Noted for the future

[womzilla]

Gettier problems.

A Gettier problem is any one of a category of thought experiments in contemporary epistemology that seem to repudiate a definition of knowledge as justified true belief (JTB). The category of problem owes its name to a three-page paper published in 1963, by Edmund Gettier, called "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?". In it, Gettier proposed two scenarios where the three criteria (justification, truth, and belief) seemed to be met, but where the majority of readers would not have felt that the result was knowledge due to the element of luck involved.

Comments

[spacecrab.livejournal.com]

The farmer wasn't justified in believing the cow was in the meadow. He saw something that wasn't actually the cow and jumped to conclusions.

Smith wasn't justified in believing that Jones would get the job. We're given this proposition as an assumption that proves to be false when Jones doesn't get the job. What was the basis of Smith's justified belief, anyway? It's not stated.

In 1967, when this was first presented to me, A.J. Ayer (http://thespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2012/03/outline-of-ayers-knowing-as-having.html") was considered to have the last word on this problem:

"Ayer suggests that debates about whether or not it possible to know that p are actually debates about whether or not one ever has the right to be sure that p."

In 1969, I quit the Ph.D Philosophy program at UCLA in favor of moving to San Francisco where I could go see the Jerry Garcia Band play every week.