What Is Knowledge?

Do Gettier Cases Show that Knowledge is not Justified True Belief? Mark received: 68 (high 2:1)

Plato is often credited as being the father of the notion of Justified True Belief, and ever since his writings centuries ago, it has remained one of the major proposed epistemic definitions of knowledge (Fine, 2003). Laying down necessary conditions for 'knowing' seems fundamental if one intends to study the Theory of Knowledge or, it might seem, anything at all. In this essay I will discuss Justified True Belief as a necessary and sufficient basis for knowledge, and in particular consider the effectiveness of the counter-examples posed by E. Gettier in 1963 (along with similar examples which have come to bare the same name, by virtue of similarity.) First I shall explain two different cases, and then I shall discuss some attempts to refute them. Ultimately, I shall show that, although Justified True Belief does play an important role in our understanding and use of the word `knowledge`, the Gettier Cases do show that it is not, and could never be, a sufficient condition for absolute knowledge.

Justified True Belief & Gettier Cases

The Justified True Belief (from hereon JTB) statement is as follows (Gettier, 1963):

If S believes P, If S is justified in believing P, and If P is true, S can be said to know P.

Gettier refuted this with two counter-examples, and many similar examples have been proposed by others since. Here a character satisfies each of these conditions for Knowledge; however most would still deny his 'knowing'. The first is summarised as such:

Smith is stated as being justified in his belief that Jones will be employed to a position that he has also applied for. He is also somehow certain that Jones has ten coins in his pocket - from these two justified beliefs he can justifiably state and believe that the man who will get the job will have ten coins in his pocket. Next it is revealed that, in a turn of events, it is in fact Smith who gets the job. Furthermore, upon returning home and taking off his jacket Smith realises that, by sheer chance, he has had exactly ten coins in his pocket all day. The successful applicant did indeed have ten coins, awarding Smith's statement with justification, belief, and truth. (Gettier, 1963.)

Most Gettier cases follow the same formula as the one above, with varying complexity. The second case I will put forward, however, is slightly different, posing a problem for different reasons. It was put forward by Alvin Goldman (who I shall return to) in 1967. It roughly follows the lines of the following:

A traveller is driving down a country lane, past fields and trees and (what he perceives to be) many barns a distance from the road. In reality, however, these are merely facades, erected to fool passers-by into believing that they are barns. The man is perfectly justified in believing that each of them is a barn, due to their size and detail. At some point, the man focusses on one particular barn, and he forms the belief, "that is a barn, and I know that is a barn." Now, in this one case, the man happens to be correct - he is gazing at the only real barn in the area. However he has previously incorrectly thought the same thing, multiple times. In this one case he has sound justification and, somehow, he has chanced upon truth. (Goldman, 1967.)

So the question must be posed; did either of the characters really have knowledge? Most would assert no, even though in each case the JTB criteria have seemingly been fulfilled (Gettier, 1963). This has been the topic of many a paper and discussion since, to try and fix and rejuvenate the battered remains of Justified True Belief.

Responses to the Gettier Cases

There are two methods which have been attempted to amend JTB. The first involves strengthening or replacing the 'justification' aspect and the second involves adding a fourth criterion to the statement (the JTB+X method). (Zagzebski, 1994.)

Let us just consider the first case for now. Here the oddity arises because the character's 'justification' is based on a false lemma, and is in no way connected to the reason for the statement's truth. A simple rectification could state (as Michael Clark immediately did in 1963) that belief in something which is not true can never be justified, denying them justification. This seems an attractive notion, and an easy fix, until we realise that we have fallen into the trap of being too rigid with our definitions here - If we insist that justification involves absolute truth at every stage, we must accept that we are justified in far fewer of our beliefs than we realise. We lay easy pickings for the sceptic, who will insist that, if this is the case, then we can hardly know anything at all.

One major response is that of Reliabilism, advocated by the likes of Alvin Goldman (mentioned earlier) and Alvin Platinga. Reliabilism insists that 'justification' must be formed through some kind of reliable process. Goldman's Causal Theory states that there must be "a causal connection between the fact that makes p true [.] and Smith's belief of p. " (Goldman, 1967, p.358). The reason Smith believed p was true was that Jones carried 10 coins. The reason p was true was that Smith carried 10 coins. This lack of causal relationship, to Goldman, denies Smith knowledge. (Goldman, 1967.) Platinga's Reliabilist argument is slightly different; he asserts that it is not justification which is necessary, it is warrant, referring to a kind of justification supported by a person's faculties working as they should in the environment they are intended to work. (Platinga, 1993.3.) Neither of these theories, however, attach a necessity for the intermediate steps of justification to be true, as pointed out by Linda Zagzebski. She asserts that this is a fundamental flaw - and in fact puts forward a formula for creating a Gettier Case for any such JTB amendment. Zagzebski claims that her formula will work "as long as there is a small degree of independence between this other element and the truth", and proceeds to formulate a working example for Platinga's 'warrant' theory (Zagzebski, 1994.) As long as we do not assert that the justification for our belief necessarily be linked to truth, there will be an uncertainty associated with the belief, exposing it to Gettier Cases.

The Problem of the Nature of Knowledge

It is here that I must acknowledge a certain contradiction; I have declared that justification cannot feasibly be linked to truth, yet stated that if it is not, the Gettier cases are inescapable. Before reaching my conclusion, I shall use the second example from above to illustrate my point.

Consider the barn case. When asking oneself, "Why does the man not know that the barn is real?", we cannot undermine the protagonist's justification with false lemmas as in the first case. We are forced to conclude that it is because he has easily been fooled by the facades; and that, if the barn were fake like the others, he would be none the wiser. It is tempting to impose a sensitivity condition, which requires that the knower would necessarily realise if the 'knowledge' was in fact not true. In practise however, if we disregarded any 'knowledge' that we would still believe to be true if it were to be false, we would know hardly anything at all. Furthermore, if his knowledge of the barn's existence is so discredited by his fallibility regarding the facades, then our knowledge of a multitude of other things must also be discredited, as humans are so fallible by nature. We seem to be falling into the sceptic's trap once again. We are forced to admit, then, either that we cannot know very much at all, or that the man did in deed 'know' that the barn was real, and JTB prevails.

At this point my stance is becoming clear: the reason why the Gettier cases are truly as inescapable as Zagzebski claims is that to avoid them, we must eliminate the gap between justification and truth; and to do that would mean to tighten the definition of knowledge to the point of uselessness. We need JTB to function as a model of knowledge, as absolute knowledge is seemingly an unreasonable thing to strive for. I do not really know that my car is still parked where I left it as I cannot see it, however I am justified in my belief, and if it is true, I will say that I do know it. The Gettier cases take advantage of the degree of uncertainty permitted in our every-day use of the word 'knowledge', without which knowledge would only extend to absolute certainties (of which, except in an a priori sense, there are none.) To conclude, the Gettier cases prove that Justified True Belief, although necessary as a real-life model for knowledge, can never serve as a watertight definition.

Reference List

Gail Fine (2003) Plato on Knowledge and Forms: Selected Essays Oxford University Press

Edmund Gettier (1963) Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis, Vol.23, No. 6. (June 1963) pp. 121 - 123

Alvin Goldman (1967) A Causal Theory of Knowing The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 64, No. 12 (Jun 22, 1967) pp. 357-372 Journal of Philosophy, Inc

Linda Zagzebski (1994) The Inescapability of Gettier Problems The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 174 (Jan 1994) pp.65-73 Blackwell Publishing for The Philosophical Quarterly

Alvin Platinga (1993) Warrant: The Current Debate Oxford University Press, Inc

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