The Gettier Problem

[thegrons]

Gettier wasn’t saying that these beliefs wouldn’t be justified. If we believe something with sufficient evidence, then that belief is justified. For example, we would be justified in thinking that “there is a cow in the pasture” because there is no sufficient reason for us to believe that the stuffed animal was not a live cow. This is important; it means we can have justified but false beliefs.

I’m not sure making explicit the exact belief solves the problem. You said that the real belief in question was “there is a cow 100 yards in front of me.” While this belief is clearly false, I question the possibility of having this belief without also having the belief “there is a cow in that field.” Are these one and the same belief? If not what is there exact connection? Surely you might be able to distinguish them cognitively, but regardless, you have the belief “there is a cow in that field.”

The issues arising out of Gettier problems would be solved if truth was not a criterion for knowledge. Take the cow example. The issue at hand is whether or not I am justified in my belief that there is a cow in the field. Take the real cow out of the equation so that the decoy cow is left. If I have no reason to believe that the cow is a decoy, then I can be justified in my belief “there is a cow in the field.” Now here is the real issue. Whether or not that cow is real or fake does not affect my belief; I will act as though the belief is true even if it is false because I am justified in believing it is true. Since there is no cognitive distinction between a true justified belief and a false justified belief, I don’t think truth should be a criterion for knowledge.

What Gettier problems demonstrate is that there are cases where we have justified beliefs that are only coincidentally true. This weakens the appeal of the traditional JTB formation of knowledge. Personally, I think this is a good thing for epistemology. When discussing theories of knowledge, philosophers overwhelmingly focus on “justification.” You do see discussions of “belief,” but rare are the discussions of “true” (unless they are discussing Gettier). And so, removing the truth criterion will only formalize what epidemiologists already do.

I don’t see how you can have knowledge of something that isn’t true? Can one know that it is 3:00 PM when it is 5:00 AM? Or can you know that 2+2=7? I think that truth has to play a role in knowledge or else we have nothing more than beliefs.

But the epistemology project has in large failed. There is not one theory of knowledge or truth that is free from fallacy; all theories have failed, yet knowledge is valuable with respects to its practical uses. Most philosophers would tell you that induction is irrational, yet we still have to walk through life and make decisions and we often choose a system of rationale that we are comfortable defending, one that still has some circularity to it but the circle is large enough where it doesn’t destroy our sensibilities.

 

[Taestron]

I don’t see how you can have knowledge of something that isn’t true? Can one know that it is 3:00 PM when it is 5:00 AM? Or can you know that 2+2=7? I think that truth has to play a role in knowledge or else we have nothing more than beliefs.

You are right, I cannot have knowledge of either of those propositions, but this is not because of the truth criterion of knowledge but the belief criterion. It is cognitively impossible for me to believe anything that I think is false. But if I am justified in believing a false belief, and I do not know that the belief is false, then I am comfortable with saying I have knowledge of that belief. For example, let us I say I always believed the lyric to “America the Beautiful” was “above the golden plain.” Nobody ever corrected me and the phrase makes sense, so let us say I am justified in believing it. For everyone who believes this lyric is “above the fruited plain,” it is cognitively impossible for them to believe my lyric is correct. But for me who does not know any better, I maintain I can have knowledge that “above the golden plain” is the correct lyric to the “America the Beautiful” even though this is not correct.

But the epistemology project has in large failed. There is not one theory of knowledge or truth that is free from fallacy; all theories have failed, yet knowledge is valuable with respects to its practical uses. Most philosophers would tell you that induction is irrational, yet we still have to walk through life and make decisions and we often choose a system of rationale that we are comfortable defending, one that still has some circularity to it but the circle is large enough where it doesn’t destroy our sensibilities.

Not too much of an argument here. I would say that because we are trying to define a system in which we are in the bounds, anything we say about it will be incomplete. However, just because we cannot have a complete system does not mean the discipline is a failure. We can still make valid insights into what ways of thinking are justifiable, whether faith counts as justification, how well logic fits into our modes of thinking, etc.

P.S. Maybe I am not “most philosophers” but “irrational” seems a bit misleading to how I think of induction. Sure we cannot base it in unassailable logic, but if we use it and it works, then why not say that there is evidence that it is sound?

 

[Qoeleth]

This is a completely different conception of justification than the one you mentioned before. In your previous post, you wrote: “If it leads to true belief in any particular instance, it is, by definition, justified.” Sure, if astrology worked 99% of the time we would probably say that beliefs derived from it were justified. (That is, of course, a different hypothetical.) But let’s suppose we have a crystal-ball psychic who is a fraud and whose predictions are accurate only 10% of the time. According to your previous post, beliefs deriving from her predictions are justified on those 1-in-10 occasions when, randomly, they happen to be true. In reality, however, most people would say that consulting a fraudulent psychic never justifies a belief, even when she happens to get lucky.

To give another example, suppose that at a traveling fair they have a “cancer diagnosis” machine, where you grip two electrodes and the machine tells you whether you have cancer or not. In fact, however, the electrodes are nonfunctional and the machine is set up to give the same diagnosis to everybody: “You do not have cancer.” If it were correct that anything that “leads to true belief in any particular instance” were “by definition, justified,” then we would have to conclude that such a machine actually provides justification for people who, as it turns out, don’t have cancer, to believe that they are cancer-free.

There is a difference between correlating justification with the general reliability of a process in producing true beliefs, and correlating it with the truth of the specific belief in question. The cancer-diagnosis machine, for instance, is not generally reliable, so it cannot justify beliefs even in those “particular instance” when it happens to “produce truth.”

I would make a distinction between “justified” sources of knowledge- which I would hold to be any source of information which produces true information, in that given instance- and “reasonably-expected-to-be-justified” sources of information.

Now, with a random cancer diognosis machine- if it gives true information, it is “justified” in that case, where it gives true information. The problem is, there is no way of knowing in advance when it will, or will not, be justified. Therefore, it is unreliable.

The process of obtaining knowledge is justified or unjustified only according to the truth it produces. Let me give an example- a man may believe God exists. Now, let’s say he believes this, purely from a ‘hunch’ or feeling. Now, he may say “I know God exists”. If he is right, he has true belief. And since in that particular case, his hunch proved true, it would count as justified true belief.

But in other cases, his ‘hunch’ might prove wrong. In such cases, he would be unjustified to believe the hunch.

So, it would seem that justification is the same as truth.

 

[thegrons]

I would make a distinction between “justified” sources of knowledge- which I would hold to be any source of information which produces true information, in that given instance- and “reasonably-expected-to-be-justified” sources of information.

Now, with a random cancer diognosis machine- if it gives true information, it is “justified” in that case, where it gives true information. The problem is, there is no way of knowing in advance when it will, or will not, be justified. Therefore, it is unreliable.

The process of obtaining knowledge is justified or unjustified only according to the truth it produces. Let me give an example- a man may believe God exists. Now, let’s say he believes this, purely from a ‘hunch’ or feeling. Now, he may say “I know God exists”. If he is right, he has true belief. And since in that particular case, his hunch proved true, it would count as justified true belief.

But in other cases, his ‘hunch’ might prove wrong. In such cases, he would be unjustified to believe the hunch.

So, it would seem that justification is the same as truth.

Most philosophers would not consider anything having to do with induction to be knowledge. Science is considered an inference to the best explanation.

The problem with induction is that it begs the question and is therefore irrational. I begs the question because what we are setting out to prove is the very thing we assume in our premises. The question of the cancer machine or the lottery or a fortune teller cannot have knowledge unless we grant them some sort of clairvoyant knowledge (of which I believe God has when dealing with the future - though I cannot prove it).

 

[WillP]

Is anyone familiar with the Gettier Problem? In short Gettier claims to have found a counter-example to the tripartite theory of knowlege viz. JTB knowledge is a justified true belief.

Here is a Gettier example: A man looks out the window into his pasture and sees a cow about 100 yards out; hence he forms the belief “there is a cow in the pasture”. Unknown to him the cow he was looking at was a stuffed animal, but there really is a cow in the pasture though it was hidden behind the barn. So The man has a true belief, but was it justified?

Another Gettier example would be: A man digs in his pocket and feels some change and forms a belief “I have a dollar of change in my pants”. But when he pulls out the change he only has .90 cents, BUT he had a dime in his back pocket so again he has a true belief BUT was it justified?

These Gettier examples have seemed to perplex philosophers for years because of the issue of justification and the only seemingly possible answer to these issues were somewhat ad hoc. They were ad hoc in the sense the to say that the man was never really justified seems to run against our intuitions.

I think I have the answer that shows that these Gettier problems are not really problems at all and furthermore they turn on a misrepresentation of what propositions one would really form. For example in the cow in the pasture example, would someone really form the proposition “There is a cow in the pasture” or would they really believe “There is a cow 100 yards out in the pasture in my line of site, (occupying the space of the toy animal)”? And the man with the change in the pocket would not form the proposition “I have a dollar in my pants” but rather the object of his belief would be in the change in the front pocket.

So in these two and all Gettier type examples, the believer never had a true belief to begin with. Gettier misrepresents what the prudent man would believe and his attack on the tripartite view of knowledge is really slight of hand, or at best a fallacy of hasty generalization. I believe that Gettier cannot show that the JTB analysis is flawed and to say that the issue of a false belief is not ad hoc.

Any comments?

Beliefs are only justified to the extent 1) they are based on honest observation and 2) possess logical consistency. Thus, the farmer is justified in his belief because his observations were honest and his associations were logically connected (cows inhabit the pastures, cows look like the image he saw etc). So while the belief is justified it later becomes UNjustified as additional evidence is developed. An honest observer must, indeed, make course corrections based on evidence. Thus, when it is learned that what he saw was in fact not a cow, this rendered his belief unjustified and he was required to revise it.

\What I find mildly distasteful with your example is that you turn the process into a parlor game.

 

[thegrons]

I don’t understand what you mean by parlour game? Most Gettier examples are exactly as I quoted viz. a mechanical cow and a guy with change in his pocket; secondly your view of being justified and then UNjustified has not been received due to the ad hoc view of justification. Most would argue that seeing a mechanical cow is sufficient justification. Frankly I found Gettier’s exsamples to be tawdry, fast and loose, and typical of philosophical ranker. Gettier builds a strawman and then tears it down.

 

[WillP]

I don’t understand what you mean by parlour game? Most Gettier examples are exactly as I quoted viz. a mechanical cow and a guy with change in his pocket; secondly your view of being justified and then UNjustified has not been received due to the ad hoc view of justification. Most would argue that seeing a mechanical cow is sufficient justification. Frankly I found Gettier’s exsamples to be tawdry, fast and loose, and typical of philosophical ranker. Gettier builds a strawman and then tears it down.

I mean simply this: The farmer is justified in his belief because his belief conforms to certain norms worthy of belief. Namely, the farmer sees what his experience tells him is a cow. It conforms in shape, size and visually to what is known to be a cow. I fail to see that as an *ad hoc *description of justification.

Why this seems to me to be a parlor game is because it is fundelmentally silly to quibble whether the belief is justified if it turns out that the farmer is right but for the wrong reason.It is a play to words and language–not to logic.

It is much more straight forward and honest to acknowledge that belief is then, at the time justified, but based on reliable evidence, in order to conform to the norms which justify a belief–the older belief must be abandoned in favor of what the evidence subsequently dictates.

This is hardly ad hoc. It is however what scientists usually do in the formation and exploration of a hypothesis.

I hope I have been clearer.

 

[thegrons]

In epistemology it is ad hoc in that the justification that you are suggesting is “made to order” . Philosophers say this because if you can say that one was never justified, then you should have been able to reach this conclusion prior to discovering that the cow was a fake. Justification has nothing to do with truth in the sense that it is merely a good reason to believe something. I would argue that the believer was justified regardless of the truth. Scientists of all people seem to have justification for their hypotheses regardless of the outcome.