A REVIEW OF BENOIT GAULTIER

Thesis Statement: The Gettiered beliefs, found in his critique of “Justified True Belief”, simply cannot be formed due to the incoherencies and illogicality found in his arguments.

Thesis Development

The attack on traditional definition of Knowledge (JTB) by Gettier has some loop holes and with that cannot be said to have such conclusive authority to stand against the JTB regarding justification and knowledge. Benoit’s approach is to make counterexamples so as to show that Gettier’s own examples which he used to refute the JTB is in itself based on a disputable theory of knowledge. In fact, it is being contested that Gettier should have argued in his paper that knowledge is not justified true belief.  

In the article, Benoit cites an example of him visiting a company, and one of the employees of the company, John, tells him that he owns a ford. He imagines that he has good reasons to believe him (1) John shows him his ford key ring as well as a car registration document which indicates the tax category of the Ford model that he is telling (2) several of his colleagues affirmed while John was on phone, that he is honesty and trustworthiness personified. Consequently, he believed that John owns a Ford which led to his inference that someone in the company owns a Ford.

However, the real truth that came out was that (1) John does not own a Ford and (2) another person in the company, Martin, whom he knew nothing about, owns a Ford. In this case, Benoit argues that his belief that John owns a Ford is justified and ipso facto his belief that someone in the company owns a Ford. Even though his belief in the first proposition is wrong, his belief in the second proposition is true because someone in the company actually owns a Ford. Nonetheless, Benoit argues that this does not constitute knowledge since he does not know that someone in the company owns a Ford.

There may be a controversy that will emerge if we are to attribute knowledge to such a person. The epistemic attitude he has rests solely on a false premise, ‘John owns a Ford’. Thus, even though the proposition, ‘someone in the company owns a Ford’ is true it cannot amount to knowledge since that expression is a belief about John in particular. The necessity of this point to the philosophical analysis of Gettier’s case is based on the idea that one forms not only the belief that John owns a Ford but, in addition, the different belief that someone in the company owns a Ford. Benoit claims that the question of the possibility of this second belief in Gettier’s article has not itself been convincingly challenged.

But Benoit proceeds again to analyse and says that, if upon arriving at the company, he notice a Ford parked in the employee’s parking lot (to which access is strictly controlled), he would have had the evidence that someone in the company owns a Ford. This would have led him to have the belief or go on believing that someone in the company owns a Ford- even after talking with John and forming a different belief that he owns a Ford. This, he claims, is because perceptual evidence does not support the claim that someone in the company owns a Ford only by supporting the claim that such particular individual owns one. The crux of the argument is such that one cannot claim to have additional belief, namely that someone has a Ford. Since the former is necessarily derived from the latter.

He argues that, although it can be shown that justified true belief is not knowledge but this cannot be done creating cases based on what he labels as the principle of weakening, by definition, of a false and justified belief. He insists that among the cases presented by Gettier, only those that are not based on such a principle can achieve this (i.e., that JTB is not knowledge).

Question

Is there no hope for showing indisputably that a belief may be true and justified and yet not constitute knowledge without resorting to the principle of “undefinition” of a false belief? Again, is there any reason for classifying such a justified true belief – or those in question in the Barn facades case for instance as “Gettiered” since it seems like a rather unhelpful verbal stipulation devoid of all epistemological raison d’etre.

Conclusion

The above question rises as a consequent to what was revealed by the diversity of intuitions epistemologists have about these cases. They seem not to be able to prove the epistemological conclusions that “genuine” Gettier cases (those that are based on the principle of a weakening of a false and justified belief) seemed to be able to prove. 

Having given the various illustrations of the incoherencies and illogicality of Gettiered beliefs, it is simple to just posit that such Gettiered beliefs cannot be formed. Hence, if that is so, it naturally follows that the justified true belief, to which it was aimed at, cannot be said to have been repudiated and its edifice dismantled from universal acceptability.

Gettier is acclaimed today as one who punctured the gigantic balloon of justified true belief but it is somewhat confusing when one considers the incoherencies in his arguments. How is it possible that he can use such principle of weakening, which is seemingly unfavourable and unacceptable to crumble the justified true beliefs? Benoit succinctly sees these and laments its injustice to the traditional epistemology and so he argues one should not be carried away by the seeming plausibility of Gettiered belief but to see the limitations which makes it implausible and incapable of being formed.