Explicitists

Explicitists are a group of philosophers who hold a particular view on the nature of knowledge. They believe that knowledge is a form of justified true belief, but with an additional condition: the justification for the belief must be explicit or consciously accessible to the knower. This stands in contrast to implicitists, who argue that justification can be non-conscious or latent.

The core idea behind explicitism is that to truly know something, one must be able to articulate or at least be aware of the reasons why one believes it to be true. If a person holds a true belief for reasons they are unaware of, or cannot bring to consciousness, explicitists argue that this does not constitute genuine knowledge. This position often arises in discussions about epistemology, the theory of knowledge.

For example, consider someone who has an intuition about a complex mathematical problem and solves it correctly. An explicitist might argue that if they cannot explain the steps or the reasoning behind their intuition, even if it was correct, they don't truly *know* the solution in the fullest sense. They might have stumbled upon it or had a lucky guess, but the justification wasn't explicit.

Explicitism attempts to address certain Gettier-style counterexamples to the traditional justified true belief account of knowledge, which suggest that true beliefs can be justified but not genuinely known if the justification is coincidental or misleading. By requiring explicit justification, explicitists aim to secure a more robust connection between belief, truth, and the knower's cognitive grasp. However, critics sometimes question the feasibility of always having explicit justification and whether implicit knowledge is a coherent concept.