Michael XXXXX

PHIL201 – D10-201030
Discussion Board #4

Once upon a time, knowledge was defined as justified true belief. Justified true belief
essentially states that for someone to have knowledge of something, it must be true, it
must be believed to be true, and the belief must be justified. However, after two thousand
years of being allowed to have justified true beliefs, a fly was inserted in the ointment.
The way I understand it, in 1963, Edmund Gettier made a name for himself by essentially
being the person who thought up “infinity … plus ONE!” According to Gettier, adding
non-essential, irrelevant facts to a proposition changes the truth of it. For a pragmatist,
these non-essentials have no bearing on the actual, utilitarian truth and should be
discarded, but the solution is not so clear cut for most people, even for many pragmatists.
Gettier problems attempt to prove that we can never be sure of our knowledge or of the
facts of the world; in other words: just a long name for agnosticism.

No matter how much my belief is justified, there will still be instances of coincidental
correctness, aka “dumb luck” or even “epistemic luck.” Philosophers Keith Lehrer and
Thomas Paxson (1966) proposed that knowledge should be considered “undefeated
justified true belief," but there will always be potentially defeating information “out
there” in the world. Knowledge must be flexible enough to be modified as we learn new
things. In Gettier problems, facts that are useful and relevant are covered over with extra
layers of unknowable information that serves no other purpose than to attempt to see how
many angels we can set dancing on the head of a pin. I don’t feel the Gettier problems are
valid arguments against immediate knowledge, which is what the Gettier-problem
characters have.

Knowledge regarding the future is often added to Gettier problems. We cannot know the
future; it would be foolish to buy a new car because you “know” you’re going to win the
lottery. Gettier problems also showcase a lack of knowledge of the present. We are to
believe that knowledge is flawed because we cannot account for accidental facts, i.e. the
ten coins in the pocket or the friend in Barcelona. For the broken clock, the time
displayed is still correct knowledge, and should be counted as such. The reason you
believed – and your belief was correct and justified – is a causal answer. Jim Pryor
(2002), Associate Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, says, “Many philosophers (have)
started suggesting that we shift our attention to the things that cause our belief, instead of
the evidence that rationalizes our belief." If Smith believes someone in his office drives a
Ford, and he has received numerous rides in a Ford from his co-worker, Bill Itsmine, who
has stated repeatedly that he owns the car, and who even showed Smith the ownership
papers after he finished paying the car loan, then Smith’s belief has a causal explanation.
It is undefeated justifiable truth. If Itsmine sells the car or gets fired, the facts, and hence
the knowledge, will change, but Smith’s immediate knowledge at this time is undefeated.

In the end, we know what we know because we know it. Many attempts to define
knowledge end up in circles; there may never be a complete and accurate definition. For
me, I can agree with author Cary Cook’s (2003) definition of immediate knowledge: “that
by which a mind is certain that it exists, thinks, perceives, and emotes. It is necessarily
correct, necessarily certain, and requires no underlying reasoning on which to be based."

Sources:
Lehrer, K. and T. Paxson. (1966) “Knowledge: Undefeated Justified True Belief.” The
Journal of Philosophy 66: 225-237.
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/stable/pdfplus/2024435.pdf

Jim Pryor. (2002) “Theory of Knowledge: The Gettier Problem.”

http://www.princeton.edu/~jimpryor/courses/epist/notes/gettier.html

Cary Cook. (2003) “KNOWLEDGE Definition.”

http://www.sanityquestpublishing.com/essays/knowledgedefinition.html

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