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What is the best description of the “Gettier Problem”?


a. An argument against the principle of deductive closure for justification: If S believes P justifiedly and P implies Q, then S believes Q justifiedly.

b. An argument against the logical principle of existential generalization: F(a) implies that there is something that is F.

c. A form of skepticism about knowledge that arises in workplace scenarios.


d. The apparent problem that the JTB account of knowledge does not have the correct extension; and the attending challenge of figuring out what the missing ingredient is.

The issue is with the meaning of “justified.”

This likely a topic that has been dealt with before on this forum? Either way it is a VERY good idea to delve into this as I’ve seen many strange personal conceptions of “knowledge” thrown around (myself included.)

What we can say is that “knowledge” is agreed upon if set within strict boundaries. An issue also arises about how “facts” relate to “knowledge.”

As for your question ... I am sorry to say I don’t quite understand the options. If you could be more pricise maybe I could pick one over the others. At the moment I don’t understand them so cannot pick one over another.

Knowledge is defined as justified true belief but belief and knowledge are mutually incompatible [ believing something and
knowing something are not the same and are actually polar opposites ] I have absolutely no need for belief and so therefore
define knowledge as justified probable truth because of the problem of induction

Facts are non falsifiable by definition but knowledge is not because induction means it is probably
true not definitely true. As only proof or falsification can provide knowledge that is definitely true

Surreptitious75
Knowledge is defined as justified true belief but belief and knowledge are mutually incompatible [ believing something and
knowing something are not the same and are actually polar opposites ] I have absolutely no need for belief and so therefore
define knowledge as justified probable truth because of the problem of induction

Omit the "belief" aspect of knowing? Of course, then you are saying S can know P without believing P. This is a contradiction since knowing implies believing. If you desire to hold to your position, you would have to make this work, showing How I can know that my cup is on the table without believing it, for example. Some have tried, but to no avail. One I've have encountered tried to place P in some forgotten recesses of the mind of the knower, and therefore, bypassing belief in describing the epistemic structure: S knows P, and the knowledge claim is grounded in the presence of P in the some closeted part of the psyche; but S does not believe P, because belief must be such that it is possibly occurrent, and since the closeted description precludes occurrent belief, it cannot be posited as belief.

But you say it is the inductive nature of truth that puts belief out of the df of knowldge. But then, induction is a reference to the way knowledge is acquired, not to something outside of this, and this means knowledge must be about the subject's regard for P. What IS this regard? It is here you dismiss belief. But this is exactly what we mean by belief, the establishment of belief. See Peirce's How We Make Our Ideas Clear and Fixation of Belief for a closer look. It sounds like your dismissal of belief is no more than a verbal dispute with the words 'knowledge' and 'belief': remove belief, fine. But you would have to take what we mean by the term and incorporate it into your new df of knowledge.

Facts are non falsifiable by definition but knowledge is not because induction means it is probably
true not definitely true. As only proof or falsification can provide knowledge that is definitely true

And why can't probability conditions be falsifiable? Proof? Falsification? These surely are definite terms. But how do they deserve their relation to what is "definitely true"?

Surreptitious75 wrote: ↑December 2nd, 2018, 10:07 am Knowledge is defined as justified true belief but belief and knowledge are mutually incompatible [ believing something and
knowing something are not the same and are actually polar opposites ]

Of course, belief isn't the same as knowledge; but they are not "polar opposites", because belief doesn't exclude knowledge, and knowledge doesn't exclude belief. Actually, knowledge includes belief. As Wittgenstein says: "What I know, I believe." (On Certainty, §177)

Surreptitious75 wrote: ↑December 2nd, 2018, 10:07 amI have absolutely no need for belief and so therefore define knowledge as justified probable truth because of the problem of induction

This definition is inadequate, because knowledge is a mental state and justified probable truth isn't (as opposed to holding a justified true belief).

One can believe something without any evidence or proof but one cannot know something without evidence or proof. To know something implies
that such knowledge can be demonstrated. Otherwise it is merely an assertion without evidence or proof. Which is a belief but by another name
If you know something so can therefore demonstrate it belief is superfluous to requirement. You cannot know and believe something at the same
time because belief by definition is a lack of knowledge. You can believe something which is false but you can only know something which is true

Consul wrote: ↑December 2nd, 2018, 2:03 pm Actually, knowledge includes belief.

I agree with you. But some folks are so attached to science and repelled by religion that the word 'belief' has only ugly meanings for them, which don't really apply to belief as an element of knowledge. If we substitute something like 'assent', it might make more sense to them. Belief works fine for me, though. I can't know something if I don't believe it.

chewybrian wrote: ↑December 2nd, 2018, 2:31 pm

Consul wrote: ↑December 2nd, 2018, 2:03 pm Actually, knowledge includes belief.

I agree with you. But some folks are so attached to science and repelled by religion that the word 'belief' has only ugly meanings for them, which don't really apply to belief as an element of knowledge. If we substitute something like 'assent', it might make more sense to them. Belief works fine for me, though. I can't know something if I don't believe it.

It should be mentioned that some philosophers do believe in beliefless knowledge, including such an eminent one as David Lewis:

"I even allow knowledge without belief, as in the case of the timid student who knows the answer but has no confidence that he has it right, and so does not believe what he knows."

(Lewis, David. "Elusive Knowledge." 1996. Reprinted in Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, 418-445. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 429)

See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/know ... /#BeliCond

If you disagree with Lewis, you can argue that the student both knows and believes that p, but isn't certain that p. Of course, this presupposes that neither knowledge nor belief entails (subjective) certainty. I think belief doesn't entail (subjective) certainty; but, as far as knowledge is concerned, there is a relevant distinction between it and knowledge-claims: Knowledge (as an objective mental state) doesn't include subjective certainty, but a knowledge-claim does. I don't claim to know that p unless I am certain that p.

Consul wrote: ↑December 2nd, 2018, 3:01 pmI don't claim to know that p unless I am certain that p.

More precisely: I don't honestly claim to know that p unless I am certain that p.

Consul:

"I even allow knowledge without belief, as in the case of the timid student who knows the answer but has no confidence that he has it right, and so does not believe what he knows."

This is the least of the problems re. knowledge and S knows that P. Trying their best through the decades no one has yet to even begin to establish the "connection" between the knower and the know. for one can disentangle S's justification in believing P from P itself. The barn facsimile, the severed head arguments and others cannot make the connection work because it does not work: It is not that there is no P, it is rather that P IS, as Heidegger would put it, equiprimordially COMPLICATED. The knowing relationship is not, cannot be understood as, some existential transposition of P "into" S such that knowledge of P actually includes some extraordinary intimacy with the object.

Just been alerted to, "can disentangle" should read "cannot disentangle"
The original Gettier problem:
In Gettier's original paper, his first example
describes a man named Smith who is competing with Jones for a job. Smith has been told by the President of the
company that Jones is going to get the job, and he happens to know that Jones has ten coins in his pocket.
Therefore, he reasons that the person who gets the job will have ten coins in his pocket, which seems to be a
perfectly justified conclusion. As it happens, the President turns out to have been mistaken, and it is Smith
himself who gets the job. Coincidentally he also has ten coins in his pocket, and so his belief that the person who
gets the job will have ten coins in his pocket is true.
If the ten coins in the pocket are connected to the belief that the boss will give a promotion, how should the analysis preclude the arbitrariness of the two being entirely unrelated in the Gettier problems?
All that about severed heads (above) and barn facsimiles, these are in the Gettier literature in an attempt to show how to recast the traditional analysis of knowledge to rid it of the Gettier counterexample.

Finally,. just in case anyone is interested for a good summary of how to think about this, look here: https://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2012/c ... isner2.pdf