[From
Analysis, 23 (1963):
121–123. The author (b. 1927) is a professor emeritus of philosophy at
Brown
University. The three-page article here reproduced was one of the
most widely cited publications in the
English-speaking philosophical world in the later twentieth century; no
philosopher of recent times has won so much attention through so small
a publication. (Gettier, so far as I know, never published anything
else.) The notes are by the author.] |
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EDMUND GETTIER Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? |
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1 |
Various
attempts have been made in recent years to state
necessary
and sufficient conditions for someone’s knowing a given proposition.
The attempts have often been such that they can be stated in a form
similar to the following:1
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2 |
I shall begin by noting two points. First, in that sense of ‘justified’ in which S’s being justified in believing P is a necessary condition of S’s knowing that P, it is possible for a person to be justified in believing a proposition that is in fact false. Secondly, for any proposition P, if S is justified in believing P, and P entails Q, and S deduces Q from P and accepts Q as a result of this deduction, then S is justified in believing Q. Keeping these two points in mind, I shall now present two cases in which the conditions stated in (a) are true for some proposition, though it is at the same time false that the person in question knows that proposition. | |||||||||
Case I: |
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3 |
Suppose
that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job.
And
suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive
proposition:
Smith’s evidence for (d) might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would in the end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Jones’s pocket ten minutes ago. Proposition (d) entails:
Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the grounds of (d), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (e) is true. |
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4 |
But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket. Proposition (e) is then true, though proposition (d), from which Smith inferred (e), is false. In our example, then, all of the following are true: (i) (e) is true, (ii) Smith believes that (e) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (e) is true. But it is equally clear that Smith does not know that (e) is true; for (e) is true in virtue of the number of coins in Smith’s pocket, while Smith does not know how many coins are in Smith’s pocket, and bases his belief in (e) on a count of the coins in Jones’s pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job. | |||||||||
Case II: |
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5 |
Let
us suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the
following proposition:
Smith’s evidence might be that Jones has at all times in the past within Smith’s memory owned a car, and always a Ford, and that Jones has just offered Smith a ride while driving a Ford. Let us imagine, now, that Smith has another friend, Brown, of whose whereabouts he is totally ignorant. Smith selects three place names quite at random and constructs the following three propositions:
Each of these propositions is entailed by (f). Imagine that Smith realizes the entailment of each of these propositions he has constructed by (f), and proceeds to accept (g), (h), and (i) on the basis of (f). Smith has correctly inferred (g), (h), and (i) from a proposition for which be has strong evidence. Smith is therefore completely justified in believing each of these three propositions. Smith, of course, has no idea where Brown is. |
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6 |
But imagine now that two further conditions hold. First, Jones does not own a Ford, but is at present driving a rented car. And secondly, by the sheerest coincidence, and entirely unknown to Smith, the place mentioned in proposition (h) happens really to be the place where Brown is. If these two conditions hold, then Smith does not know that (h) is true, even though (i) (h) is true, (ii) Smith does believe that (h) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (h) is true. | |||||||||
7 |
These two examples show that definition (a) does not state a sufficient condition for someone’s knowing a given proposition. The same cases, with appropriate changes, will suffice to show that neither definition (b) nor definition (c) do so either. | |||||||||
NOTES |
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1.
Plato seems to be considering some such definition at Theaetetus
201, and perhaps accepting one at Meno 98. [RETURN] |
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2.
Roderick M. Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1957), p. 16. [RETURN] |
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3.
A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1956),
p. 34. [RETURN] |