Epistemology - Modern - The Gettier Problem, Bibliography
knowledge true belief justified
The understanding of knowledge at work, implicitly or explicitly, in much of ancient and modern epistemology is that of knowledge as justified true belief. According to this traditional account (TAK), a subject, S, knows that p if and only if the following three conditions are met: (i) p is true; (ii) S believes that p; (iii) S is justified in, or has adequate evidence for, believing that p. While (i) and (ii) are almost entirely uncontroversial, (iii) lies at the heart of intense controversy. It is generally agreed that (i) and (ii) are not sufficient; knowledge cannot be analyzed as true belief. Suppose S took a medication that causes paranoid delusions. As a result, S believes he is being followed. Suppose further that S's belief happens to be true. There is broad agreement that accidentally true beliefs like that do not count as knowledge. However, what knowledge requires in addition to truth and belief is highly controversial. According to TAK, it is justification.
Additional Topics
If TAK were correct, conditions (i)–(iii) would be sufficient for knowledge. Using a couple of clever examples, Edmund Gettier showed that they are not. Ever since, it has become common practice to refer to cases that demonstrate the insufficiency of (i)–(iii) as "Gettier cases." Here is a simple example. Suppose S believes that there is a sheep in the field. But what S…
BonJour, Laurence. The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985. Chisholm, Roderick M. The Theory of Knowledge. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1989. De Rose, Keith, and Ted A. Warfield, eds. Skepticism. A Contemporary Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Dretske, Fred I. Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge, Mass.: M…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments