IS KNOWLEDGE THE ABILITY TO ϕ FOR THE REASON THAT P?

Episteme ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Gettier Case ◽  
Gettier Cases

AbstractHyman (1999, 2006) argues that knowledge is best conceived as a kind of ability: S knows that p iff S can ϕ for the reason that p. Hyman motivates this thesis by appealing to Gettier cases. I argue that it is counterexampled by a certain kind of Gettier case where the fact that p is a cause of the subject's belief that p. One can ϕ for the reason that p even if one does not know that p. So knowledge is not best conceived as an ability of this kind.

scholarly journals GETTIERIZED KNOBE EFFECTS

Episteme ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Beebe ◽  
Joseph Shea
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Knowledge Attribution ◽  
Gettier Case ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Knobe Effect ◽  
Effect Literature

AbstractWe report experimental results showing that participants are more likely to attribute knowledge in familiar Gettier cases when the would-be knowers are performing actions that are negative in some way (e.g. harmful, blameworthy, norm-violating) than when they are performing positive or neutral actions. Our experiments bring together important elements from the Gettier case literature in epistemology and the Knobe effect literature in experimental philosophy and reveal new insights into folk patterns of knowledge attribution.

scholarly journals Gettier Cases: A Taxonomy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley Buckwalter ◽  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Gettier Case ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Deep Fault ◽  
Theoretical Literature ◽  
Fault Lines ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

AbstractThe term “Gettier Case” is a technical term frequently applied to a wide array of thought experiments in contemporary epistemology. What do these cases have in common? It is said that they all involve a justified true belief which, intuitively, is not knowledge, due to a form of luck called “Gettiering.” While this very broad characterization suffices for some purposes, it masks radical diversity. We argue that the extent of this diversity merits abandoning the notion of a “Gettier case” in a favour of more finely grained terminology. We propose such terminology, and use it to effectively sort the myriad Gettier cases from the theoretical literature in a way that charts deep fault lines in ordinary judgments about knowledge.

scholarly journals Gettier Cases

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Blouw ◽  
Wesley Buckwalter ◽  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Gettier Case ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Deep Fault ◽  
Theoretical Literature ◽  
Fault Lines ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

The term ‘Gettier case’ is a technical term frequently applied to a wide array of thought experiments in contemporary epistemology. What do these cases have in common? It is said that they all involve a justified true belief which, intuitively, is not knowledge, due to a form of luck called ‘gettiering.’ While this very broad characterization suffices for some purposes, it masks radical diversity. We argue that the extent of this diversity merits abandoning the notion of a ‘Gettier case’ in favor of more finely grained terminology. We propose such terminology, and use it to effectively sort the myriad Gettier cases from the theoretical literature in a way that charts deep fault lines in ordinary judgments about knowledge.

Gettier Was Framed!

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edouard Machery ◽  
Stephen Stich ◽  
David Rose ◽  
Amita Chatterjee ◽  
Kaori Karasawa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Framing Effect ◽  
Order Effect ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Gettier Case ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Knowing That

Gettier cases describe situations where an agent possesses a justified true belief that p, without, at least according to mainstream analytic epistemology, knowing that p, while the “Gettier intuition” is the judgment that a protagonist in a Gettier case does not know the relevant proposition. Our goal in this chapter is to show that we can make the Gettier intuition compelling or underwhelming by presenting it in different contexts. We report a surprising order effect whereby people find the Gettier intuition less compelling when a case describing a justified but false belief is presented before a Gettier case. We also report a surprising framing effect: two Gettier cases that differ only in their philosophically irrelevant narrative details elicit substantially different judgments. Finally, we discuss the metaphilosophical implications of these effects.

scholarly journals Knowledge Judgments in "Gettier" Cases

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Gettier Case ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Knowledge Attributions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Experimenter Bias ◽  
Intuitive Judgments ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Analysis Of Knowledge

“Gettier cases” have played a major role in Anglo-American analytic epistemology over the past fifty years. Philosophers have grouped a bewildering array of examples under the heading “Gettier case.” Philosophers claim that these cases are obvious counterexamples to the “traditional” analysis of knowledge as justified true belief, and they treat correctly classifying the cases as a criterion for judging proposed theories of knowledge. Cognitive scientists recently began testing whether philosophers are right about these cases. It turns out that philosophers were partly right and partly wrong. Some “Gettier cases” are obvious examples of ignorance, but others are obvious examples of knowledge. It also turns out that much research in this area of philosophy is marred by experimenter bias, invented historical claims, dysfunctional categorization of examples, and mischaracterization by philosophers of their own intuitive judgments about particular cases. Despite these shortcomings, lessons learned from studying “Gettier cases” are leading to important insights about knowledge and knowledge attributions, which are central components of social cognition.

A New Solution to the Gettier Cases

2021 ◽  
Vol 132 ◽  
pp. 251-270
Author(s):  
Gi Hyun Kim ◽  
Doe Sik Kim
Keyword(s):  
Gettier Cases

scholarly journals Why Gettier Cases Are Still Misleading

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moti Mizrahi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gettier Cases

scholarly journals Patterns, noise, and Beliefs

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-51
Author(s):  
Lajos Ludovic Brons
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Frege’S Puzzle ◽  
Daniel Dennett ◽  
Belief Reports ◽  
Frege's Puzzle ◽  
Principle Of Charity

In “Real Patterns” Daniel Dennett developed an argument about the reality of beliefs on the basis of an analogy with patterns and noise. Here I develop Dennett’s analogy into an argument for descriptivism, the view that belief reports do no specify belief contents but merely describe what someone believes, and show that this view is also supported by empirical evidence. No description can do justice to the richness and specificity or “noisiness” of what someone believes, and the same belief can be described by different sentences or propositions (which is illustrated by Dennett’s analogy, some Gettier cases, and Frege’s puzzle), but in some contexts some of these competing descriptions are misleading or even false. Faithful (or truthful) description must be guided by a principle (or principles) related to the principle of charity: belief descriptions should not attribute irrationality to the believer or have other kinds of “deviant” implications.

Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology

Philosophy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Melchior
Keyword(s):  
Modal Epistemology ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Epistemic Principle ◽  
Skeptical Hypothesis ◽  
Sensitivity Condition ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Skeptical Problem ◽  
Analysis Of Knowledge

Sensitivity is a modal epistemic principle. Modal knowledge accounts are externalist in nature and claim that the knowledge yielding connection between a true belief and the truthmaker must be spelled out in modal terms. The sensitivity condition was introduced by Robert Nozick. He suggests that if S knows that p, then S’s belief that p tracks truth. Nozick argues that this truth-tracking relation can be captured by subjunctive conditionals. As a first approximation, he provides the following modal analysis of knowledge: S knows that p iff (1) p is true; (2) S believes that p; (3) if p were false, S wouldn’t believe that p and (4) if p were true, S would believe that p. The dominant terminology in the literature, also adopted here, is to call condition (3) the sensitivity condition and condition (4) the adherence condition. The sensitivity condition is intuitively appealing since it states that a subject does not know that p if she would believe that p even if p were false. Nozick used the sensitivity condition to accomplish two major tasks. First, he provided a solution to the Gettier problem by arguing that in Gettier cases subjects do not know since the sensitivity condition is violated. Second, he presented a controversial solution to the skeptical problem according to which we have external world knowledge but do not know that the skeptical hypothesis is false. This solution is available because sensitivity is not closed under known entailment. Quickly, criticism of the sensitivity condition emerged. First, most epistemologists regarded the price of abandoning knowledge closure as a price too high to pay. Second, it was noted that sensitivity leads to the counterintuitive consequence of precluding us from inductive knowledge since induction typically yields insensitive beliefs. The most dominant reaction to these problems was to replace sensitivity by the modal principle of safety, nowadays the most popular modal principle. However, sensitivity is not only important as a starting point of modal epistemology. Because of its intuitive attractiveness, many authors aimed at refining the original sensitivity account in order to avoid well-known problems. This has led to a second wave of sensitivity accounts. As of today, various sensitivity-based theories are on the market, including accounts that avoid closure failure, probabilistic interpretations of sensitivity and adherence, and contextualist approaches. There is thus a vivid and ongoing debate about the sensitivity principle in epistemology.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document