In this week’s reading of What is this thing called Knowledge by Pritchard discusses how people define knowledge. According to Pritchard, everyone has difficulty in defining knowledge, with this difficulty also known as the problem of the criterion. He argues that the person needs to identify instances of knowledge in order to determine the criteria for knowledge (21). This problem leads to the Justified True Belief Account (JTB), which proves that a person has knowledge of something if he has a proof for it, or justification for his belief. Let’s look at an example for better clarification.
Jong is told by Joe that someone in his class has a pencil (a). Jong believes Matt has a pencil, because Matt is holding an object that looks like a pencil (b). Therefore, Jong believes that someone in his class has a pencil (c).
In this example, Jong is justified in believing that someone in his class has a pencil, simply because he saw Matt holding one. Since Jong has a proof in his belief, it is considered as JTB. However, Gettier argues that it is possible for a belief to be true and justified without being knowledge, because two features constructs Gettier’s cases: fallibility and luck. In his examples with two cases, he argues that “the combination of truth, belief, and justification does not entail the presence of knowledge” (Hetherington).
As an example for Gettier’s arugment, what if Matt was actually holding a pen that looked like a pencil? This statement totally contradicts Jong’s belief. However, if a student other than Matt happened to have a pencil, then it is out of pure luck that Jong’s belief is, in fact, true and justified. However going with Gettier’s argument, this cannot be considered as “knowledge” because it was out of luck that Jong’s JTB was in fact true.
In another class reading by Feldman, Meyers and Stern argued that if the principle (ex. Jong’s belief) is false, then the counter-example that Gettier gave fail. They argued that (a) can justify (c) only if (c) is true (Feldman 68). However, Feldman disagrees (defending Gettier), saying that “there are examples that do not rely on this false principle” (Feldman 68).
To fully understand what Feldman is saying, let’s go back to the example. Let’s say that Matt is not holding a pencil, but a pen that looks like one. For this example, Meyers and Stern would say Jong’s JTB in (c) is false because the principle is false. However, what if Jong generalizes a statement that he deduced from (a)?
Someone in Jong’s class told him that someone in Jong’s class has a pencil, and that person is very good friend of Jong, who he trusts (d).
In this generalization, we can say that from (d), Jong believes (c). As a result, Jong has a JTB in (c) because of this proof, even though Jong still doesn’t know (c) (Feldman 69).
An outside source was found to see the arguments that went against the Gettier’s cases. Hetherington proposed a contrary interpretation of luck, as he calls this interpretation the Knowing Luckily Proposal (Hetherington). He gives an example by reinstating Gettier’s Case I. Hetherington states that Smith is lucky to have a belief that whoever gets the job will have ten coins in the person’s pocket (which happened to be true). This does not mean that Smith is lacking knowledge, but rather came close to lacking knowledge (Hetherington). So he concludes that “because Smith would only luckily have that justified true belief, he would only luckily have that knowledge.” (Hetherington). I found this interesting because this proposal directly goes against Gettier’s reason for refuting the JTB Account.
I wonder now: will we ever be able to clearly define knowledge? With every proposed argument comes with a rebuttal. Maybe we will never have a unanimous agreement. Who knows what’s going to happen in the future?
Sources:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/gettier/ (by Hetherington)
Yesterday we talked about the new JTB account in which two more propositions were added to rectify instances of knowledge gained via one or more false beliefs. This new account seemed to solve the Gettier dilemma of obtaining knowledge through a false belief, but then quantified instances of actual knowledge as false belief (as illustrated in the clock example with Sally vs. John). My question to you is: do you think Hetherington’s argument solves these issues? Do you (or anyone) think Hetherington’s argument solves the flaws that were created by both old and new JTB and Gettier or do you think something else? I found Hetherington’s ideas to be really interesting so I’m curious to see what others think about this.
I found your article about Hetherington very interesting. It touches on this idea that we can luckily know something and introduces a sort of spectrum of knowledge. There is “almost lacking knowledge” or “coming close to definitely lacking knowledge.” These concepts, however, lend themselves to the idea that one can have knowledge but by luck. I wholeheartedly disagree with this account because if one comes across knowledge luckily, then I do not think that he or she knows it. For example, if we examine Feldman’s counter-example, Smith thinks that Mr. Nogot owns the Ford and can then logically conclude the true belief that someone in his office owns a Ford. However, he luckily came across this true belief that is based on false justification. If someone’s justification is false, can they then have knowledge? I would agree with Feldman in that they cannot.
Knowledge, I believe, is an all-or-nothing deal. You cannot “sort of” know something. You either know it or you don’t and this concept of “almost lacking knowledge” is too vague and easy to misunderstand. If you almost lack knowledge or come close to definitely lacking it, how can you purport to know anything? When do you fully know something as opposed to almost not knowing something?
I do not think that you claimed to support Hetherington’s proposal so I (like Hilleary) am curious as to whether or not you disagree with his points.
I am going to have to disagree with Hetherington’s approach to solving the Gettier examples. When he says, “This does not mean that Smith is lacking knowledge, but rather came close to lacking knowledge” drives my intuition the wrong way. How is the man that he is talking about still have knowledge if what he thinks is the reasons for this knowledge are false. My justification for this is when a math problem is graded. Most teachers will not give you full credit or even partial credit for getting the right answer, but the way in which you arrived at that answer gets you the credit. Grant you the answer is the final part, but if all the work leading up to this is right, theoretically the answer should be right as well. The knowledge in question is only accredited to the person if their reasoning behind it are sound and true. Thus leading the person to conclude the truth. I believe Nozick is commenting on this in his paper as well with the third claim of having to believe if p were not true then s wouldn’t believe p to be true. In other words, the person has to know the real truth, and has to be able to know when the proposed idea is wrong. Thus eliminating the idea that someone can “luckily have that knowledge.”
I agree with your contemplation about knowledge. Gettier presents a refutation to the Justified True Belief account by stating that a JTB could be true by luck. On the other hand, Hetherington is saying that someone can be lucky to form a belief that happens to be true. Therefore, Hetherington concludes that a person came “close to lacking knowledge.” This wording makes the concept unclear. Does he still have knowledge even if its luckily? It says that he came close to lacking knowledge, implying that he does not lack knowledge- so he must have knowledge. Still, is it necessary to say that he came close to not knowing something if there was no luck involved? With all these contemplations about knowledge, it is difficult to define knowledge.