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.

Gettier Cases without False Lemmas?

Erkenntnis ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Levin
Keyword(s):  
Gettier Cases

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.

Knowledge, defeasibility theory of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall Swain
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Ethical Concept ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Analysis Of Knowledge

Based upon an analogy with the legal and ethical concept of a defeasible, or prima facie, obligation, epistemic defeasibility was introduced into epistemology as an ingredient in one of the main strategies for dealing with Gettier cases. In these cases, an individual’s justified true belief fails to count as knowledge because the justification is defective as a source of knowledge. According to the defeasibility theory of knowledge, the defect involved can be characterized in terms of evidence that the subject does not possess which overrides, or defeats, the subject’s prima facie justification for belief. This account holds that knowledge is indefeasibly justified true belief. It has significant advantages over other attempts to modify the traditional analysis of knowledge in response to the Gettier examples. Care must be taken, however, in the definition of defeasibility.

The Inescapability of Gettier Problems

2020 ◽  
pp. 311-319
Author(s):  
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
The State ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Proper Function ◽  
Good Luck ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter argues that any definition of knowledge as true belief + x will be subject to Gettier-style counterexamples as long as the connection between x (justification, reliability, proper function, etc.) and getting the truth is close but not inviolable. The recipe for generating a counterexample uses the idea of double luck. It starts with an instance of bad luck (A belief is false but has component x) which is canceled out by an instance of good luck (Make the belief true after all for reasons that have nothing to do with the believer). As long as the truth is never assured by the conditions which make the state justified, there will be situations in which a false belief is justified. With this common, in fact, almost universal assumption, Gettier cases will never go away.

STANDARD GETTIER CASES: A PROBLEM FOR GRECO?

2014 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Gettier Cases

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.

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