Gettier's Essay Is Justified True Knowledge?

A fight over photos of pregnant teen in high school yearbook. This all started when Anderson Bonilla wanted to make the yearbook have a more real look to it. What parts of life did Anderson Bonilla wish to focus on? Anderson Bonilla wanted to focus on what really happens in the normal life of teens in high school. He was wanting to show the real experiences teens in high school have.

In this paper, I hope to effectively summarize W.K Clifford’s (1879) argument on the ethics of belief, followed by a summary of William James’ (1897) argument on the right to believe, and finally, provide an argument for why W.K Clifford’s (1879) argument is stronger by highlighting its strengths while simultaneously arguing against William James’ (1897) argument.

In Edmund Gettier’s analysis of ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’, he talks about the fundamental ideals that allow a fact or result to be believed and known. However, he does this on a basis with two cases that provide sufficient premises, yet they do not result in the condition to be a known fact. The first case involves two men, Smith and Jones, that are applying for the same position at a company. It goes on to say that Jones has ten coins in his pocket and the individual that has the coin in his pocket will get the job.

With this particular case, Gettier effectively challenges the relationship between the sufficient condition and the necessary conditions because Smith’s justified true beliefs are not jointly sufficient for him to know he is the man with 10 coins in his pocket who will get the job. In fact, even if Smith’s justified true belief turns out to be true; Jones actually gets the job, intuitively we are not convinced that his justified true beliefs is deemed as knowledge because in the case that he is correct, we intuitively regard his justified true belief as a lucky coincidence since he could have had a false justified true belief.

In this counterexample of the traditional view of knowledge that Gettier illustrates, a true justified belief evolved from a false justified belief. What the Gettier problem shows us is that in order for a true belief to qualify as knowledge, it must satisfy two conditions; it must not be a lucky guess (that is, it must be justified), and it must not be a lucky truth. A true belief that isn't a lucky guess, it may still be a lucky truth, and thus fall short of being knowledge. So where must knowledge come from?

Warrantibility - If you know something, then you believe that, that something is something, but you cannot say that you know that something unless that something is true. Because, for that something to be true, it has to have warrantability. What this means is that knowledge implies belief, but belief does not imply knowledge. Therefore knowledge is warranted, true belief.

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.

The Epistemic closure principle explains that knowledge can be gained by the logically implied inferences between a predicate, based on past experience, and a conclusion. By definition epistemic closure purports that we are justified in believing that our logical inferences are true. Therefore, we can conclude that our past experience (predicate) is a reason to believe a proposition. This principle has been used as the basis of various forms of skeptical arguments against the traditional analysis and inductive/deductive reasoning. Such an example was presented by Edmund Gettier, whose arguments question if we are justified in believing our beliefs as knowledge. Also, Hume questioned if we can really trust inductive/deductive reasoning. In the following I will argue that even though, Gettier’s arguments hold some truth, we are still caused to conclude that the epistemic closure is a logical necessity and true.

Evidentialism, and non-evidentialism theories have presented strong arguments that are pitted against each other. For those who believe in evidentialism, they argue that for one’s conclusion to be justified there must be evidence which solidly supports the claim. However, non-evidentialism theory contrasts with this. The non-evidentialists argue that belief, when there is little, or no evidence, is enough to justify one’s conclusion. In this case, I argue that evidentialism theory is true.

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.

In everyday life, people often claim knowledge of various facts and experiences. However, despite the regularity of such claims, it is difficult to articulate what knowledge specifically is and what conditions are necessary to constitute knowledge of a specific fact or event. One set of conditions for knowledge, known as justified true belief, states that a person knows something if that thing is true, if they believe it, and if they are justified in believing it (Gettier 345). This theory, however, was shown to be problematic by the philosopher Edmund Gettier. By proposing two examples, Gettier showed that the conditions of justified true belief are not sufficient to establish knowledge (345-346). Although Gettier found this flaw, he did not propose any alternate conditions of knowledge to add to or replace those of justified true belief (346). This is where Nozick’s idea of knowledge, presented in “”Knowledge” from Philosophical Explanations,” becomes relevant. Nozick’s conditions for knowledge attempt to define knowledge without being swayed by cases such as the Gettier examples. In this paper, I will first summarize Nozick’s conception of knowledge as well as some of the reasoning for including each condition. I will then try to find an example to show that Nozick’s conditions, although more widely applicable to knowledge than justified true

The Gettier Problem is a widely acknowledged philosophical question, named in honour of Edmund Gettier who discovered it in 1963, which questions whether a piece of information that someone believes for invalid reasons, but by mere happenstance is correct, counts as knowledge. Before the Gettier paper was published, it was widely believed that the Tripartite Theory of Knowledge- which states that Justified True Belief equaled knowledge- was fact. This means that with three conditions, one could know something. Firstly, if you believe something, secondly, if you have justification for believing, and thirdly, that your belief is in fact true. If all three of these conditions were met, then this amounted to knowledge. However, with the publication of Gettier’s paper, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”, he attempted to prove, with the aid of a number of problems, that it was not sufficient to have only these three conditions in order for a belief to become knowledge.

Do not be misconstrued, not all acts can be verified others are taken as a face value. E.g we all know that there is 12 months in a year. How this is known? It is because the ‘highest development’al minds of the time, decided on this. They had to do this minus their ethical, political and philosophical points of view. The author pointed out how ironic it is that agreeance. can be made about certain

In this paper, I will discuss the truth-belief-justification conceptual analysis of knowledge, which I will refer to as TBJ, Gettier cases, and an example that refutes TBJ. Conceptual analysis is an analysis of a proposition P with given premises to acquire knowledge of that P. The truth-belief-justification analysis of knowledge fails to provide sufficient conditions for someone to possess knowledge. For a condition to be necessary, it has to be satisfied to have knowledge of a proposition. If a condition is sufficient, then the person x will have some information to know something about proposition P. Jointly sufficient conditions are conditions that all need to be satisfied together to have knowledge about some P. They are necessary and supposedly jointly sufficient, but Gettier cases prove that extra conditions on top of TBJ are required to be jointly sufficient.

Even though the coherence theory of truth differs from the coherence theory of knowledge, which states that a belief is justified if the belief coheres with a set of beliefs that forms a coherent system (Audi,