"I gave a girl a ride in my wagon" opens one of the most creepiest songs ever written in the history of the pop era. For those who don't know, that statement is the opening line from the 1975 diddy "Chevy Van" by Sammy Johns. Clocking in at a mellow two minutes, fifty-nine seconds, the adventure of a young man, a loose hitchhiker, and their, well, let's say (alleged) "encounter", was (as it is said) a typical portrait of the free-lovin' easy-goin' days of the '70s. Whatever. The song goes a little like this: Boy drives shaggin' wagon, boy picks up hot hitchhiking chick, hot hitchhiking chick immediately and inexplicably loses consciousness, when she awakens, she is struck by the overwhelming desire to take the shaggin' waggon's captain "by the hand" and do him. After their moments of love, boy drops the hitchhiker off somewhere south of BFE, and never sees her again. At least until the paternity suit ( I added that). What I find truly interesting about the song is in the chorus. Free-wheelin' Sammy makes the statement, "she's gonna love me in my chevy van (and that's alright with me)". Hold on, I think, let's back this one up. "She's gonna love me in my chevy van"?!? One, that's a pretty big statement to make, and two, I thought, that sounds like a mighty big EPISTEMIC claim. She's "gonna" love you? Well, how exactly does he know she will? Maybe he just picked up Susan Atkins? But, Sammy makes the claim that she's "gonna" love him. Two minutes and fifty-nine seconds worth of claiming. And once again I ask how does he know for sure? I'm almost certain that his explanation will fall along the lines of something like this: 'Well, whenever I picked up hitchhikers before, they always give it up to me. So I assumed that this chick would be no different. Hey, at least I didn't charge her for gas money!' Leaving the comment about gas money aside, what Sammy's answer is, is straight up induction. We do this kind of thinking all the time. Based on past experiences, we make assumptions about how a present (or future) situation will be. Hume's famous example was stating that the sun will come up tomorrow. We say this because we have observed in the past that the sun comes up every morning, so we assume that tomorrow will be no different. We say the sun will come up tomorrow. And most of the time this kind of thinking works. You can assume, based on prior experience, that a hitchhiker will have sex with you. But there's the glitch: This works until we run into a situation where our line of reasoning is wrong and the present or the future doesn't resemble the past (and this folks, is the problem of induction!). So, let's say that Sammy wants to make the claim that his sleeping? passed out? riding companion will in fact share her love with him. How does he know that she will? How can Sammy say that he is justified in believing that she will? Enter epistemology 101: knowledge as justified true belief. We know that Sammy believes that the hitchhiker will make love to him (it sounds so silly using the term "make love", doesn't it?), but we get the sense that Sammy wants more than to merely believe that claim; he wants to be justified in doing so. To say that we truly "know" something means more than to say that we believe either this or that claim. We would want to say that we also have proper reasons for believing what we believe, or justification. Justification is important because (epistemically speaking) justification makes it more likely that our beliefs are true (or at least more likely to be true). I think that it goes without saying why we want true beliefs. But, in a nutshell, true (or TRUE, or True -- depending on how much you want to emphasize the concept) are our foundations for knowledge. If we had no true beliefs, then well... you don't want to know. All I can say is that there would be no American Idol (and nobody would like that). This, justified true belief, that is, is the traditional view of knowledge. It's this: 1) s believes p 2) p is true 3) s has good reason (justification) to believe p. 1,2 &3 are necessary conditions for knowledge. Which means if we ain't got all three, we don't know. So, how can Sammy go from merely believing that his hitchhiking sleeping beauty is going to sex him up to saying that he knows that she will? Well, by employing a method for justification of course! Let's look at two of my faves coherentism and reliabilism. According to coherentism, a belief is true if it coheres (or is consistent with) our other held beliefs (what we already believe to be true). So for example, Sammy sees the hitchhiker on the side of the road. His system of held beliefs may include the following: -- I drive a sweet chevy van -- Hippy chicks esp. hitchhiking ones, are easy -- Chicks dig dudes with sweet chevy vans -- Chicks who sleep with moonlight dancing off of their hair, wake up and take you by the hand will want to have sex with you, seriously. Sammy's belief, "she's gonna love me in my chevy van" which is to say, 'I believe that this chick will have sex with me' seems to cohere with his other beliefs (in fact, you could say that Sammy hit the jackpot). But there's a problem here. The truth of Sammy's belief relies on Sammy's other beliefs. Sammy may be wrong. He may have an entire system of false beliefs. In that case, even if his belief was true (in virtue if his other beliefs), he is not justified in making the claim that his belief is true. So what's Sammy to do? He can use another means of justification. Let's try reliabilism. The reliabilist (is that right?) says, sure the coherentist has his thoughts to rely on, but that's the problem in itself. We need something more. If you got whacked on the head so hard that everything you saw had dancing elves around it, no matter whether the dancing elves fit consistently into every belief you had about the world, your "true" statements would not be true (by virtue of the fact that there are no dancing elves). So, the reliabilist says, we need more. Justification, he says, is determined by the reliability of the process by which we form our beliefs. So, instead of relying on other beliefs, the reliabilist uses memory, good reasoning, introspection, etc. to arrive at beilefs that are true or more likely to be true. We can't justify our beliefs by mere guesses, or by our emotions or what we want to be true. So, if Sammy was of sound mind and body (i.e. he hadn't smoked too much of the "reefer"), then given the reliability of his belief-forming processes, Sammy is likely to produce true beliefs. And justified in claiming the likelihood of his beliefs being true. All said and done, I think that Sammy did smoke too much of the locoweed, drove nowhere picked up nobody, and made the whole thing up. Just proving that there's a reason why they call it dope.
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