Knowledge Without Belief?
Suppose that yesterday you read an email about a bridge closure. You'll need to commute on an alternate route for a month. Yet here you are today, governed by habit, driving straight toward the closed bridge. In a moment, you will remember that the bridge is closed, but you haven't yet.
Now normally, I think we'd say the following things about you: You've forgotten that the bridge is closed. And you know the bridge is closed. Consider what you'd say to a passenger, for example, the moment after you remember: "Whoops! I forgot the bridge was closed"; "Oh, that was dumb of me; I knew the bridge was closed".
But do you believe the bridge is closed, as you drive blithely toward it? I don't feel much of an ordinary-language pull one way or another on this. But most contemporary philosophers of mind regard "think" (in the simple present, not the present progressive) as a fairly straightforward ordinary-language substitute for "believe" in many contexts. Do you think the bridge is closed, in those moments of forgetfulness? This sounds strange to my ear.
So maybe we can say you know the bridge is closed, but you don't think or believe that it is? Or (to change the example), as you stand there stammering, with Larry's name momentarily escaping you, that you do know that his name is Larry, after all, though you don't think or believe that it is, right now? Hmm... that seems strange, too!
We could test ordinary folks' intuitions on this. Provide a scenario of the sort above, then ask one group of subjects whether the person "knows" the fact in question, another whether she "believes" it, and a third whether she "thinks" it. I'd predict considerably higher attribution of "knows" than "thinks".
Is there trouble here for the standard view in contemporary epistemology that (propositional) knowledge is a species of belief? Or are ordinary intuitions a poor guide? Or am I wrong about how the intuitions will fall out?
Maybe part of what's going on is that "think" is a bit more temporally narrow in its reference than "knows"?