When we're talking about meanings (propositions) and beliefs (so that we're talking about propositional knowledge), we need to actually be talking about meanings and beliefs, both of which are things going on in particular individual's heads.Consul wrote: ↑June 20th, 2021, 11:58 am1. "Gettier makes a very specific statement (Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket), and from that he deduces a very generalized statement, (The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.) However, it is not clear who ‘the man’ refers to here. If ‘the man’ refers to Jones then the statement is false, because Jones is not the man who gets the job. If ‘the man’ refers to Smith, then Smith would be making a statement without any justification, since he believes that Jones will get the job. The first possibility violates the truth requirement for justified true belief, while the second case violates the justification requirement. Gettier has tried to use semantic obscurity to trick the reader into believing that justified true belief is not enough for knowledge. However, it can be seen that in this case the ‘knowledge’ was either not justified or false, and thus never constituted knowledge in the first place."Count Lucanor wrote: ↑June 19th, 2021, 10:48 pm I don't mind if only one other person in the world agrees with me:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/63/The ... _a_Problem
Gettier has tried to use semantic obscurity to trick the reader into believing that justified true belief is not enough for knowledge. However, it can be seen that in this case the ‘knowledge’ was either not justified or false, and thus never constituted knowledge in the first place.[...]
Gettier makes the assumption that the evidence presented justified Smith’s beliefs. However, Gettier makes no attempt at saying how strong the evidence is, and if we can infer anything it is that the evidence is quite weak, and it could be argued that in both cases Smith was not justified in making the statements of knowledge he made.[...]
The problem of reference-muddling in example one and the inherent logical flaw in example two show that Gettier problems are no threat to ‘knowledge as justified true belief’. The classical definition of knowledge as justified true belief doesn’t have to be changed, and no extra premises have to be added.
The author presupposes that there is a particular person—either Jones or Smith—to which the noun phrase "the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket" refers. Is this presupposition true? Not necessarily, because that noun phrase can be interpreted purely quantificationally rather than referentially:
"There is a (exactly one) man who will get the job and has ten coins in his pockets."
This statement doesn't imply any specific reference to Smith or Jones—let alone an ambiguous one—, so the author's argument against Gettier's example is thereby undermined. Smith believes both justifiedly and truly that there is a (exactly one) man who will get the job and has ten coins in his pockets, but he doesn't know there is owing to an epistemically relevant mismatch between what justifies his belief and what makes it true.
2. "…This second example cannot be accepted because it contains an inherent logical flaw. Gettier uses an example in the form of ‘either a or b, not a, therefore b’. However, this form of logic can ‘prove’ an infinite number of impossibilities. For example, I have reason to believe that Brown is in Barcelona, so I say “Either cows fly or Brown is in Barcelona.” It turns out Brown is now in Amsterdam, therefore, cows fly. This is obviously impossible, thus showing that the formula can’t be used to prove anything – or else it could be used to prove everything! You cannot claim here to know a proposition which randomly happened to be true just because its complementary proposition which you thought was true wasn’t. This is the wrong ‘justification’. Conclusions derived using this logical sleight-of-hand cannot be considered knowledge."
If I am justified in believing that Brown is in Barcelona, then I am also justified in believing that either Brown is in Barcelona or cows fly. Gettier's example has the logical form "a, therefore either a or b", which is doubtless a valid inference (independently of whether or not b is possible); and this is all that is needed for Gettier's argument.
The author's logical objection fails generally, because if b is impossible such that []~b (necessarily-not-b), then the inference "either a or b, not a, therefore b" is invalid. It is valid if and only if both a and b are possible. For if only a is possible and b is not, then not-a is impossible—given that it is true that either a or b. And, then, if not-a is impossible (due to b's impossibility), there can be no valid inference to any possible or impossible b. So it is not the case that "this form of logic can ‘prove’ an infinite number of impossibilities", because it cannot prove any impossibilities at all. For if either a or b, and b is necessarily false, then a is necessarily true (*, and there can be no true impossible b (such as "Cows fly").
(* By "a is necessarily true" I don't mean to say that a is a necessary truth).
The way that belief works is not that when someone believes "Joe took a trip to London," thy believe something like, "A man took a trip to London" where "a man" might not refer to Joe. If someone believes "Joe took a trip to London," then when they say "A man took a trip to London" is true as a suitable substitution, "a man" refers to Joe per their belief, per how they assign meaning to that sentence.
Their are similar issues with most Gettier examples (though different issues depending on the example).