Christina Pitz
Professor Swanson
Intro to Philosophy
24 April 2018
Essay 2
In his essay Is Justified True Belief Knowledge by Edmund J. Gettier he argues no, that justified true belief does not equate to knowledge. The first three criteria that are commonly mentioned in determining if someone knows a given proposition are as follows: S knows that P IFF (if and only if), i) P is true, ii) S believes that P, and, iii) S is justified in believing in P. Gettier provides two different cases to prove his point that however sometimes all the conditions are true, it follows that a person is false in knowing the given proposition. The two different cases he uses in the paper both involve Smith and Jones, the first about who will get the job, and the second about the knowledge of what kind of car Jones owns. His first case says that Smith and Jones are applying for the same job, and Smith has strong evidence to support the proposition that (a) Jones will get the job, and that Jones also has ten coins in his pocket. Therefore this proposition would entail that (b) the person to get the job would have ten coins in his pocket. Because (b) entails (a) and Smith has strong evidence for it, he is justified in believing that Jones would be the man to get the job. However, Gettier then encourages us to imagine that unbeknownst to him, Smith will actually be the one to get the job, and he himself also has ten coins in his pocket. This would cause a problem in that (b) is true but Smith inferred it from (a), which would be false. Because of examples like these, the criteria is not perfect in determining that if all the given propositions are true, and that even though they might all be true, someone could still be incorrect in claiming to know something. In this paper I will argue to include an additional fourth criterion, and to provide a counterexample to show that although something might fit the all four criterion, it is still not sufficient enough to prove that someone knows something.
The three conditions commonly used are not sufficient in determining someone's knowledge on a given proposition. The fourth criterion that I believe would add to these conditions is to say that iv) x does not reason through a false belief in arriving at his belief that p. If we were to incorporate that criteria with the coin/job scenario that Gettier uses it would say that Smith does not reason through a false belief in arriving at his belief that Jones would get the job and that he has ten coins in his pocket. I did not previously mention this but Smiths strong evidence for him believing that Jones would get the job is due to the owner of the company telling Smith that Jones would end up being the winner, and then Smith going on to count that Jones had ten coins in his pocket. If all of this were to be true, and Jones was in fact going to be chosen for the job, then the fourth criteria, as well as all the other criteria, would be true and it would be appropriate to state that Smith does in fact know that Jones will get the job. Now what would happen if we went back to the scenario in which Smith would actually be the one to get the job, as well as him also having ten coins in his pocket? I am going to walk through each of the four criteria to determine if this fourth condition would allow Smith to know the proposition. In Gettier’s case i) (b) is true, ii) Smith believes that (b) is true, he believes the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket, iii) Smith is justified in believing that (b) is true, and finally iv) Smith does not reason through a false belief in arriving at his belief that the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. If we were to look at this without the fourth criterion it would appear that all of the conditions are true, but what Smith does not know is that he also could have ten coins in his pocket, and in fact be the one getting the job. So if we were to just look at the three criteria, the conditions would all be true, but it is not sufficient for Smith to say he knows who will be the one to get the job. What this fourth criteria adds to the analysis of that argument is that it accounts for the fact that Smith could be reasoning through a false belief from the sense that he knows Jones has ten coins in his pocket, and does not know that he himself also has ten coins in his pocket. In other words, if Smith were to reason that the person to get the job had ten coins in his pocket, and he knew Jones had ten coins in his pocket, but does not know that he has ten coins in his pocket, he would claim to know that Jones would be the one to get the job. In that situation the fourth criteria would be false, which would lead him to the correct conclusion that Smith does not actually know that Jones will get the job. Adding the fourth criteria fixes this specific scenario, but it is not the permanent answer to determining what it takes for someone to officially know something.
Although I think the fourth criteria makes the conditions more likely to determine if someone knows a proposition, it does leave some holes. A very easy and often applicable counterexample to show that those four criteria are not always applicable is with just about any high school rumor. For example, let’s use a scenario that says c) Johnny has a Twix bar, and d) Jared lost his Twix bar. Jared then tells Patricia that he believes Johnny stole his candy bar. If we were to analyze this using the four criteria, they would all lead to be true, but in fact they still fail to know the proposition. In this case, i) (d) is true , ii) Patricia believes that (d) is true, iii) Patricia is justified in believing that (d) is true, and iv) Patricia does not reason through a false belief in arriving at her belief that Johnny stole Jared’s Twix bar. Although these conditions are all true, it is still very likely that Johnny did not in fact steal Jared’s Twix bar. He could have brought it from home, got it from the vending machine, etc.. There are many potential scenarios to explain why Johnny also had a Twix bar, and for all we know Jared already ate his Twix bar, but wants another so he is accusing Johnny of stealing it in hopes that he will just give it over to him to avoid conflict. In this situation, unless Patricia or Jared saw Johnny taking the candy bar, or had some way of identifying it as Jared’s it is almost impossible to know for sure. As a result of Gettier’s ideas and counterarguments about knowledge, he got other people thinking, and joining in on the debate. In Jennifer Nagel’s paper The Analysis of Knowledge she discusses some challenges against Gettier’s ideas. Known philosopher, Alvin Goldman introduces the idea of causal theory of knowledge, which states that experienced based knowledge requires the knower to be appropriately causally connected to a fact. There are many other theories and ideas about what determines knowledge but none have been undebatable. In addition to just the basic principles of the conditions, wording is also a huge component. What does it mean for something or someone to be ‘justified’? That alone could change the analyzation of the conditions. There is still plenty of work to be done on how to most accurately identify when a proposition can be deemed as known.
The quest to find the best way to determine true knowledge has been, and will continue to be debated for years. As of now there is no perfect answer and many different theories have been introduced, but they have all faced criticism. Progress is always being made as shown by the different philosophers adding their own theories and building off of the critique and constructive criticism given. There are even plenty of examples that use the common three criteria, and even though some of the conditions might be false, the proposition could actually be true, so there are a lot of ways in which they do not prove to be sufficient. Gettier made a good contribution to theories of knowledge as has many other philosophers and it was interesting reading the paper, and establishing my own counterexamples and analyzing the scenario he mentioned using an additional fourth criterion. I am excited to read more about peoples thoughts on Gettier’s points, additional criteria, and counterexamples they come up with. Epistemology is a very interesting concept and proves to be very complex.
Works Cited
C. Swanson. (2018) ‘Paper Topic on Gettier’.
E. Gettier, ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’, Analysis, Vol. 23, No.6 (1964), 121-3.
J. Nagel. (2014). Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction, Chapter 4, ‘The Analysis of Knowledge’, 46-60. (Oxford).