Epistemic Reasons, Evidence, and Defeaters

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Errol Lord
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
The Gettier Problem

After Edmund Gettier’s “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”, epistemology was dominated by attempts to explain what is needed in order to make justified true belief knowledge. The post-Gettier literature contained many views that tried to solve the Gettier problem by appealing to the notion of defeat. Unfortunately, all of these views are false. The failure of these views greatly contributed to a general distrust of reasons in epistemology. However, reasons are making a comeback in epistemology, both in general and in the context of the Gettier problem. There are two main aims of this chapter. First, I will argue against a natural defeat-based resolution of the Gettier problem. Second, I will defend my own defeat-based solution. This solution appeals to a modal anti-luck condition. I will argue that this condition captures anti-luck intuitions, and has virtues that rival modal anti-luck conditions lack.

Sed ubi Socrates currit? On the Gettier Problem before Gettier

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Risto Hilpinen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Current Belief ◽  
The Future ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Gettier Problem ◽  
The Way ◽  
Forward Looking

Medieval philosophers presented Gettier-type objections to the commonly accepted view of knowledge as firmly held true belief, and formulated additional conditions that meet the objections or analyzed knowledge in a way that is immune to the Gettier-type objections. The proposed conditions can be divided into two kinds: backward-looking conditions and forward-looking conditions. The former concern an inquirer’s current belief system and the way the inquirer acquired her beliefs, the latter refer to what the inquirer may come to learn in the future and how she can respond to objections. Some conditions of knowledge proposed in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century epistemology can be regarded as variants of the conditions put forward by medieval authors.

scholarly journals THE NOTHINGNESS OF THE GETTIER PROBLEM

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Tom Eneji Ogar ◽  
Edor J. Edor
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Knowledge Claim ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Fourth Condition ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Traditional Account ◽  
The Gettier Problem

This work, “The Nothingness” of the Gettier Problem is an attempt to deconstruct the popularly held view that a fourth condition may be necessary for the Traditional Account of Knowledge otherwise known as JTB. Plato, it was who championed the traditional account of knowledge as justified Belief in response to the agitation of the skeptics notably Georgias and Protagoras. This tripartite account held sway until Edmund Gettier Challenged the position with his article “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Since this challenge, scholars have tried to solve what has become known as the Gettier Problem by trying to fashion out a fourth condition to JTB. This work argues that the celebrated Gettier counter-examples in the challenge of the tripartite account is a "nothingness". The traditional account is rather fundamental in knowledge claim, hence any new vista in form of additional information on JTB should not invalidate it. The textual analysis was adopted as a method for this research.

A Contextualist Solution to the Gettier Problem

2005 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor Douven
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Epistemic Luck ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Benign Nature ◽  
Epistemic Duty ◽  
Contextualist Solution ◽  
The Gettier Problem

According to the deontological view on justification, being justified in believing some proposition is a matter of having done one's epistemic duty with respect to that proposition. The present paper argues that, given a proper articulation of the deontological view, it is defensible that knowledge is justified true belief, virtually all epistemologists since Gettier. One important claim to be argued for is that once it is appreciated that it depends on contextual factors whether a person has done her epistemic duty with respect to a given proposition, many so-called Gettier cases, which are supposed to be cases of justified true belief that are not cases of knowledge, will be seen to be not really cases of justified belief after all. A second important claim is that the remaining alleged Gettier cases can be qualified as cases of knowledge. This requires that we countenance a notion of epistemic luck, but the requisite kind of luck is of a quite benign nature.

Inferential Knowledge and the Gettier Conjecture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Borges
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Causal Dependence ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Inferential Knowledge ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Straightforward Solution ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
The Gettier Problem

The Gettier Problem, when properly understood, has a straightforward solution. My main thesis—my ‘Gettier conjecture’—is that gettierized subjects fail to know in virtue of their justified true belief depending causally and evidentially on something they fail to know. Inferential knowledge (i.e., knowledge of a conclusion) requires knowledge of all the premises on which one’s conclusion depends causally and evidentially. This chapter is a first effort in trying to support this thesis. Section 2 discusses the Gettier conjecture, the notions of evidential and causal dependence, and applies the conjecture to the original Gettier cases. Section 3 looks at two objections: the claims that the conjecture fails to deal with all Gettier cases and that the Gettier Problem is a philosophical ‘dead end.’ In Section 4 I offer further support for the conjecture by situating it within a knowledge-first framework.

Reliabilist Virtue Epistemology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Greco ◽  
Jonathan Reibsamen
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Naturalized Epistemology ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Intellectual Abilities ◽  
Virtue Reliabilism ◽  
Virtue Responsibilism ◽  
The Gettier Problem

According to reliabilist virtue epistemology, or virtue reliabilism, knowledge is true belief that is produced by intellectual excellence (or virtue), where intellectual excellence is understood in terms of reliable, truth-directed cognitive dispositions. This chapter explains why virtue reliabilism is a form of epistemological externalism, is a moderately naturalized epistemology, and is distinct from virtue responsibilism. It explains virtue reliabilism’s answers to various forms of skepticism, its solution to the Gettier Problem, and its explanation of the value of knowledge. The chapter also describes several varieties of contemporary virtue reliabilism. Finally, it offers replies to two recently prominent objections to virtue reliabilism: that it is committed to an untenable epistemological individualism, and that there are empirical reasons to doubt whether people generally have the kinds of intellectual abilities that virtue reliabilism requires for knowledge.

Knowledge, Benign Falsehoods, and the Gettier Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio de Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Inferential Knowledge ◽  
The Gettier Problem

Contrary to millennial thought, inferential knowledge does seem to arise in certain cases of reasoning to which false premises are evidentially essential. The phenomenon refutes all of the well-known epistemologies that account for inferential knowledge. I offer an explanation of the phenomenon based on a fairly conservative revision to the defeasibility theory of knowledge, and explain why Peter Klein’s proposed solution fails. The explanation put forward here aims at giving us these two highly desirable results: (a) something we have never had and may not have noticed we needed, a defeasibility theory that is compatible with epistemological fallibilism, and, (b) within this revised, fallibilistic version of the defeasibility theory, an explanation of the benign/malignant distinction for false beliefs that completes the defeasibilist resolution of the Gettier Problem.

Explaining Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Methodological Aspect ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
The Gettier Problem

This is an edited collection of twenty-three new papers on the Gettier Problem and the issues connected with it. The set of authors includes many of the major figures in contemporary epistemology who have developed some of the well-known responses to the problem, and it also contains some younger epistemologists who bring new perspectives to the issues raised in the literature. Together, they cover the state of the art on virtually every epistemological and methodological aspect of the Gettier Problem. The volume also includes some skeptical voices according to which the Gettier Problem is not deeply problematic or some of the problems it raises are not genuine philosophical problems.

A Pragmatic Phenomenalist Account of Knowledge

Dialogue ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 565-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byeong D. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Practice Model ◽  
Robert Brandom ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
The Gettier Problem

ABSTRACTRobert Brandom argues for a “pragmatic phenomenalist account” of knowledge. On this account, we should understand our notion of justification in accordance with a Sellarsian social practice model, and there is nothing more to the phenomenon of knowledge than the proprieties of takings-as-knowing. I agree with these two claims. But Brandom's proposal is so sketchy that it is unclear how it can deal with a number of much-discussed problems in contemporary epistemology. The main purpose of this article is to develop and defend a pragmatic phenomenalist account of knowledge by resolving those problems. I argue, in particular, that this account can accommodate both the lesson of the Gettier problem and the lesson of reliabilism simultaneously.

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