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.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Elusive luck: Contextualist approach to the Gettier problem

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Ema Brajkovic
Keyword(s):  
Driving Force ◽  
Epistemic Luck ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Essential Component ◽  
Contextualist Approach ◽  
Conversational Contextualism ◽  
The Gettier Problem

Lewis' philosophical ambition to eradicate the skeptical threat towards infallibilism was the driving force behind his contextualist approach to knowledge. One of the discerning characteristics of his conversational contextualism is the claim that it can solve the Gettier problem. The first part of this paper will be directed towards explicating the arguments Lewis employed in reaching said solution. The second part will be concerned with Cohen?s critique of the proposed explanation. Cohen?s considerations result in an insight that contextualism does not have the adequate means to answer the Gettier challenge. Finally, I shall make an attempt at further motivating Cohen?s claim by investigating the essential component of Gettier cases - epistemic luck. This will be done by appealing to Pritchard?s concept of veritic epistemic luck. The author?s goal is to suggest that contextualist resources are neither suitable to solve nor exhaustively articulate the Gettier problem.

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 Do Safety Failures Preclude Knowledge?

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-319
Author(s):  
J. R. Fett
Keyword(s):  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Sensitivity Theory ◽  
Safety Condition ◽  
The Gettier Problem

The safety condition on knowledge, in the spirit of anti-luck epistemology, has become one of the most popular approaches to the Gettier problem. In the first part of this essay, I intend to show one of the reasons the anti-luck epistemologist presents for thinking that the safety theory, and not the sensitivity theory, offers the proper anti-luck condition on knowledge. In the second part of this essay, I intend to show that the anti-luck epistemologist does not succeed, because the safety theory fails to capture a necessary requirement for the possession of knowledge. I will attack safety on two fronts. First, I will raise doubts about whether there is any principled safety condition capable of handling a kind of case, involving inductive knowledge, that it was designed to handle. Second, I will consider two cases in which the safety condition is not met but the protagonist seems to have knowledge nonetheless, and I will vindicate my intuitions for thinking that those are in fact cases of knowledge by contrasting them with traditional, well-known Gettier cases. I want to conclude, finally, that safety failures do not necessarily prevent one from acquiring knowledge.

scholarly journals Experimental Epistemology and "Gettier" Cases

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Personality Traits ◽  
Experimental Literature ◽  
Behavioral Patterns ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
Theoretical Literature ◽  
The Gettier Problem

This chapter reviews some faults of the theoretical literature and findings from the experimental literature on “Gettier” cases. Some “Gettier” cases are so poorly constructed that they are unsuitable for serious study. Some longstanding assumptions about how people tend to judge “Gettier” cases are false. Some “Gettier” cases are judged similarly to paradigmatic ignorance, whereas others are judged similarly to paradigmatic knowledge, rendering it a theoretically useless category. Experimental procedures can affect how people judge “Gettier” cases. Some important central tendencies in judging “Gettier” cases appear to be robust against demographic variation in biological sex, age, language, and culture, although there could be some interesting differences related to culture and personality traits. Some remaining questions regarding Gettier’s cases, “Gettier” cases, and “the Gettier problem” concern the psychology and sociology of contemporary anglophone theoretical epistemology. Some remaining questions regarding the empirical study of knowledge judgments concern mechanisms underlying observed behavioral patterns.

scholarly journals Knowledge-First Virtue Epistemology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kelp
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Relevant Notion ◽  
The Gettier Problem

This chapter aims to develop a novel virtue epistemological account of knowledge and justified belief, which gives the view a knowledge first spin. It is virtue epistemological in that it offers accounts of knowledge and justified belief in terms of exercises of epistemic abilities. It has a knowledge first twist because, unlike traditional virtue epistemology, it does not unpack the relevant notion of an epistemic ability as an ability to form true beliefs but as an ability to know. In addition, this chapter aims to show that the resulting knowledge first virtue epistemology compares favourably with its traditional cousins as it offers an appealing new solution to the Gettier problem.

Gettier Problem

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Timofey S. Demin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Strategy Analysis ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Constituent Elements ◽  
Analysis Of Knowledge ◽  
The Gettier Problem

Theories, that answering the question “What is knowledge?” in analytic epistemology appears under the influence of Gettier cases – a way of refutation such theories of knowledge, that have truth and belief as constituent elements. In the paper were analyzed basic strategies of solving the Gettier problem. One way is to save the analysis of knowledge by changing the elements in order to avoid the Gettier problem. There are three possible ways of doing so: adding new elements to the justification, changing the justification on the other criteria or strengthen the justification in such a way, that it would resolve any possible Gettier cases. For each strategy analysis of the theories of knowledge is given. In the paper idea of the inescapability of Gettier cases for analysis of knowledge was supported by the argumentation of Linda Zagzebski. In that ground, the analysis of knowledge was refuted. From that perspective, two of the most influenced ways of answering the question “what is knowledge” was proposed. First, the irreducible theory of knowledge, where knowledge is a mere state of the mind. Second, rejection existence of the universal invariant of the knowledge in every case. There are multiple senses of what the knowledge is and none of them is prior to other. The author lives as the open question the right way to think about the knowledge. In the closing part of the paper, the author presents a perspective critique of the knowledge problem as the project of overrated significance, and argues for a need to create new arguments that supporting that problem.

No false grounds and topology of argumentation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenwei Shi
Keyword(s):  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Axiom System ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Argumentation Framework ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
And Topology ◽  
Grounded Semantics ◽  
The Gettier Problem

Abstract We integrate Dung’s argumentation framework with a topological space to formalize Clark’s no false lemmas theory for solving the Gettier problem and study its logic. Our formalization shows that one of the two notions of knowledge proposed by Clark, justified belief with true grounds, satisfies Stalnaker’s axiom system of belief and knowledge except for the axiom of closure under conjunction. We propose a new notion of knowledge, justified belief with a well-founded chain of true grounds, which further improves on Clark’s two notions of knowledge. We pinpoint a seemingly reasonable condition which makes these three notions of knowledge collapse into the same one and explain why this result looks counter-intuitive. From a technical point of view, our formal analysis driven by the philosophical issues reveals the logical structure of the grounded semantics in Dung’s argumentation theory.

scholarly journals In Gettier's Wake

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
The Gettier Problem

A critical review of “Gettier” cases and theoretical attempts to solve “the” "Gettier" "problem".

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