In this week\u2019s reading of What is this thing called Knowledge<\/i> 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<\/i>. 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\u2019s look at an example for better clarification.<\/p>\n
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).<\/p>\n
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\u2019s cases: fallibility and luck. In his examples with two cases, he argues that \u201cthe combination of truth, belief, and justification does not entail the presence of knowledge\u201d (Hetherington).<\/p>\n
As an example for Gettier\u2019s arugment, what if Matt was actually holding a pen that looked like a pencil? This statement totally contradicts Jong\u2019s belief. However, if a student other than Matt happened to have a pencil, then it is out of pure luck that Jong\u2019s belief is, in fact, true and justified. However going with Gettier\u2019s argument, this cannot be considered as \u201cknowledge\u201d because it was out of luck that Jong\u2019s JTB was in fact true.<\/p>\n
In another class reading by Feldman, Meyers and Stern argued that if the principle (ex. Jong\u2019s 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 \u201cthere are examples that do not rely on this false principle\u201d (Feldman 68).<\/p>\n
To fully understand what Feldman is saying, let\u2019s go back to the example. Let\u2019s say that Matt is not holding a pencil, but a pen that looks like one. For this example, Meyers and Stern would say Jong\u2019s JTB in (c) is false because the principle is false. However, what if Jong generalizes a statement that he deduced from (a)?<\/p>\n
Someone in Jong\u2019s class told him that someone in Jong\u2019s class has a pencil, and that person is very good friend of Jong, who he trusts (d).<\/p>\n
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\u2019t know (c) (Feldman 69).<\/p>\n
An outside source was found to see the arguments that went against the Gettier\u2019s cases. Hetherington proposed a contrary interpretation of luck, as he calls this interpretation the Knowing Luckily Proposal <\/i>(Hetherington). He gives an example by reinstating Gettier\u2019s Case I. Hetherington states that Smith is lucky to have a belief that whoever gets the job will have ten coins in the person\u2019s pocket (which happened to be true). This does not mean that Smith is lacking knowledge, but rather came close to lacking knowledge<\/i> (Hetherington). So he concludes that \u201cbecause Smith would only luckily have that justified true belief, he would only luckily have that knowledge.\u201d (Hetherington). I found this interesting because this proposal directly goes against Gettier\u2019s reason for refuting the JTB Account.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s going to happen in the future?<\/p>\n
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Sources:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.iep.utm.edu\/gettier\/<\/a> (by Hetherington)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In this week\u2019s 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 … Continue reading Defining Knoweldge<\/span>