ABSTRACT
The standard approach to questions about the Concept of knowledge has for some time consisted in attempts to analyse the everyday meaning of the word 'know' and its cognates. One might wonder whether, if the idea is to analyse the concept of knowledge, this can really be the right programme. As well as intuitions about the extension of the concept, people seem also to have certain intuitions about its intension, that is to say intuitions about why certain cases do, and others do not, qualify as knowledge. The sceptic notoriously tries to show that the two do not mesh: our intuitions about the intension, the conditions of application of the concept, in fact determine a much smaller extension than that which our directly extensional intuitions mark out. The idea that it may be worth asking after the roots of the value of knowledge when investigating the concept has an ancient precedent.
