Holding points of view does not amount to knowledge

Abstract

I argue that knowing and having points of view are fun-damentally different epistemic states if we assume that having justified true beliefs is necessary for knowledge. Knowers necessarily possess justified true beliefs, but persons holding points of view may, for example, lack justification, have false beliefs, or both. I examine these differences and expose other crucial differentiating patterns between the structure of knowledge and points of view that make the latter more likely to lead to disagreements. I hypothesize that these patterns remain invariant in alterna-tive views of knowledge like contextualism as long as we preserve the classical structure. Yet there is much research to be done on the multiple and contrasting properties that emerge if we consider non- classical analyses of knowledge