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Knowledge Is Justified True Belief

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To have knowledge you must have evidence to justify it, but not necessarily belief. An example of this is someone who voted for Hillary Clinton in the election and found out the next day that Donald Trump won, because it was so surprising, it is likely that they would not have believed it. That being said, belief is important because it means that you embrace this idea for which you have justification and truth therefore accepting it as knowledge. When all three present, they clearly suggest knowledge due to the simple fact that each of them provides adequate proof that the idea is in fact true. As mentioned before, you can have knowledge without belief, however it will not be accepted knowledge. Justified true belief is necessary in order …show more content…

The cornerstone of his essay are his two cases which he believes show that justified true belief is not knowledge. In the first case that Gettier puts forth, the justified true belief is as follows: “(d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.” and “(e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.” He goes on to reason out that these are the beliefs of Smith, the other man competing for the same job. Smith has evidence from the president of the company to support that his thoughts above are indeed justified true beliefs. However, Gettier goes on to explain how if the president changes his mind, (d) becomes untrue, but (e) remains true as Smith finds out the he also has ten coins in his pocket. Case II brings forth this proposition: “(f) Jones owns a Ford” and furthermore “(g,h,i) Either Jones owns a ford, or Brown is in Boston, Barcelona or Brest-Litovsk.” We have the information that every time that Smith has seen Jones driving a car, it has been a Ford. Therefore because Smith has a strong justified belief in (f) which entails (g),(h), and (i), he therefore in completely validated in believing the latter three. Once again Gettier gives us another piece of information, suppose Jones had been driving a rental car but Brown actually was in Barcelona. At this point we have an identical situation to Case I

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