GETTIER’S PROBLEM AND CASES
INTRODUCTION
The Justified Truth Belief[1]
(JTB) theory of knowledge is an attempt to provide set of necessary and
sufficient conditions under which a person can be said to know something. The
theory suggests that if a person p has a belief b, if b is in fact true, and if
p is justified in believing b, then p knows that b. For example, I believe I
have two hands, I do in fact have two hands, and I have good justification for
believing I have two hands, because I am using them to type. Therefore, under
the JTB theory of knowledge, I know I have two hands.
In 1963, Edmund Gettier presented an
argument meant to reject the Platonic definition of knowledge as Justified True
Belief. The goal of his argument is to show that despite having all of these components
(having a belief which is demonstrably true and justified) that we fail to
achieve real Knowledge about reality.
It
will be the interest of this paper to examine Gettier’s problem and cases form
a number of perspectives. We shall also make a critical evaluation of the
Gettier problem. It is also important to note that although only the first case
of Gettier’s analysis will be mentioned, however, both cases will be treated
accordingly.
KNOWLEDGE
AS JUSTIFIED TRUE BELIEF
The traditional formulation of
propositional knowledge involves three key components: Justification, Truth,
and Belief (JTB). Propositional knowledge is, in this tradition, a justified
belief held about a truth. To elaborate, the formulation holds that three
conditions are necessary, and jointly sufficient for "knowledge".
First, belief: you do not know something unless you also hold it as true in
your mind; if you do not believe it, then you do not know it. Second, truth:
there can be no knowledge of false propositions; belief in a falsehood is
delusion or misapprehension, not knowledge. Third, justification: the belief
must be appropriately supported; there must be sufficient evidence for
the belief. Thus, knowledge is like a three-legged stool which cannot stand
when any one leg is removed.
GETTIER’S
PROBLEM AND CASES
Before 1963, many philosophers
thought knowledge was Justified True
Belief. A view met its crisis in Edmund Gettier’s 1963 paper “Is Justified
True Belief Knowledge?” Gettier produced two cases wherein, intuitively, the
subject gains a justified true belief but fails thereby to know, demonstrating
that knowledge differs from justified true belief. The Gettier problem challenges
us to diagnose why Gettier’s subjects do not know. Many assume that surmounting
the challenge will lead to the correct theory of knowledge. Some denounce or
reject the challenge.
But few are fully immune to its allure, and none denies its
profound impact on contemporary epistemology.
Examples in this mold we call
Gettier cases. Here is one of Gettier’s cases which are intended to elucidate
our discussion:
CASE 1:
(1) The man who will get the job has ten
coins in his pocket.
Smith’s belief in (1) is based on his
beliefs in (2) and (3):
(2) Jones is the man who will get the job.
(3) Jones has ten coins in his pocket.
Smith has good evidence for (2) and (3):
the boss told him (2), and he counted the coins in Jones’s pocket ten minutes
ago. So his beliefs in (2) and (3) are justified; since together they imply
(1), his belief in (1) is also justified. But unknown to Smith, it is he who
will get the job, not Jones, and as it happens he, Smith, also has ten
coins in his pocket. So Smith’s belief in (1) is not only justified, but true:
the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. And yet it seems
clear that Smith does not know (1). If this is correct, then having a justified
true belief is not sufficient for knowing.[2]
TWO
BASIC FEATURES OF GETTIER CASES[3]
Some characteristics unite Gettier cases.
Each contains a belief that is true and well justified without being knowledge.
The following two features also help to constitute Gettier cases namely:
(1)
Fallibility: The justificatory support is fallible. It indicates strongly without proving conclusively that
the belief is true.
(2)
Luck: Within each case, the
well-but-fallibly justified belief is true.
In Gettier’s first case, Smith’s evidence
supports belief b well but fallibly. It cannot entirely eliminate the
possibility of b’s being mistaken. Actually, b is true but due to
good luck, not in a normal way. It is made true by circumstances Smith getting
the job; there being ten coins in his
pocket overlooked by his evidence.
RESPONSES TO GETTIER’S PROBLEM
The responses to Gettier have been varied.
Usually, they have involved substantive attempts to provide a definition of
knowledge different from the classical one, either by recasting knowledge as
justified true belief with some additional fourth condition, or as something
else altogether. In this work, we shall discuss on the following:
PRESENCE OF FALSEHOOD
One way of defending the view that
propositional knowledge is Justified True Belief is that, one of Gettier’s
assumptions is false. Gettier's counterexample, and others like it, have led to
a re-evaluation of the JTB theory. Many attempts have been made to modify the
JTB, to account for these examples in such a way that they will no longer be
categorized as knowledge, without eliminating actual instances of knowledge.[4]
Perhaps the most obvious response to
Gettier's challenge is to question the “J” part of JTB. It seems fairly clear
what we mean by “True” and “Belief,” but “Justified” is on the other extreme.
At one end of the spectrum, the Gettier problem can be avoided rather simply by
employing a very strict definition of justification: infallibility. In other words,
no belief is justified if our rationale for believing it leaves open the
possibility of error. In Gettier's example, Smith was not justified in his
belief because he assumed that the company President was correct and truthful,
and that itself was not necessarily true (in fact, it turned out to be false).
The most obvious diagnosis is
simply that the initial belief that p, from
which the true justified belief that q is
inferred, is false. So we might add to the tripartite analysis, the fourth
condition, that nothing can be known which is inferred from a false belief, or
from a group of beliefs of which one is false.[5]
According to Gilbert Harman’s solution to the Gettier problem, the reasoning
from a false belief precludes knowledge, thus Gettier’s subjects do reason
from false beliefs, and so they do not know.[6]
RELIABILITY
Revealing that justified, true
belief is not sufficient for knowledge (even though a belief may be justified
and true), Gettier seems to worry that the truth or justification of the
agent’s belief may be a matter of luck. For example, suppose that an agent is
driving a Ford through a town filled with barn-like structures. The agent stops
the car in front of what appears to be a barn and forms the belief that there
is a barn in the town. This belief seems justified because it was caused by the
agent’s perception. The town that the agent is in, however, is actually one
filled with barn facades. Ironically, the agent’s belief is true because the
agent stopped in front of the only real, three-dimensional barn in the town
when he formed his belief. Because the agent holds a true, justified belief,
the agent seems to know that there is a barn in the town.[7]
Gettier, however, argues that the agent’s true, justified belief is not
knowledge because it is coincidental that his belief is justified and true.
Since the truth of the agent’s belief may be disconnected from its justification,
Gettier claims that knowledge requires something more then JTB.
Goldman tries to solve one of the problems
posed by Gettier through reliabilism: the theory that an agent’s belief is
justified if it was caused by a cognitive process that tends to produce true
beliefs. For example, perception generally produces true beliefs and thus is a
reliable mechanism that can justify an agent’s belief. Reliabilism is an
externalist theory of justification because the facts about a process’s
reliability are not available to the agent’s immediate consciousness.
Consequently, because justification is a result of a process that produces
beliefs that tend to be true, Goldman seems to claim that the justification of
an agent’s true belief is not a result of luck.[8]
THE DEFEASIBILITY APPROACH
Proponents of the defeasibility theory or
approach, suggest that in Gettier’s cases, evidence that normally would count
as adequate justification for believing a proposition p is undermined or
defeated by some true proposition. They then specify what is involved when a
proposition defeats a justification. According to one simple version of the
view, a proposition d defeats
person S’s justification e for believing p if and only if:
(a)
d is true, and
(b)
the conjunction of e and
d does not completely justify S in believing p.
Knowledge is analyzed in terms of
defeasibility, as follows: S knows p if and only if the following
conditions are met:
S
believes p
S
is justified in believing p
S’s justification is not (capable of being) defeated.[9]
According
to another version of the Defeasibility approach, one’s justification for
believing p is defective, at least from
the standpoint of knowledge. If one’s evidence for believing p could be defeated by the addition of
some true proposition to one’s body of evidence. The idea is that, if one’s
justification for believing p would
be defeated by the addition of some true proposition, then one’s justification
for believing p is not the right sort
for knowing that p.[10]
By implication, one could say that S
knows that p if and only if there is
no true proposition that could be added to S’s evidence for p and defeats S’s
justification for believing p.
A CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF GETTIER’S PROBLEM
In brief, let’s analyze
Gettier’s first case mentioned earlier. Smith trusted (a) the president’s of
the company, who assured him that Jones would job and (b) that he Smith, had
counted the coins in Jones’s pocket ten minutes ago. From this, Smith infers not that
Jones will get the job, rather,
Smith makes a general statement or assumption, that the man who will get the job
has ten coins in his pocket. The proposition that the man who will get the job
has ten coins in his pocket though is true, but Smith does not know. Thus, (i)
his claimed or seeming knowledge that the man who will get the job has ten coins in
his pocket is a product of falsehood and (ii) his believe or inference that the
noun “man” represents Jones becomes
absolutely false.
Consequently, given that basic
knowledge requires nothing in addition to satisfy the JTB conditions, the fact
that he, Smith, had ten coins in his pocket unknown to him, serves as an
additional knowledge and thus he does not know.
What is more, critics object that
reliabilism is not sufficient for justification. Reliable processes such as
sensory experiences may lead an agent to draw a false conclusion. For example,
suppose that an agent is unaware that he is driving through a town filled with
fake barns. The agent stops before one of the barn facades and forms the belief
that there is a barn before him. According to reliablism, the agent is
justified in his belief because it was formed through a reliable mechanism,
perception. Even though the agent’s belief was caused by a reliable mechanism,
the agent’s belief is not true. Given that an agent may draw false conclusions
from a process that tends to produce true beliefs, it does not appear as though
reliabilism sufficiently justifies one’s beliefs.[11]
Stephen Hetherington in defending what he
calls the “Knowing Luckily Proposal” claims that while most knowledge is not
had through luck, some of it can be. He argues that in Gettier’s cases
knowledge is present, although
the subject almost lacks it.
Knowledge is therefore had less securely or stably, but knowledge is still had
all the same. The keys to Hetherington’s Knowing Luckily Proposal are as follows:
1)
The Epistemic Counterfactuals Fallacy: Hetherington argues that it is a fallacy
to infer from a counterfactual lack of knowledge that a subject actually lacks knowledge. It is
important not to confuse lacking knowledge with almost lacking it, which is what happens when we link the actual
and the counterfactual too closely.
2)
Fallible Knowledge: One knows that p even when one might not have done so indeed. For instance, one
knows luckily that p. equivalently; one knows that p even while almost not doing so.
CONCLUSION
At the course of this paper, we have
introduced that the Edmund Gettier in his Gettier Problem sought to reject the
Platonic definition of knowledge as JTB. Thus, unlike the Gettier’s job case,
there can be no knowledge from a false proposition. On the other hand, while we
affirm that most knowledge is not had through luck, this paper posits that to
some extent, knowledge can be through some sense of luck.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dancy, Jonathan. An
Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology. Great Britain: Basil Blackwell.
1991.
Geffner, Jennifer (2012) "Reliabilism: A Response to the
Gettier Problem," Colgate Academic Review: Vol. 2, Article 8.
http://commons.colgate.edu/car/vol2/iss1/8
Gettier,
Edmund. Is Justified True Belief
Knowledge? Analysis. Vol. 23. 1963
Hetherington,
S. “The Gettier Problem” In The Routledge
Companion to Epistemology, edited by Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard.
New York: Routledge, 2011, PP. 119 - 130
Kvanvig,
Jonathan. The Value of Knowledge and the
Pursuit of Understanding (New York: Cambridge University Press),
Lemos, Noah. An Introduction To The Theory Of Knowledge. USA:
Cambridge University Press. 2007.
Luper,
Steven. General Introduction to Essential Knowledge. Pearson:
Longman Press, 2004.
Turri, John. Manifest
Failure: The Gettier Problem Solved. Imprint: volume 11, no. 8 April 2011.
[1] Plato formulated an account of knowledge (though in the end he
did not endorse it) which has sometimes been loosely interpreted as taking
knowledge to be justified true belief.
[2] Edmund Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis.
Vol. 23. 1963.
[3] S. Hetherington, “The Gettier Problem” In The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, edited by Sven Bernecker and
Duncan Pritchard (New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 121.
[4] Cf. Jonathan Kvanvig, The
Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (New York: Cambridge
University Press), p. 119
[5] Jonathan Dancy, An Introduction To Contemporary Epistemology
(Great Britain: Basil Blackwell, 1991), p 27
[6] Cf. John Turri, Manifest Failure: The Gettier Problem Solved
(Imprint: volume 11, no. 8 April 2011), p 4
[7] Jennifer Geffner, (2012)
"Reliabilism: A Response to the Gettier Problem," Colgate Academic Review: Vol. 2, Article 8, p. 44-45
[9] Steven Luper, General
Introduction to Essential Knowledge, (Pearson:
Longman Press, 2004).
[10] Noah Lemos, An Introduction
To The Theory Of Knowledge (USA: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 31
[11] Jennifer Geffner, (2012)
"Reliabilism: A Response to the Gettier Problem," Colgate Academic Review: Vol. 2, Article 8, p. 45
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