The Gettier Problem Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The Gettier Problem - Essay Example Gettier’s argument says that it is possible that a person believes in something that is justified as well as wrong at the same time. One flaw is that Gettier’s argument can lead us to cynicism because it is evident from our everyday lives that it is hardly the case when something is justified by satisfactory evidence that fulfills all philosophical rules of relevant evidence. Gettier wrote his 1963 paper refuting the ‘Justified true Belief’ JTB. If Gettier’s paper is considered true than JTB nullifies but the following example exposes cracks in Gettier’s paper. S knows that P if and only if; ïÆ'Ëœ S believes P ïÆ'Ëœ P is true ïÆ'Ëœ S is justified in believing P ïÆ'Ëœ And P causes S to believe in P This example excludes the example of Gettier. And doesn’t believe in something as a given fact, for instance if there is a group of people and one person out of the group happens to be Brazilian, the above example cannot give me the position to state that I know that someone out of this group is a Brazilian since this fact will not be my cause for knowing. In his paper, is justified true belief knowledge of 1963, Edmund Gettier raised a problem which he argued and viewed in the traditional knowledge theory. Many attempts by a number of epistemologists have failed, for example, Thomas Paxson and Keith Lehrer put across a theory, which utilized the defeasibility argument to attempt solving the Gettier problem (Lehrer and Paxon 225- 237). In my opinion, Gettier’s problems possibly cannot be beaten of defeated on the basis of principles because in order to understand these problems one has to consider the premise of these problems as true, as it will explained later in this paper that Gettier only plays with the justification and the truth. And it is evident that there is a very fine line between the justification and the truth. Moreover, there is always a certain level of truth to be accepted by a prudent person. For instance, if we all agree to the fact that a billiard ball is round, the question is, is it really round in shape? Students of physics might know that when things are observed at molecular levels, the shapes and boundaries of objects are very different from what they were previously considered. So a billiard ball might not be exactly round at a very fine microscopic or atomic level. Similarly if we Gettier’s problems are considered a law or considered sufficient enough to define knowledge th en the shape of the earth can be figured out by a bowling ball. For instance it is a common observation that a bowling ball is considered heavy and it is common sense that earth is holding all forests, water, land and mountains, and is also a very heavy object. Now the bowling ball is round in shape, therefore we can conclude that the earth is also round in shape. I believe that it satisfies Gettier’s problem but this is infect a terrible logic, there is no relevance between the two objects. If only such premises are considered then earth would be shaped like a washing machine because a washing machine is heavy too. One of the many objectives of epistemologists is to come up with a theory of knowledge that specifies the necessary conditions for knowledge. Traditionally, scientists have only agreed to three of these conditions, and they include p is true, s believes in p, and s has a justification to believe in p. according to the theories, if the theories satisfied the condit ions then one could say that s knows p. but then Gettier came along with his arguments. In his arguments, he proposed to counterarguments to the traditional conditions, where the theory