Holy Apostles College & Seminary Multi-media Transcript: A Closer Look at Gettier s Critique of Justified True Belief by Robert LeBlanc John B. Tuturice Dr. Phillip Yates PHL620: Epistemology 1 May 2013
John: Hey Bob, you know what really gets my craw? Bob: Um, no John, I don t know what gets your craw. John: Well I ll tell you. It s that that whole Gettier critique of the Platonic definition of knowledge as justified true belief. Bob: Are you referring to Edmund L. Gettier s Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? John: Yeah, that one. I mean, didn t it just seem confusing reading that piece? It was like my proverbial Spidey-sense was tingling; telling me that there was something a bit off with the critique. It seemed like it was missing something in its logic to prove a point. What in the world did 10 coins in someone s pocket have to do with someone getting a job? Bob: I m with you on that, John. There did seem to be something off. John: Thank you! I m not the only one! Bob: Indeed. In fact, you and I aren t the only ones. John: What do you mean? Bob: There were quite a few philosophers who reacted to the critique since it was published in 1963. So numerous were the reactions that it developed into its own category in the annals of philosophy called Gettier Problems. 1 But, I think we re getting ahead of ourselves here. John: How so? Bob: Shouldn t any examination of an issue start from the beginning? If one is to understand something better, it is always good practice to examine the main components of what make up the problem first. Once that foundation is laid, then an answer is more likely to present itself. John: You re right. So, where do we start? Bob: First, there is the idea of knowledge as justified true belief, sometimes abbreviated in philosophical circles as JTB. It originally presented itself in one of Plato s dialogs. In the dialogs, Socrates would converse with someone else during which various philosophical ideas would be explored. The dialog in particular where the idea of knowledge is explored is Plato's Theaetetus. More specifically, this Socratic dialog attempted to discern the definition of knowledge. In the dialog, the character of 1 Stephen Hetherington, Gettier Problems, preamble, at Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu 1
Theaetetus states that true opinion, combined with reason, was knowledge. 2 knowledge has been described as justified true belief. From this, John: That s interesting. Was Gettier the first to challenge the definition of knowledge as justified true belief? Bob: No. There were some others. For example, Siriharsha, the 12 th century Indian philosopher, produced similar arguments as did Alexius Meinong and Bertrand Russell in the 20 th century. 3 But, it wasn t until Edmund Gettier published his 3 page paper titled Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? in 1963 that responses to this type of critique gained traction. John: So, what did Gettier do that caused it to gain traction? Bob: Perhaps it was timing. Perhaps it was the environment in which Gettier s critique was released? Whatever the reason, it produced some strong reactions. John: What did Gettier have to say, then? Bob: In the paper, he outlined the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge of a proposition P, from the standpoint of analytical philosophy. He started out by drawing from Plato's definition of knowledge from the dialog Theaetetus using the formula of justified true belief. He diagrammed Plato's definition as follows: A subject S knows a proposition P, if and only if: i. P is true, ii. S believes that P, and iii. S is justified in believing that P Additionally, as a further point of comparison, Gettier diagrammed the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge from the viewpoint of Roderick Chisholm and A.J. Ayer, two 20 th century philosophers. He diagramed them as follows: Chisholm's analysis of knowledge is: A subject S knows a proposition P, if and only if: i. S accepts P ii. S has adequate evidence for P, and iii. P is true 2 Plato, Theaetetus, 201c, at Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org. 3 John Turri, Is Knowledge Justified True Belief?, 2, www.john.turri.org. 2
Ayer's analysis of knowledge is: A subject S knows a proposition P, if and only if: i. P is true ii. S is sure that P is true, and iii. S has the right to be sure that P is true With that foundation laid, Gettier then stated, and I quote, I shall argue that (a) [Plato's definition] is false in that the conditions stated therein do not constitute a sufficient condition for the truth of the proposition that S knows that P. 4 John: So, how did he argue his point? Bob: Gettier provided two cases which he believed demonstrate that justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge of a proposition. While Gettier uses Plato's definition, he states that by substituting is justified in believing that with has adequate evidence for or has the right to be sure that, his argument will also apply to Chisholm's and Ayer's analysis of knowledge. 5 To illustrate, let s look at the first case. Two men have applied for a job, Smith and Jones. Smith has strong evidence for the conjunctive proposition, (d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket. Therefore, it follows that (e) the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. 6 The supporting evidence is that Smith is told that the president told him Jones would get the job, and that he knows that Jones has ten coins in his pocket. So Gettier says, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (e) is true. 7 What happens is that Smith gets the job, and does not know that he also has ten coins in his pocket. Although proposition (e) is true, it does not seem that Smith has knowledge since he thought that Jones was the man who fulfilled proposition (e). 8 John: Okay. So, that gives a bit of background on the Platonic idea of knowledge and Gettier s critique. But, what about the reactions to Gettier s critique? You mentioned that there were a number of them that followed in the wake of Gettier publishing his paper. What were they? Bob: The reactions themselves can be broken down into various categories depending on the emphasis of the philosopher responding to Gettier s critique and who s doing the categorizing. But it can be said that there are certain questions that can be drawn from these reactions. For example, how does luck factor into knowledge? What about false evidence or inappropriate causality? Consider further the infallibility proposal or 4 Edmund L. Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?, www.ditext.com 5 Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?. 6 Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?. 7 Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?. 8 Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?. 3
eliminating defeat. And what of the competing intuitions of the various philosophers who responded to Gettier s critique? John: That s a lot to consider. Could you explain each of those items for me? For example, you mentioned that luck can play a factor in knowledge. How so? Bob: Luck affects Gettier cases in various ways. The break down on that can vary depending on the source. For example, the IEP article on Gettier Problems considers luck s impact on Gettier cases either via the attempted solution of eliminating luck or via the attempted dissolution of knowing luckily. 9 In Mathias Steup s An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology, on the other hand, the topic of luck is addressed as a distinction between a lucky guess (e.g., picking the winning lottery numbers) and a lucky truth (e.g., that I was picked for a job promotion even though there were more highly qualified candidates than me). 10 Steup noted, and I quote, justification is what prevents a true belief from being a lucky guess, but not from being a lucky truth. 11 He further goes on to say, in order for a true belief to qualify as knowledge, it must satisfy two conditions; it must not be a lucky guess (that is, it must be justified), and it must not be a lucky truth. A true belief that isn t a lucky guess like Smith s belief...may still be a lucky truth, and thus fall short of being knowledge. Hence in order to solve the Gettier problem, epistemologists have to figure out what kind of condition can prevent a true belief from being a lucky truth. 12 John: Well that gives a glimpse into Steup s views on luck, what about the IEP article? You mentioned something about eliminating luck and knowing luckily. What is that all about? Bob: Regarding the first consideration, that of eliminating luck, it can be said that proponents of this line of thought hold that luck, chance, accidentalness, etc. should play no part in knowledge as justified true belief. 13 Ralph Baergen, for example, notes in his textbook Contemporary Epistemology the following the target belief is true, but the way in which it is true isn t what the subject has in mind. One has the feeling that these beliefs are only accidentally true, and this seems to be what prevents us from regarding these beliefs as knowledge. The weakness of the JTB theory, then, seems 9 Hetherington, Gettier Problems. 10 Bruce Hauptli, Supplement to Lectures on Gettier s Is JTB Knowledge?, section 5, at Florida International University, www.fiu.edu. 11 Hauptli, Supplement to Lectures on Gettier s Is JTB Knowledge?, section 5. 12 Matthias Steup, An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology (Pearson, 1995), p. 9, quoted in Hauptli, Supplement to Lectures on Gettier s Is JTB Knowledge?, section 5. 13 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 8. 4
to be that it doesn t rule out the possibility that the target belief could be true only accidentally. 14 The second consideration, that of knowing luckily, is a more recent entry into the field. In 1998, Stephen Hetherington published Actually Knowing followed by Good Knowledge, Bad Knowledge: On Two Dogmas of Epistemology in 2001 whereby he attempts to reinstate JTB as valid by re-examining Gettier case number 1. 15 He asserts that because Smith would only luckily have that justified true belief, he would only luckily have that knowledge. 16 But, since the luck employed in the case is so dramatic and uncommon, its usefulness in determining knowledge would seem to be ill suited in most cases. 17 John: Is that everything on luck? Bob: No, there is more. In some ways it would seem to be almost a central theme that runs throughout so many of the reactions to Gettier s critique of JTB. I suppose one could spend volumes on that topic alone. But, perhaps it would be good to mention one more way in which luck is considered and that is of the double-luck variety. John: Double-luck? Does that mean someone has twice the luck? Bob: No, not exactly, John. Double-luck here refers to first having an element of bad luck that might normally cancel out JTB from being true. Then, add in some good luck to cancel out, so to speak, the bad luck. 18 To illustrate, consider the following example: Mary enters the house and looks into the living room. A familiar appearance greets her from her husband s chair. She thinks, My husband is home, and then walks into the den. But Mary misidentified the man in the chair. It is not her husband, but his brother, whom she had no reason to think was even in the country. However, her husband was seated along the opposite wall of the living room, out of Mary s sight, dozing in a different chair. 19 In this case, the bad luck is that Mary mistakenly identified the man in the chair who greeted her. The good luck is that the person whom she thought it was, her husband, happened to in the same vicinity. Many epistemologists would posit that while the conditions for justified true belief are met, Mary still did not have knowledge. 20 A 14 Ralph Baergen, Contemporary Epistemology (Fort Worth: Harcourt, 1995), p. 110, quoted in Hauptli, Supplement to Lectures on Gettier s Is JTB Knowledge?, section 5. 15 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 13. 16 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 13. 17 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 13. 18 Turri, Is Knowledge Justified True Belief?, 2. 19 Turri, Is Knowledge Justified True Belief?, 2-3. 20 Turri, Is Knowledge Justified True Belief?, 3. 5
notable exception is Jonathan Sutton who concluded in his 2005 work Stick to What You Know that Mary did not satisfy the condition of justification. 21 John: You mentioned that the topic of luck runs throughout many of the responses to Gettier s critique. That would seem to indicate that there are other factors to consider while examining Gettier cases. Bob: That s right. And not all factors are explicit within each case. Consider the fact that in the above example, not all philosophers were in agreement with whether or not Mary satisfied the justification criteria. What is behind this lack of agreement? Perhaps one culprit would be what is sometimes referred to as competing intuitions. It is not uncommon for philosophers to intuit that knowledge is absent from many Gettier cases. 22 Yet, there are some philosophers who take the opposing view and look to challenge the Gettier cases by dissolving, so to speak, the ground in which they walk on. And one thing that is challenged when doing so is the very intuition that some philosophers use when giving credibility to such cases. 23 An example of this was a study conducted in 2001 by Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich. One finding of theirs was that people of east-asian or Indian sub-continental descent were more likely to believe that knowledge is present in Gettier cases than people of European descent. 24 The point of the authors of the study, it would seem, is to demonstrate that intuition may not be an objective factor to rely on as it can be influenced by one s cultural background. John: What about some of the more explicit factors considered within the cases themselves? Bob: In some of the initial reactions to Gettier s paper, there was an attempt to remove (or bypass) the fallible component of Gettier problems. This was not new to Gettier s time. For example, in the 17 th century Rene Descartes argued that knowledge needed to be infallible in his Meditations on First Philosophy. 25 Key examples of this type of post- Gettier critique were Keith Lehrer s Why Not Skepticism? and Peter Unger s A Defense of Skepticism, both published in 1971. 26 But, perhaps it s best to illustrate with a case. Consider the following: Henry and his son are driving through the country. Henry pulls over to stretch his legs, and while doing so regales his son with a list of items currently in view along the roadside. That s a tractor. That s a combine. That s a horse. That s a silo. And that s a fine barn, Henry added, pointing to the nearby roadside barn. It was indeed a fine barn Henry saw. But unbeknownst to them the locals recently secretly replaced nearly 21 Turri, Is Knowledge Justified True Belief?, 3; 26. 22 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 12. 23 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 12. 24 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 12. 25 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 7. 26 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 7. 6
every barn in the county with papier-mâché fake barns. Henry happens to see the one real barn in the whole county. Had he instead set eyes on any of the numerous nearby fakes, he would have falsely believed it was a barn. 27 Like the previously mentioned case about Mary and her husband, there are elements of luck involved. There is the bad luck of having so many fake barns in the town that Henry is traveling through and there is the good luck of Henry just happening to identify the lone real barn as a barn. But, now let s also consider it from a fallibility standpoint. Because there are so many false barns, there is a potential for mistake. Due to this, one who holds to the infallibility proposal might say that there is no knowledge in this case. A reaction to this is that it is too extreme and doesn t do justice to the reality of our lives. 28 In the day to day moments of one s life, rare would be the time when someone would possess infallible justificatory support for a belief. 29 Would we then say that rarely does anyone know anything? It would be grounds for skepticism that we could ever have knowledge. Is there a more moderate way where one can acknowledge that infallible knowledge is rare, but that we can at least have varying degrees of knowledge? The majority of epistemologists seem to think so with the hope that there will be a conception of knowledge that is non-skeptical. 30 John: You also mentioned false evidence. Does that refer to how incorrect information can affect a person s knowledge of something? Bob: That is correct. If justified true belief is modified by using false evidence, then what is believed would not be knowledge. Richard Feldman, a professor of philosophy at the University of Rochester, presented a scenario whereby he modified Gettier s first case by suggesting that Smith believes that the company president told me that Jones will get the job and does not form the belief that Jones will get the job. From this, it would appear that he could still form the belief that the man who gets the job has the ten coins in his pocket without that being knowledge. 31 Additionally, this proposed solution might also introduce an unhealthy skepticism. Like the infallibility proposal, we acknowledge that we might have some false evidence in support of our beliefs. Are we to despair of ever having knowledge? 27 Turri, Is Knowledge Justified True Belief?, 3. 28 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 7. 29 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 7. 30 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 7. 31 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 9. 7
Keith Lehrer proposed a softer modification to JTB. What is removed are significant and in-eliminable false beliefs. This is sometimes known as the No False Core Evidence proposal. However, since there is some false evidence in all Gettier cases, then it is judged by those holding to this proposal that there is no knowledge. 32 One critique of this line of thinking is that it is too vague. How much evidence do you need to remove? And upon removing evidence, how far could you go before the evidence is too weak to support the belief? 33 John: I think I see what you mean. It s like a slippery slope. How could one objectively determine with certitude where to draw the line so that only the essential information remains to determine knowledge? Now, aside from eliminating false evidence, you also mentioned eliminating defeat. That seems like an odd term to use. What does it mean to eliminate defeat in regards to Gettier cases? Bob: When it comes to eliminating defeat, sometimes known as the No Defeat Proposal, one seeks to discover those defeaters that might lead to a false belief. Defeaters are a fact or truth that would weaken the justification for a particular belief, but which are unknown. The justified true belief formula is modified such that it has evidence for belief that does not overlook the defeaters. 34 In the first Gettier case, this would mean that Smith would have some evidence that pointed to his getting the job leaving us with either conflicting evidence (saying also that Jones has the job) or that there is no conflicting evidence (the evidence that Jones has the job is eliminated). This would remove us from the Gettier case. Like the no false core evidence proposal, this is also vague and leads to questions about how strict or how far one must go in eliminating defeaters. John: Defeaters, infallibility, luck, false evidence, competing intuitions is there anything else to consider? Bob: One more thing to consider are those solutions which attempt to deal with the justification aspect of JTB. One way this is done is by replacing justification with reliability. This is sometimes referred to as K-Reliabilism. 35 A K-Reliabilist view might take the following simplified form: 32 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 9. 33 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 9. 34 Hetherington, Gettier Problems, section 10. 35 Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa and Matthias Steup, The Analysis of Knowledge, section 6, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.plato.stanford.edu. 8
S knows that P, if and only if: i. S is true, ii. S believes that P, and iii. S s belief that P was produced by a reliable cognitive process. 36 Another approach is to substitute justification with causal connection to P. This is sometimes known as the Causal Theory. 37 A Causal Theory view might take the following simplified form: S knows that P, if and only if, i. P is true, ii. S believes that P, and iii. S believes that P is caused by the fact that P 38 But both K-Reliabilism and Causal Theory are similar to justified true belief in that Gettier cases seem to pose the same type of difficulty for them as well. 39 Just because justification was substituted with something else, for example, doesn t eliminate the other confounding aspects of Gettier cases such as luck. John: Wow! My head is spinning over all this stuff. Who knew that one little three page paper could ignite such wide and varied reactions? Bob: Indeed. There appears to be a long list of failures in trying to resolve the Gettier problem introduced in 1963. One philosopher, Timothy Williamson, even went so far as to argue that the project of analyzing knowledge was a mistake. Williamson believes that knowledge is a fundamental term which is not reducible to other epistemological terms. 40 It is similar, in a way, to certain philosophical ideas like the principal of non-contradiction, in so much as the idea is accepted as foundational, but is beyond our current means to clearly prove it. Another, Linda Zagzebski, claimed that that no analysis sufficiently similar to the JTB analysis could ever avoid the problems highlighted by Gettier's cases. 41 Indeed, any analysis of the form JTB + X (where X is a condition or list of conditions independent of JTB) would fail to overcome the Gettier cases (or follow on cases). 42 Still another, Susan Haack, noted the following: 36 Ichikawa and Steup, The Analysis of Knowledge, section 6. 37 Ichikawa and Steup, The Analysis of Knowledge, section 6. 38 Ichikawa and Steup, The Analysis of Knowledge, section 6. 39 Ichikawa and Steup, The Analysis of Knowledge, section 6. 40 Ichikawa and Steup, The Analysis of Knowledge, section 5. 41 Ichikawa and Steup, The Analysis of Knowledge, section 7. 42 Ichikawa and Steup, The Analysis of Knowledge, section 7. 9
Gettier-type paradoxes arise because of a mismatch between the concept of knowledge, which, though vague and shifting, is surely categorical, and the concept of justification, which is essentially gradational. If so, there may be no intuitively satisfactory analysis of knowledge to be had, no sharp line to be drawn between cases where a subject does, and cases where he doesn t, know, no ideal point of equilibrium which precludes our having knowledge by luck without precluding our having knowledge altogether. And to me, at any rate, the question: what counts as better or worse evidence for believing something? seems both deeper and more important than the question: supposing that what one believes is true, how good does one s evidence have to be before one can count as knowing? 43 To conclude however, I think it would be helpful to return to Plato's Theaetetus. From the dialog, it seems that true opinion (or true belief) is somehow related to knowledge. However that did not appear sufficient, since Socrates pointed out that a lawyer could convince a judge that a crime occurred, and it would be a true opinion, but this would not be an instance of knowledge. Theaetetus then suggested that true opinion, combined with reason, was knowledge. 44 However, even within this dialog, Socrates was not satisfied with this answer, and the dialog ended with the topic unresolved. Yet, even then, as Socrates described himself as a midwife of men's thoughts at the beginning and end of his dialog with Theaetetus, he had hope that Theaetetus might come up with an answer. And, while he did not produce the answer, Socrates prodding at least gives us hope, dare I say, we may someday come to a true understanding of knowledge. 43 Susan Haack, Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 7, quoted in Hauptli, Supplement to Lectures on Gettier s Is JTB Knowledge?, section 6. 44 Plato, Theaetetus, 201c 10
Bibliography Plato. Theaetetus. At Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org Stephen Hetherington. Gettier Problems. At Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu John Turri. Is Knowledge Justified True Belief? www.john.turri.org Bruce Hauptli. Supplement to Lectures on Gettier s Is JTB Knowledge?. At Florida International University, www.fiu.edu Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa and Matthias Steup. The Analysis of Knowledge. At Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.plato.stanford.edu. 11