ABSTRACT
Anyone who wishes to offer a definition of knowledge – who wishes to say what knowledge is – faces an immediate problem, which is how to begin. Now it might seem as if the answer here is obvious, in that one should start simply by looking at the cases in which one has knowledge and considering what is common to each case. So, for example, one might think of such paradigm cases of knowledge acquisition as the scientist who, upon conducting her experiments, correctly determines the chemical structure of the substance before her, or the ‘star’ witness in the murder trial who knows that the defendant is guilty of the murder because she saw him do it in clear daylight. The thought is that all one needs to do is determine what is common to each of these paradigm cases and one will be well on one’s way to discerning what knowledge is.
