Method
Gettier problem
Overview
In the field of epistemology, the Gettier problem is a landmark philosophical problem concerning the understanding of descriptive knowledge. Attributed to American philosopher Edmund Gettier, Gettier-type counterexamples (called "Gettier-cases") challenges the long-held notion of knowledge as justified true belief (JTB). The JTB account holds that knowledge is equivalent to justified true belief; if all three conditions (justification, truth, and belief) are met of a given claim, then there is knowledge of that claim. In his 1963 three-page paper titled "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", Gettier attempts to illustrate by means of two counterexamples that there are cases where individuals can have a justified true belief regarding a claim but still fail to know it because the reasons for the belief, while justified, turn out to be false. Thus, Gettier claims to have shown that the JTB account is inadequate because it does not account for all of the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge.
The terms "Gettier problem", "Gettier case", or even the adjective "Gettiered", are sometimes used to describe any case in the field of epistemology that purports to repudiate the JTB account of knowledge.
Responses to Gettier's paper have been numerous. Some reject Gettier's examples as inadequate justification, while others seek to adjust the JTB account of knowledge and blunt the force of these counterexamples. Gettier problems have even found their way into sociological experiments in which researchers have studied intuitive responses to Gettier cases from people of varying demographics.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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He puts the terms, thus taken in a vacuum, and made into bare logical entities, through every possible permutation and combination, tortures them on the rack until nothing is left of them, and after all this logical gymnastic, comes out with the following portentous conclusion as what he believes to be the correct view: that there is no problem at all in truth and falsehood, that some propositions are true and some…
William James, The Meaning of Truth
States what Gettier problem is; the author is tied to Gettier problem in the knowledge graph.
An attempt to treat this subject comprehensively would be a transgression of the bounds prescribed to this work, since it would necessitate the inquiry which, more than any other, is the grand question of what is called metaphysics, viz., What are the propositions which may reasonably be received without proof? That there must be some such propositions all are agreed, since there can not be an infinite series of…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Gettier problem is.
Hence, in the conclusion of a syllogism we restrict a predicate to a certain object, after having thought it in the major in its whole extent under a certain condition. This complete quantity of the extent in relation to such a condition is called universality (universalitas). To this corresponds totality (universitas) of conditions in the synthesis of intuitions.
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
States what Gettier problem is.
Philosophers who discussed Gettier problem
Related ideas
- Linda Zagzebski
- First-order logic
- Philosophy
- James Mark Baldwin
- If and only if
- Internalism and externalism
- Intuition
- Necessity and sufficiency
- Experimental philosophy
- Middle Ages
- Metaphysics
- Dharmakirti
- A. J. Ayer
- Evidence
- Alvin Goldman
- Edmund Gettier
- Keith Lehrer
- Plato
- Declarative knowledge
- Pietro Pomponazzi
- Reliabilism
- Externalism
- Robert Nozick
- Fred Dretske
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.