Reference no: EM1386704

Discussing the Gettier Problem -

The solution is a philosophical discussion responding to the a take on Edmund Gettier's views below:

With Edmund Gettier's paper, he sparked a time of innovative energy as many philosophers feverishly tried to counteract what he had, in a sense, done and bring back that traditional sense of knowledge. However, I'm not sure there was any such success to those attempts but many different ideas and ways of thinking were thrown out so that the diversity was definitely there for someone to find something to hook with and relate to.

It is said that Gettier cases are meant to challenge our understanding of propositional knowledge, knowledge of truth or fact. One of the basic issues that everyone is able to relate to is when is a fact become a fact and when is it merely an opinion? Can only count something as knowledge only if someone believes it first to be true and then we know it is, in fact, true; however, they must also have reasons for their beliefs. So if the characters of the Gettier-type examples don't have knowledge, then they only have the "knowledge of the heart", in other words their opinions.

"Do you think that Gettier's counterexamples to "justified true belief" are valid?" Well why not? For instance, one example that I found dealt with "Smith" applying for a job. But it was claimed as a justified belief that "Jones" would get the job. Smith had the justified belief that Jones had 10 coins in his pocket and, therefore, concludes that the man who has 10 coins in his pocket will get the job. As it turns out Smith does in fact get the job, and by some turn of events does have 10 coins in his pocket. Therefore, Smith's belief that the man who has 10 coins in his pocket will get the job was in fact justified and true. But is this knowledge? Gettier would of course say no. This is not True knowledge, but instead knowledge of chance or accident. This is knowledge that ended up being true, but can't be considered what is representative of what is True and factual.

However to truly know something means we have to first seek it out (if we are going about it the right way and not the accidental knowledge way). The inquiry sinks in and the thought processes thus begin. We used our rationality as well as many of our senses to then discern that knowledge and make it into something. I would perceive that it one would actually "know" something when it is validated and justified by other minds than just the one mind, who originally was the one to seek out that knowledge.