INTERLOCUTOR:
<Summary> "In the debate over atheism and agnosticism definitions are very important."
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
The definition of knowledge is critical.
INTERLOCUTOR:
I used the standard philosophical definition. I prefer Demonstrable rather than Justified, but this is not a critical distinction for the purpose of the OP. And yes, I am aware of Gettier cases.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
Doesn't this definition smuggle in truth improperly?
INTERLOCUTOR:
Truth is a correspondence between a statement/proposition/claim and reality. At least that is one of the more common definitions. Under JTB, a justified belief must correspond with reality to be considered knowledge.
Yes, there are many other theories of truth. Again, I am simply using the most commonly used definition.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
Yet, the philosophy of skepticism shows that truth is too elusive to ever include in any definition of knowledge.
If you can never verify truth, then knowledge that relies on truth can't exist. The only way for knowledge to exist is to either prove that truth is verifiable, or change the definition of knowledge to not include truth. Under skepticism, nothing is verifiable, and hence knowledge can't exist as JTB.
I think that words function as tools for social utility - evolutionary utility. Knowledge, hence, functions for evolutionary purposes, not metaphysical ones. Knowledge seems to be a degree of confidence that justifies further actions. The higher the risks associated with an action, the higher the confidence needed to justify those actions. So the degree is relative to the situation.
When a friend asks you "Do you know his name?", you say "Yes, its Bob" because he told you his name before. But technically he could have been lying - he could have been operating on a fake name. But since the situation seems trivial, we just assume that our degree of confidence justifies further benign actions like referring to him as 'Bob'.
But if we were to file a government report on Bob, we might want further verification like a Drivers license, because the stakes are higher, we want a higher degree of confidence to justify further actions. If a government official asks, "Do you know his name is Bob?" You cannot respond with a "yes" unless you checked his driver's license, whereas formerly we COULD respond with "yes" even without the drivers license.