The Platonic definition of knowledge is ‘justified true belief’, this concept was widely accepted until Gettier published his paper “Is Justified true belief knowledge?”, since then many philosophers have looked to refine the definition of knowledge. In this essay, I will be constructing Gettier cases to show that one can have a justified true belief (JTB) in X without knowing X. I will then analyse these cases with common criticisms and defences of them, subsequently, I will present an alternative view to the justification component of Knowledge.
According to the Platonic definition, A person has knowledge if three conditions are met. Firstly, to know if Durham has a castle (Y), one must believe Y. Secondly, this belief has to be true. Thirdly, one has knowledge about Y, if their belief is justified with evidence. These conditions are apparent in the tripartite analysis of knowledge and they are individually necessary and together are sufficient for knowledge. However, Gettier argued that justification, truth and belief were not sufficient conditions for knowledge. In this case, let us suppose that a person has strong evidence for the following proposition:
a) Steven has a campus card.
A student has evidence to believe that Steven has a campus card, since she has seen Steven use a card at various points on the campus and Steven has told her that he has one. Let us also suppose that the student has evidence to believe that castles exist, but has no evidence of the whereabouts of any, and thus formulates the following propositions:
b) Either Steven has a campus card, or Atlanta has a castle.
c) Either Steven has a campus card, or Durham has a castle.
d) Either Steven has a campus card, or Canberra has a castle.
The student has subsequently inferred propositions b), c) and d) since they are all entailed by a), for which she has strong evidence for. She has no idea where there is a Castle, but is justified in believing each of the above propositions.
Let us further imagine that Steven does not have a campus card, but has a card which allows him to access all areas of the university. Moreover, let us envisage that the place mentioned in proposition c), Durham, does actually have a castle. If these conditions hold, the student has a justified true belief of proposition c) without actually knowing that c) is true. Here she has a JTB without having knowledge.
Goldman’s (1967) Fake Barn Country case can be adapted to produce another example.
Suppose you are driving through Durham, with the area unbeknownst to you, the locals have constructed papier-mâché castles to celebrate the construction of the only real castle. The models are unrecognisable from the real castle from this distance, and with your eyesight being normal and reliable, you form the belief that ‘that’s a fine castle’.
You happen to be referring to the one real castle in Durham. Had you looked at the local’s masterpieces you would have had a false belief. Your belief, is justifiably true but you do not have knowledge.
In the previous examples, we claim there is justification for the aforementioned beliefs, however, a response to many Gettier problems is that one ought to strengthen the justification condition. Infallibists believe in order to have justification our beliefs should be infallible. Personally, I think there are strengths to this argument, since no Gettier case or other counterexamples would pass as knowledge, since they all fundamentally rely on an element of luck. With that said, infalibilism implies that knowledge is very hard to obtain as it is impossible to have a belief with no aspect of doubt. If justification is acquired via testimony, the source can be questioned vigoursly or if it is acquired perceptively then the ability of your quotidian senses is brought under scrutiny. Therefore, we allow knowledge not to be infallible.
Another critique to Gettier cases is that they involve too much luck for knowledge to be considered as JTB. In our second example, it is accidental that your normal visual ability is not reliable in this scenario, and it is a coincidence that you actually happened to be looking at the real castle. This means that an element of “bad luck” is cancelled out by an element of “good luck” which generates this Gettier case. With this in mind, I found Zagzebski (1994) claim that “knowledge is equal to true belief +x+ luck” plausible. Here “x” is justification or evidence with a strong connection to acquiring the truth. This line of thought is an interesting one as suggest in order to know something, one requires luck. There are few philosophers who agree that luck is a necessary condition for knowledge but it is an interesting concept nonetheless. In my opinion, I believe that instead of luck the condition of justification needs to be strengthened, which shall be explored later.
After looking at two criticisms of Gettier cases which require richer notions of justification, I will analyse another argument that defends the JTB theory. Turri (1984) suggests that a ‘bad’ equivalent of Gettier subjects,
“Know Q, and these bad counterparts know Q only if Gettier subjects know Q, so Gettier subjects know Q”.
We will now use this argument in our second example.
You have an evil twin who is a pyromaniac. He wants to destroy a castle so drives to find one. After finding a castle he blows it up. He thinks “what a fine castle I have just destroyed”.
Your evil twin knew that he was destroying a castle when he blew it up. In order for him to know this, he had to had have known it was a castle. Your twin by chance was in Durham and destroyed the same barn that you were looking at earlier that day. It’s reasonable to suppose that if your evil twin knew it was a castle then you knew it was castle. This assumption can be made since both you and your evil twin had exactly the same evidence, which you used in the same way. If its sufficient for your twin to know, then it’s sufficient for you also.
Some critics have tried to challenge this case by saying your twin didn’t actually “know” he was destroying a castle. When using the word “know” we imply that he intentionally blew up a castle but this doesn’t entail that he knew it was a castle. However, this statement can be dismissed since the actual act of your brother knowing that he was destroying a castle implicitly entails his knowing that it’s a castle. Turri’s argument has merit, and invites us to consider whether JTB does equal knowledge.
Yet, I believe that knowledge is a true belief which has been formed by reliable methods (ones which usually obtain true results). For Nozick (1981) reliability can be described by
“To know that P is to be someone who would believe it if it were true, and who wouldn’t believe it if it were false”
This means that your beliefs track the truth and are sensitive to when P is the case and when it isn’t. With reliability as a necessary component for knowledge there is no path for a Gettier case to succeed. In both examples, the concept of reliability would mean luck could no longer play a role, thus dismissing Zagzebski’s comment. O’Brien (2006) states,
“There is not a gap for a Gettier scenario to exploit between a subjective notion of justification and the objective notion of truth”. Therefore, in my opinion the condition of reliability is necessary and thus means JTB alone cannot equal knowledge.
However, critics may simply ask how reliable does a method have to be? Does it have to be totally, generally or perfectly reliable? We could attach a probability to each belief performing process, but this is would be ambiguous. Furthermore, suppose I had two beliefs, A and B. These were formed by processes that have a probability of 0.9 and 0.8, respectively, of producing a correct belief. Since I know A and I know B, by inference I know A and B so the probability overall would be 0.72. Some people may say that this probability is below the level we are willing to accept. Thus, this would imply that perfect reliability is required when inference is involved. Therefore, we reach a similar problem with the one faced with infallibility.
In conclusion, Gettier cases have invoked worldwide debate about the sufficient and necessary conditions for knowledge. If JTB isn’t the definition of knowledge, it is plausible to say that is close to being so. Many philosophers have tried to come up with their own definitions of knowledge following criticisms to these cases, but JTB is the closest philosophical definition we have at the moment despite its obvious flaws highlighted by Gettier. Therefore, I deduce that one can have a justified true belief about X without having knowledge of X, since knowledge requires more conditions which are still being explored today.