Daiwei Li

This article proposes a competing model of the traditional theory of knowledge in response to the collapse of a once-dominant narrative in epistemology—namely, the claim that the “justified true belief” (JTB) definition represents the traditional account of knowledge traceable to Plato. This narrative has increasingly come to be regarded not as a historically accurate account, but as a retrospective historiographical construction. The first part introduces the paper’s leitmotif and argues that any genuinely new project in this area must begin at a deeper and more fundamental level than the search for alternative definitions of knowledge. The second part critically examines two recent attempts to reconstruct the traditional epistemological landscape and identifies their principal limitations. The third part develops an alternative framework from four interconnected perspectives—linguistic, epistemic, practical, and ontological—articulating a judgement-act-based epistemology in contrast to the modern belief-state-based paradigm and presenting it as a viable competing model. The conclusion summarizes the central tenets of the proposal and clarifies the motivations underlying its development, with the aim of opening further avenues for inquiry into the historical and systematic questions generated by this line of investigation.