Is Justified True Belief Knowledge example essay topic

Epistemology is he study of our right to the beliefs we have. In a broader sense, we start from what we call our cognitive stances, and ask whether we are justified to have these stances. When discussing cognitive stances, we must include both our beliefs as well as what we take to be our knowing. At an even deeper level we examine our attitudes towards the various strategies and methods we use to get new beliefs and filter out old ones.

Epistemology is concerned then with whether we have acted responsibly or irresponsibly in forming the beliefs we have. Based on this process, we ultimately want to find true knowledge or justified belief. Traditionally, there are four sources of knowledge; sensation, memory, introspection, and reason. The one source of knowledge that I am particularly interested in discussing and examining is reason.

The activities of reason are dualistic in nature. First, there is inference, in which we move from old knowledge to new knowledge. The strongest form of this is valid deductive inference, which occurs when it is not possible that our premises are true of our conclusion is false, but I will deal with this more clearly later. The second activity of reason is the discovery of new truths.

Such a truth that can be discovered by the activity of reason alone is called an a priori truth, and knowledge of it is a priori knowledge. One of the most alluring and great questions in epistemology is how a priori knowledge is possible, and what sorts of truth can be known in this way. Some propositions are true in virtue of their meaning alone. For example, look at the proposition; all bachelors are people.

We know this truth to introspection and / or to memory. So, we know it by reason, but such analytic propositions are trivial and give us substantial knowledge. "Can reason give us substantial knowledge of anything, or is all a priori knowledge analytic and therefore trivial". In examining knowledge, the general consensus by philosophers and theorists is that true belief is a necessary condition for knowledge, and it was once thought that justification, when added to true belief, yields a necessary and sufficient condition for knowledge. Its sufficiency however, was disproved by Edmund Gettier.

My purpose of this paper, is two look at the dualistic relationship, if any, of these two aspects (A Priori Knowledge and Gettier cases) and there agreement with justified true belief and ultimately knowledge. I ask myself; is it possible to have a priori Gettier cases? Cases in which a person has an a priori justified true belief, but does not have knowledge. And then, does it make a difference whether the true belief is arrived at by inference or direct intuition? Intuitively, I tend to lean towards supporting a priori Gettier cases by the means of either inference or direct intuition.

At the end of the day, I must draw conclusions based on undeniable facts. Facts, that in no way can be false. I would then have to say that it is, in fact, not possible to have a priori Gettier cases and yes, it does matter whether one draws true belief from inference rather than direct intuition in order to obtain knowledge. After giving a bit of background on both a priori knowledge and Gettier's view on the relationship of true belief and knowledge, I feel obligated to clarify these two aspects more delicately. First looking at a priori knowledge and then Gettier's view, specifically, the problem of sufficiency of knowledge.

Describing a priori knowledge more thoroughly, we can start by looking at the word itself, which literally means prior to experience. Something that we know without any experience, whether it be direct or indirect, no empirical process justifies you knowing a specific proposition. But one must not get the term, a priori, confused with that of something innate. By no means is a priori something that a person is born with or given to by say some devine being.

My personal view regarding a priori knowledge is that it does not exist at all, even though, at first glance or prima facie, I tend to think otherwise. For example, in the matter of logic and mathematics, where a priori claims are most evident, such propositions can be said; '2+2 = 4' 'nothing can be red and green all over at the same time' 'every event must have a cause' etc., These are seemingly intuitively impossible to grasp empirically, yet on the contrary, they tend to justify a priori knowledge. After examining such statements, in particular, those of mathematics, given that they are much more relatable to me, I conclude that this knowledge may be justifiable through experience. It is just the fact that our human minds can't ascertain it. These thoughts are beyond our mental limitations. In support, I turn to the example of Euclidean geometry.

Bonjour states, "Since geometry had been taken for centuries to be the very paradigm of a priori knowledge, the advent of non-Euclidean geometries and the apparent discovery that Euclidean geometry, far from being unchallengeable justified and indeed certain on an a priori basis, was in fact false - indeed that his could seemingly be shown empirically". Even though Bonjour actually rejects this claim and intends to defend a priori knowledge. I can't ignore this fact. It was just a matter of time before we looked at geometry differently. I think this holds true to other aspects as well or if not, it is just the simple fact that our minds cannot wrap around such propositions and prove them such as justified true knowledge. In Edmund Gettier's quest for knowledge he examines the aspect of sufficiency through dissecting and observing proofs.

He explains in, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" : 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: a. S knows that P IFF i. P is true, ii. S believes that P, and. S is justified in believing that P. For example, Chisholm has held that the following gives the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge: b.

S knows that P IFF i. S accepts P, ii. S has adequate evidence for P, and. P is true. Ayer has stated the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge as follows: c. S knows that P IFF i.

P is true, ii. S is sure that P is true, and. S has the right to sure that P is true. I shall argue that (a) is false in that the conditions stated therein do not constitute a sufficient condition for the truth of the proposition that S knows that P. The same argument will show that (b) and (c) fail if 'has adequate evidence for' or 'has the right to be sure that' is substituted for 'is justified in believing that' throughout. 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 Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition: d. Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket. 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: e.

The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. 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. 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 ( ) 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 Inlet us suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following proposition: f. Jones owns a Ford. Smith's evidence might be that Jones has at all times in the past within Smitb'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: g. Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston. h. Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona. i. Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk. 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. 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 ( ) Smith is justified in believing that (h) is true. 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. Gettier showed by his counter-example and reasoning that the traditional definition of knowledge is insufficient; there are cases where the three clauses are all true, but S does not know.

The general idea was that one's true belief might be justified in a way that depends too much on luck. An example that is appealing to me because of its easy applicable illustration is the witnessing of the hands moving on a clock. When a clock, which is normally accurate happens to have stopped, but its hands indicate the very time at which one glances at it. Obviously, this happens by chance, and although your belief is true and justified, you do not obtain knowledge.

After looking at Gettier's argument, I have no reason to believe that he is wrong in that just because you have justified true belief in p, you cannot say that you know p. After presenting both a priori knowledge and Gettier's thoughts on knowledge and my personal responses to both, we must now see how they are related to one another, if at all. When combining my feelings on the two subjects, I would have to say that it is not possible to have an a priori Gettier case. My reasoning is because a priori knowledge cannot validly exist and that only empirical evidence is convincing with regards to our present world and limitations. Correspondingly, one cannot obtain knowledge from something that does not exist, in this case, a priori knowledge. This does not deny the fact that one can still obtain justified true beliefs, but it must be supported empirically with rational evidence, and for our purposes, take place in our "present world and limitations".

In conclusion, a priori knowledge is not sufficient enough to justify knowledge. Since this argument can be made, as we are well aware of, in reading Laurence Bonjour, In Defense of Pure Reason, I must address the topic of inference versus direct intuition as acceptable means of reasoning with respect to a priori knowledge and Gettier cases. I personally think these methods of reason are mute, since I reject the claim that a priori Gettier cases cannot exist and obviously, there is no need to examine such methods. Although with regards to the search of true knowledge, I think they definitely need to be addressed and defined. Intuition, by definition, is a mode of understanding or knowing characterized as direct and immediate and occurring without conscious thought or judgment.

Generally speaking, you can break down intuition into two distinct connotations. The first, being a process which is unmediated and somehow mysterious. Secondly, intuition can be explained as a response to subtle cues and relationships apprehended implicitly. Throughout history, the latter has seemed to be more reasonable through studies of implicit learning and learning without awareness. While the former, rather unscientific, seems to be more acceptable and common sensi cal. Again, I am hesitant not to support such a method of reasoning because it is so hard to prove or justify beyond reasonable doubt.

This then brings me to inspect the definition of inference. Inference can be better explained as deduction, a process of drawing a conclusion. In philosophy, more specifically logic, the result of deriving a conclusion from a set of premises including a conclusion that is probable in relation to the premises. A famous philosophical example is to look at the following premises; (1) All men are mortal and (2) Socrates is a man, and then inferring or deducing the conclusion that (3) Socrates is mortal. I think it is rather apparent that inference can be more justifiable to that of intuition since you can look at premises, for example, and then draw conclusions. This process is an empirical one whether the proposition given to you is presently justified by experience and / or built from a past experience.

This is obviously more plausible when it comes to Gettier cases, such as the Jones-Smith, or the Jones owns a Ford case. One is justified in believing that these conclusions are true, but still true knowledge isn't met. Though inference is a valid means of reason in this case, it cannot be one with regards to a priori Gettier cases since it is not possible to have one. In summary, I feel that both, Gettier's view of sufficiency in regard to the search of knowledge and a priori knowledge, are reasonable and helpful in trying to find true answers about the relationship of true belief and knowledge. Further, on one hand, I think Gettier proves his argument with a justified and reliable method, while on the other, a priori knowledge is too unclear even sometimes beyond our cognitive limitations.

Finally in relation to both the former and latter, I examined inference versus intuition and discovered the following. Inference or deduction, which is very evident in Gettier cases as a significant step in understanding knowledge, results in clear hard evidence. Intuition, on the contrary, though it is hard to dismiss since it seems so natural to us, however when reaching undeniable evidence for knowledge, it is not sufficient enough.