No Justification for Smith’s Incidentally True Beliefs

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Alfred Schramm
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Deductive Closure ◽  
Proportionality Principle

Abstract Edmund Gettier (1963) argued that there can be justified true belief (JTB) that is not knowledge. The correctness of Gettier’s argument is questioned by showing that Smith of his famous examples does not earn justification for his incidentally true beliefs, while a doxastically more conscientious person S would come to hold justified but false beliefs. So, Gettier’s (and analogous) cases do not result in justified and true belief. This is due to a tension between deductive closure of justification and evidential support. For being justified, any believing, disbelieving, or withholding of deductively inferred propositions must be distributed proportionally to given evidential support. This proportionality principle has primacy over deductive closure in case of conflict. Although the author’s argument does not save the JTB-account, it explains why subjects in Gettier situations do not earn knowledge.

No Justification for Smith’s Incidentally True Beliefs

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Alfred Schramm
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Deductive Closure ◽  
Proportionality Principle

Abstract Edmund Gettier (1963) argued that there can be justified true belief (JTB) that is not knowledge. The correctness of Gettier’s argument is questioned by showing that Smith of his famous examples does not earn justification for his incidentally true beliefs, while a doxastically more conscientious person S would come to hold justified but false beliefs. So, Gettier’s (and analogous) cases do not result in justified and true belief. This is due to a tension between deductive closure of justification and evidential support. For being justified, any believing, disbelieving, or withholding of deductively inferred propositions must be distributed proportionally to given evidential support. This proportionality principle has primacy over deductive closure in case of conflict. Although the author’s argument does not save the JTB-account, it explains why subjects in Gettier situations do not earn knowledge.

Knowledge and False Belief

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hawthorne ◽  
Dani Rabinowitz
Keyword(s):  
Structural Feature ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Influential Paper

Many treat it as theoretical bedrock that knowledge cannot be generated by false belief. Much of the impetus behind this view stems from the literature generated by Edmund Gettier’s influential paper. Nevertheless, some recent literature has undermined the alleged structural feature using compelling cases. Roughly, two groups have emerged: those proposing that knowledge is had via a true belief in the vicinity and those suggesting that a false belief provides the epistemic support required for knowledge. While we tentatively side with these authors, we are not at all sympathetic with the theories on offer as they prove problematic upon closer reflection. An alternative picture is suggested wherein falsehoods play a causal role in generating knowledge. In this sense knowledge can be generated by habits involving false beliefs.

Do People’s Motives Influence Their Susceptibility to Imagination Inflation?

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie J. Sharman ◽  
Samantha Calacouris
Keyword(s):  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Source Monitoring ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Explicit Motives ◽  
Imagination Inflation ◽  
Motivational Model ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Affiliation Motives

People are motivated to remember past autobiographical experiences related to their current goals; we investigated whether people are also motivated to remember false past experiences related to those goals. In Session 1, we measured subjects’ implicit and explicit achievement and affiliation motives. Subjects then rated their confidence about, and memory for, childhood events containing achievement and affiliation themes. Two weeks later in Session 2, subjects received a “computer-generated profile” based on their Session 1 ratings. This profile suggested that one false achievement event and one false affiliation event had happened in childhood. After imagining and describing the suggested false events, subjects made confidence and memory ratings a second time. For achievement events, subjects’ explicit motives predicted their false beliefs and memories. The results are explained using source monitoring and a motivational model of autobiographical memory.

Dream interpretation and false beliefs.

1999 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuliana A. L. Mazzoni ◽  
Pasquale Lombardo ◽  
Stefano Malvagia ◽  
Elizabeth F. Loftus
Keyword(s):  
Dream Interpretation ◽  
False Beliefs

When Is True Belief Knowledge?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Foley
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Significant Aspect ◽  
Coming To Know ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
What Matters

A woman glances at a broken clock and comes to believe it is a quarter past seven. Yet, despite the broken clock, it really does happen to be a quarter past seven. Her belief is true, but it isn't knowledge. This is a classic illustration of a central problem in epistemology: determining what knowledge requires in addition to true belief. This book finds a new solution to the problem in the observation that whenever someone has a true belief but not knowledge, there is some significant aspect of the situation about which she lacks true beliefs—something important that she doesn't quite “get.” This may seem a modest point but, as the book shows, it has the potential to reorient the theory of knowledge. Whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends on the importance of the information one does or doesn't have. This means that questions of knowledge cannot be separated from questions about human concerns and values. It also means that, contrary to what is often thought, there is no privileged way of coming to know. Knowledge is a mutt. Proper pedigree is not required. What matters is that one doesn't lack important nearby information. Challenging some of the central assumptions of contemporary epistemology, this is an original and important account of knowledge.

Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Pennycook ◽  
David Gertler Rand
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Election Fraud ◽  
Voter Fraud ◽  
Election News

The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election saw an unprecedented number of false claims alleging election fraud and arguing that Donald Trump was the actual winner of the election. Here we report a survey exploring belief in these false claims that was conducted three days after Biden was declared the winner. We find that a majority of Trump voters in our sample – particularly those who were more politically knowl-edgeable and more closely following election news – falsely believed that election fraud was wide-spread and that Trump won the election. Thus, false beliefs about the election are not merely a fringe phenomenon. We also find that Trump conceding or losing his legal challenges would likely lead a ma-jority of Trump voters to accept Biden’s victory as legitimate, although 40% said they would continue to view Biden as illegitimate regardless. Finally, we found that levels of partisan spite and endorsement of violence were equivalent between Trump and Biden voters.

The Proportionality Principle

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Bennedsen ◽  
Kasper Meisner Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Proportionality Principle

The Fight Against Doubt

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inmaculada de Melo-Martín ◽  
Kristen Intemann
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Vaccine Safety ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Scientific Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Consensus ◽  
Scientific Claims

Current debates about climate change or vaccine safety provide an alarming illustration of the potential impacts of dissent about scientific claims. False beliefs about evidence and the conclusions that can be drawn from it are commonplace, as is corrosive doubt about the existence of widespread scientific consensus. Deployed aggressively and to political ends, ill-founded dissent can intimidate scientists, stymie research, and lead both the public and policymakers to oppose important policies firmly rooted in science. To criticize dissent is, however, a fraught exercise. Skepticism and fearless debate are key to the scientific process, making it both vital and incredibly difficult to characterize and identify dissent that is problematic in its approach and consequences. Indeed, as de Melo-Martín and Intemann show, the criteria commonly proposed as means of identifying inappropriate dissent are flawed, and the strategies generally recommended to tackle such dissent are not only ineffective but could even make the situation worse. The Fight against Doubt proposes that progress on this front can best be achieved by enhancing the trustworthiness of the scientific community and being more realistic about the limits of science when it comes to policymaking. It shows that a richer understanding is needed of the context in which science operates so as to disarm problematic dissent and those who deploy it in the pursuit of their goals.

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