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5. Gob is a prime example of the “Dunning-Kruger effect,” wherein individuals who are incompetent wildly overestimate their competence and cannot recognize competence in other people either. The classic article describing this effect is Justin Kruger and David Dunning, “Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (1999): 1121–1134.

Chapter 13

IS JUSTIFIED TRUE BLUTH BELIEF KNOWLEDGE?

Brett Coppenger and Kristopher Phillips

The Bluths know lots of things. George Michael knows that he loves his cousin Maeby. Gob and the members of The Magician’s Alliance know the secrets that explain their tricks.1 Buster knows a great deal about agrarian business in the eighteenth century, but doesn’t know whether or not we should be concerned about an uprising. And if you were to ask Michael whether or not he was dreaming (or more likely, having a nightmare), he would sadly, but adamantly, maintain that he knew he was awake and that his experiences were all real.

Epistemologists (philosophers interested in figuring out what knowledge is) have attempted to find the necessary (required) and jointly sufficient conditions (those conditions that together are enough) for knowledge. By examining the previous examples of Bluth knowledge, we can illustrate the necessary and sufficient conditions of the “traditional account” of knowledge.

I Didn’t Even Know That There Was a Cabin . . . He Wasn’t Taking Me To . . .

For starters, George Michael, Gob, Buster, and Michael all believe something—of course, they don’t all believe the same thing. George Michael believes that he loves his cousin, Gob has all kinds of beliefs about how magic tricks are performed, even if he’s not very good at performing them himself, and so on. So belief is necessary (required) in order to have knowledge. But is belief enough? If you believe something, does that mean you know it?

Consider Tobias’s belief that he is an exceptional actor. Tobias is utterly convinced that he’s first-rate artiste (not to mention that he was a first-rate analrapist), despite his utter failure at landing any sort of role as an actor. Perhaps we can place some of the blame on Carl Weathers, but epistemologists are not in the business of finding out who is at fault, we’re worried about knowledge!

The problem with Tobias’s belief is that it’s unjustified. Tobias believes that he’s a great actor, but he holds this belief despite a preponderance of counter-evidence. It’s hard to imagine why Tobias thinks he can act. Mere belief, while necessary for knowledge, is not sufficient—we need something more. A belief must be justified if it’s to count as knowledge. A paradigm case of unjustified belief might be a belief based on a magic eight ball. If, for instance, Lindsay came to believe that she was not a Bluth simply because she asked a Magic Eight Ball “Am I a Bluth?” and the Magic Eight Ball responded, “All signs point to no,” we would still say the belief is unjustified, even if it turns out to be true.

Surely though, if someone believes something and they are justified, then they would know it, right? Maybe not; consider Michael’s automobile accident from the episode “My Mother the Car.” After regaining consciousness, Michael came to believe that he’d tried to hit his brother Gob with his father’s car. Michael is justified in his belief, since his mother told him that he was responsible and his injuries were consistent with his mother’s explanation of what happened. But, does Michael know he tried to hit his brother with the car?

Once again, there’s still something missing. The problem with Michael’s belief is not that it failed to be justified, but instead, that the belief turned out to be false. Lucille misled Michael into thinking he was at fault, when in fact she had intended to run down her first born, and then with her super-human strength switched places with Michael. Of course, earlier that day, Michael had