A Response On Nozick 's Conception Of Knowledge

John Smith and William Bradford were two authors of the 1600s, who wrote journals about the the way they lived in the New World. John Smith's journal was filled with adventure and talked about how heroic he was to persuade people to come to America. William Bradford's journal was about his voyage to coming to America and his spiritual teachings and beliefs. The three main difference between John Smith and William Bradford’s Journals are their styles of writing, preconceived notion of the Native Americans, and their reasons for coming into America.

In Plato’s Theaetetus, the dialog between Socrates and his student, Theaetetus, sets up the argument that knowledge is true belief that is adequately justified. Although there are many examples that prove Plato’s suggestion, people such as Edmund Gettier have questioned and disproved the notion of knowledge as justified true belief. In response to Gettier’s findings, many have tried to modify or find an alternative to the Justified True Belief model in search for the true definition of knowledge. In this paper, I will outline and discuss Plato’s Justified True Belief argument, outline and discuss Gettier’s response to Plato’s argument, and lastly, present and analyze four solutions to the Gettier problems.

ID: A12179740 Phil 15 (Spring Quarter) Response to Goldman’s idea of Justified True Belief + Casual Connection In his essay “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge,” Edmund L. Gettier argues that a belief that is justified and true is insufficient for knowledge. He provides multiple examples to prove that in some cases a belief can be justified and true but you still do not have knowledge. In response to his argument, some philosophers have argued that a belief can be justified if there is an appropriate causal connection between the truth-maker and the belief. This casual connection can be memory, perception etc.

Imagination is a wild thing. We use imagination as a tool to escape reality and to create an image of the world we want to exist. Imagination is good to some extent because in some cases people’s imagination goes too far and they end up trying to live an unrealistic life, trying to achieve the impossible, and trying to change who they truly are to be able to live in their fantasy. Imagination is the tool needed to succeed but it is the one tool needed for destruction. As portrayed in the short story “The veldt” by Ray Bradbury, that talks about a family that lives in an unrealistic world, in a fantasy they created for themselves and ended up harming them.

In his 1963 article “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”, Edmund Gettier pointed out the fault in the traditional definition of knowledge and presented two counterexamples. The problem created by the two counterexamples is called the Gettier problem. In detail, the Gettier problem is whether a true belief based on invalid reasons counts as knowledge. My own Gettier counterexample is as follows. One day, my dad and I went to Costco Gas Station and there were already a lot of cars waiting for gasoline filling. So we queued in the last. When we were the next one to use the pump, there were two cars using the pumps, with one in the front and the other following it. My dad then asked me, of the two cars in front of us, which one would leave first.

Gettier’s short paper “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” demonstrates that contrary to the classic definition of Knowledge, which is seen as equivalent to justified true belief, there are cases where justified true belief does not exactly match up to what we generally understand as knowledge. Gettier uses two specific cases to illustrate that even when something is true and backed up with reasonable evidence, it still does not mean we actually know it. Therefore, justified true belief does not necessarily mean it is knowledge. Having understood Gettier’s argument, the title “Is Knowledge Justified True Belief?” is a confusing one for it seems to have two separate meanings. First, we can understand the title as, whether knowledge justified

Edmund Gettier’s argument that justified true belief is not a sufficient definition for knowledge is correct. There are many scenarios in which the conditions for justified true belief are met but cannot be said to qualify as knowledge; therefore justified true belief is not a sufficient definition for knowledge.

David Hume presents an argument that unobserved matters of fact are irrational to believe in. In this argument, Hume argues that unobserved matters of fact have only been justified by the relation of cause and effect. Yet cause and effect is not a logical justification of unobserved matters of fact. I agree with Hume’s argument because the world is everchanging there is nothing to say that the causes we see will always lead to the same effect that we have always seen.

Nozick’s analysis of knowledge states that S knows P if and only if (i) P is true (ii) S believes P (iii) if P weren’t true, then S would not believe P, and (iv) if P were true, then S would believe P. An example, presented by Harmon, involving a dictator’s death and whether somebody knows if the dictator was killed will be used to show how Nozick’s analysis is suppose to work. A separate example, presented by Kripke, involving a photon’s emission and whether the subject knows if a photon was emitted will be used to oppose Nozick’s analysis of knowledge. I believe that Kripke’s counterexample to Nozick’s analysis of knowledge does not successfully show that Nozick’s analysis fails and I will add my own condition to prove how Nozick’s analysis

In this essay, I will criticize W.K. Clifford’s main claim that it is always wrong, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. I will prove it is not wrong to form a belief without sufficient evidence, by engaging with ineffability. In the first section, I will begin by presenting Clifford’s main argument for why it is always wrong to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. In the second section, I will define and explain The Representation Principle. Since Clifford does not clearly define what constitutes “sufficient evidence,” I will employ The Representation Principle as one requirement for sufficient evidence. The Representation Principle states: it is impossible to acquire sufficient evidence if someone is unable to fully represent all of the relevant information. In the third section, I will present my argument for refraining from forming beliefs, also referenced as The “RFB” Argument. I conclude that in some cases it is wrong for human beings

Now, the justification component of the classical definition of knowledge takes place at the center of recent epistemology. Consequently, various epistemic justification theories as contemporary theories of factual knowledge have been produced with respect to some different classifications of these theories — e.g. internalist theories (foundationalist and coherentist theories), and externalist ones (probabilist and reliabilist theories): While in the former ones justification of belief is internal, in the latter ones, external to the believer's mind/mental life. That is, internal justification of the belief is possible by reflection upon the believer's own conscious state of mind, i.e. upon her internal, doxastic state. In short, the justifiability of her belief is determined by what beliefs she has, and her direct cognitive access to the justification for her belief is required. On the other hand, in externalist justification some important feature of the belief justification is outside the mind of the believer. The externally justifiability of a belief may be a function of the reliability of a belief-forming process, which causes that belief to be a true one, or it may be a function of the probability of the belief. Such factors as reliability, and probability, which play justificatory role, are external, i.e. non-doxastic factors to the believer. She does not have direct access to them, while her beliefs, as being her internal,

Coherentists uphold the view that a belief or set of beliefs are justified in so far as they cohere with the set of beliefs, forming a system of coherent beliefs. Although this argument may present itself as circular reasoning, this does not necessarily make it vicious; in fact the Coherentist may respond by claiming that reasoning is not always linear, and without promoting vicious reasoning, can be nonlinear in nature; a reasonable conclusion but difficult to exemplify. Further to this assumption of nonlinear justification, advocates of this theory may also claim that we should not look to individual beliefs to be primarily justified, instead we should concern ourselves with the entire system of belief. This system can be justified in so far as it is coherent to a appropriately excessive degree according to BonJour. However, it is difficult to adequately explain this notion of coherence. Again Bonjour presents an argument that references how the coherence of a belief may be judged; the criteria includes the necessity of logically consistent systems of belief, probabilistic consistency, considerable inferential connections between component beliefs that are superior to the proportion and strength of connections. Additionally, this system of belief(s) may be diminished by divisible subsystems or irrelevant beliefs to the inferential connections. Although this criterion is

or that death is not the end. There is no way to prove that this is

The production of knowledge is a process that occurs through a sequence of related actions, these series of actions allows for the Ways of Knowing to interact in a way that works to develop the knowledge that is being produced. From the prescribed title we can claim that while the Ways of Knowing may appear to be acting in isolation when forming knowledge, they are actually working in a variety of different ways in the construction and formation. In some cases, the Ways of Knowing are interacting so closely together that it is often hard to differentiate between them, for example emotion and reason, or imagination and memory. Given the right circumstances faith can be isolated to a point where it can be acting by itself to produce knowledge. However, this knowledge is often deemed as unreliable, due to faith being seen as one of the more “subjective” ways of knowing. This inability to differentiate the ways of knowing from each other during the production of knowledge, raises the questions “Can any knowledge in any Area of Knowledge be produced by a single Way of Knowing?” and “Is it possible to distinguish between Ways of Knowing if they are working together?”. While reason is used in almost all production of knowledge, it is the other Ways of Knowing used that can determine whether the knowledge is reliable or not, as some Ways of Knowing are more subjective than others. This essay will attempt to

Do justification, belief and trust really describe knowledge? For the philosopher Plato, justification, belief and trust defines knowledge. This theory was popularly accepted until the philosopher Edmund Gettier proposed the contrary. Gettier suggested that knowledge is more than trust, justification and belief. According to Gettier, Plato’s theory does not define knowledge, because trust, belief and justification can be satisfied, but still these conditions do not led to knowledge. Knowledge from my point of view is more complex than what Plato proposed. In this essay, I shall first describe Gettiers arguments, and provide counterexample of why true, belief and justification fail to define knowledge, which finally, I shall present a possible solution to this philosophical problem.