, so it is no longer
 justified, grounded true belief -- because it's no longer true.  At a
 later time, it may be once again (coincidentally) true, but no longer
 grounded.  

 This sort of `vagueness' is common in the development and
 characterization of the Standard View.  We talk about `knowing'
 things based on `sufficient' or `reasonable' evidence; in our
 examples we create situations in which it seems `good enough' reasons
 or rationale are put forward to convince us that beliefs (which are
 themselves inherently fuzzy things) are `justified' or rational.
 While the Gettier-style arguments seem to be pointed, in a sense, and
 the Traditional Theory of Knowledge, I begin to suspect that the
 difficulties they point out are actually inherent in the Standard
 View itself.

 Another thing occurs to me as I examine this view `from a distance',
 as it were.  It strikes me that this argument seems to morph somewhat
 into a variant of the `No Defeaters' theory that might be reexpressed
 as `No Relevant Defeaters'; or, to put it a still different way,
 ``does not essentially depend on any falsehood''.