Is it useful to view human behaviour this way? — Mikie

Depends on what goals/result one is after. Yes, one can learn more about human behaviour by viewing it this way, but such academic knowledge is perhaps not the goal. — noAxioms

Beliefs can be embedded to the point of being instincts. Or traditions. Or superstitions. Or habits. Or, rarely, reasoned and practiced efforts. — Pantagruel

It depends what counts as useful, what goals one has in mind. Or there is the point that common life often attributes beliefs in circumstances when the philosophical paradigm of reasoned effort is clearly not plausible. At least, the philosophical paradigm focuses almost exclusively on beliefs that can be expressed in language by the believer with an occasional condescending nod to animals. But common sense attributes a wide range of beliefs to animals, not to mention infants who have not yet learned language. So perhaps academics would do well to take the issue seriously.

Not that it is particularly easy. The range of what might be considered embedded beliefs is very wide and it is unlikely that they will all fall into the same classes when accounts of them are given. In other words, much might depend on how you define "embedded".

Take the "seeking and sucking" behaviour of a new-born mammal. It certainly seems to be embedded but I would be reluctant to attribute that to a belief; it seems more plausible to classify it as a reflex, which will, no doubt, soon become a conditioned reflex. Its origin, presumably, will be genetic, since evolution must surely favour the new-born with a seeking and sucking reflex over one that doesn't; hence, an instinct. The ability to form conditioned reflexes itself must surely also have a genetic, and therefore an evolutionary, basis, though I'm not sure I would call it an instinct. Why not? I don't know. But I do know it is purposive, even though not an action in the paradigm sense.

Habits are another interesting kind of case. Is stopping at a red light a reflex or a habit or an action. Take stopping at a red light; I can think of reasons why it might be classified as any of those - it depends on the circumstances.

Mikie's example is different from either of these and no doubt will need a different kind of explanation, again.

Traditions and superstitions are in a different class, I suppose. But actions in accordance with them do not, in my opinion, qualify as paradigm cases of actions.

:smile:

Well, how about starting with this:-

Starting with two observations:-

First, our ways of talking about actions constitute a language game, a practice and a (let's say) paradigm. Part of this paradigm is the idea that an action is explained (on one level) by the idea of a reason for doing something. "Believe" (and other words) play a part in this because they identify (potential or actual) the reasons for a particular agent doing something.

Second, although one can, for some purposes, think of language as consisting of propositions or, better, the equipment for constructing expressions of propositions, it is nothing without its practice, i.e. people uttering sentences. (The best definition for me is that a proposition is a sentence with its use in a context that includes actual and/or potential audiences.) In some uses, that is not very relevant, but in the case of "believe" and "know" it is very relevant.

Returning to our original case

Suppose our long-suffering farmer stands by the gate to his field, looking out over it. Without speaking, he turns, goes back to his Land-Rover and emerges with a length of rope. He comes back, opens the gate and walks out into the field towards a piece of cloth. How do we make sense of his action? We know a good deal about him, so I say to you that he believes that the piece of cloth is a cow that is in the wrong place and he is going to rescue her and return her to her right place. This has nothing to do with anything that it is in his mind, though we could infer something about what he would say if we asked him. But this is not about what he would say; it is about what he is doing.

I'm afraid I got lost in the business about where Michael was born, so I won't comment on that, beyond saying that the propositions (!) you were discussing are clearly in a network and the relationships between them are quite complicated and even more complicated if you include "believes" in the mix.

I haven't worked out exactly how this would apply to Gettier cases, except that Gettier treats beliefs as if they were in precise correlation with propositions and as if propositions presented themselves one by one in a neat row and I don't really accept either proposition (!!)

There are lots of questions and obscurities, but perhaps that it is basis for discussion?

The main objection that I levy against current convention is that the conventional notion of belief as propositional attitude cannot bridge the evolutionary gap between language and language less creatures' beliefs. — creativesoul

I agree that there is a problem about that, and that it is annoying. I suppose it is inevitable that philosophers who believe that philosophy is all about language will tend to focus on language. But I agree that it is clear that dogs and horses etc. do have beliefs even though they cannot express them in language. They express them through their actions and reactions - non-verbal behaviour. That does mean they do have ideas and concepts.

I use the term "propositional attitude" because it groups together a collection of terms with a common feature - a "that" clause - (grammatically known as indirect speech, which it can be, but isn't always). That group starts with "believe" and "know" but there are many others. They are mostly to do with cognition, which is why they are philosophically interesting.

But I'm not a fan of the concept of a "proposition" for several reasons, one of which is that the crtterion of identity seems to be that two sentences with the same meaning express the same proposition. But that is a very weak criterion and I notice that philosophers very seldom, if ever, rely on it. There's a particular problem about this criterion because it is not clear whether two sentences that are logically related express the same meaning.

One result of this is the colour exclusion problem, much pondered by Wittgenstein between the two world wars in the first half of the last century. "This is red all over" and "This is blue all over" clearly do not express the same meaning, but are nonetheless logically related, because each excludes the other, that is it logically follows from "This is red all over" that it is not blue anywhere. Hence, Wittgenstein concluded, propositions are organized into systems and one specific proposition gets its meaning from its relationshipi to the other propositions in the system. Hence, the abandonment of logical atomism and the development of the concept of language games.

When you translate all of that into the context of belief or knowledge, it becomes something of a mess. I'm not altogether convinced by your way of handling it; it has admirable clarity and certainty, but I think it is too rigid to cope with the complexities of the language game with propositional attitudes, specifically the fact that the appropriate expression of a belief is affected not only by the believer, but also by the person uttering the sentence/proposition and by who is receiving it.

Whether you agree or not, I hope that is reasonably clear.

Reading this discussion has been an interesting and instructive experience. I hope I won't be messing up the discussion if I add some comments.

Philosophical discussion often sets its terms around theism, with atheism as its opposite and religion as its subject. But I think that the focus on God misses the point. A religion (or sect) is a way of life, and it is as much about what one does as what one believes. Nonetheless, since the beliefs add up to a way of thinking about the world and the concept of God is meant to be a foundation of that, the beliefs are important. Beliefs and actions interact of course, so there is no separation, just a complexity. The social conditions in which the religion must exist are, of course, an additional complexity.

Not that science and religion are incompatible. There are, are there not, many people who are scientists and have a religious belief. We tend unthinkingly to adopt the idea that there is some sort of competition between the two. This serves the purposes of extreme atheism but is a really relic of ancient battles which do not need to be fought any longer. There are plenty of conceptions of God that allow for peaceful co-existence, from science as reading the mind of God via God as the sustainer of all natural laws to "God, or Nature".

Is science a way of looking at and living in the world - in short a way of life? It seems to have many of the features.

Could atheism be considered a religion? I don't think it is associated with any particular way of life, so my answer is no.

Having said that a religion is a way of life, it does seem to me that, whatever a religion aims to be, it becomes a field across which the tendencies of human nature play out. Sectarian divisions often reflect a personality type, (fundamentalism, liberalism, and so forth) so what exactly the way of life of Christianity (for example) is, becomes difficult to discern.

One problem that I've been worrying about a great deal lately is this. Each religion sets out to be a complete way of life and sees no need to make room for alternative belief-systems. Since it is set up as a minority in a hostile environment, that seems inevitable. Exclusivity is common to all (or at least many) of them. Add to this the belief that the real foundation of religious belief is not argument or evidence or any of that. It is faith (or perhaps "commitment"). What bother is me is that "othering" non-believers seems to be inherent in that. (Hume's argument against miracles - section 10 in the Enquiry - is a good example, if you read it carefully to the end.) So intolerance seems built in. I realize that in practice many religious people are perfectly, generously, tolerant. But the tendency seems built in and history seems to show that it will surface from time to time.

I think of it more as an executive function that can assume control. — Pantagruel

OK. But that assumes some kind of continuous monitoring, doesn’t it?

I believe, that to say my actions were caused by an addiction, or by some physical event, rather than admitting that it was my will, is just to try and make an excuse for one's wrongful actions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Pantagruel said something similar somewhere in the discussion. Well, to me, that doesn’t explain anything and justifies a most unhelpful dismissive attitude to people who are wrestling with what they experience as a great difficulty. You and Pantagruel are entitled to your beliefs. But since you don't want to accept any involvement in their problems, what you believe doesn't really matter.

However, whenever things are being carried out for a purpose, implying the existence of intention, then the will is active. This would include things like breathing, and the beating of the heart. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK. But then what is the role of consciousness? And what makes this will my will? Why can’t my heart and lungs just get on with what they need to do? (Breathing, of course is more complicated than the heart, but there are lots of other things that are fully automatic, like digestion.) In my book, my heart-beat is not a freely willed act and even though it has a purpose, it is certainly not intentional (or unintentional). To put the point another way, my impression is that the will as the source of action was designed to distinguish between conscious and unconscious action, on the basis that distinction would explain why some of the things that go on are free and others are not, and this explained what we are responsible for and what we are not responsible for. On this account, the will no longer identifies that distinction and no longer answers those questions.

The point is that to be consistent, the will must always be the cause of action. It would make no sense to say that sometimes the will causes a human action, and sometimes it did not. Then we'd have to differentiate between which actions are caused by the will, and which actions are caused by something else. In reality though, we see that all human actions have a similar source, and it is not the case that some are derived from one place, and others from another place — Metaphysician Undercover

That depends on how you define an action. I thought that the point of the concept of the will was to distinguish between actions, which can be free, and "events" caused by something else, which can’t; that’s why we are reluctant to call the latter “actions” at all. Of course, there are many complex cases and so we sometimes stretch the term. It may be true that all human actions have similar sources, but it does not follow that they all have the same source. My observation is that actions are not all alike, but have different reasons, values, aims, objectives and purposes.

Each set of circumstances at each moment of time is unique. . . . . . — Metaphysician Undercover

I guess there is a paradox involved here, in that two things that cannot be discerned as distinct must be the same thing and, contrariwise, if two things can be discerned as separate, they must be two things, not one. It then seems as if the only true or real case of identity is a thing’s identity with itself, which is a limiting case and not typical. You can use the words that way if you choose to do so. But the standard use is different. When we say that two things are identical, we mean identical in relevant respects, (relevant means appropriate to the context). In a similar vein, we can justify applying a single general principle where situations are similar in relevant respects, because it is not merely useful but fundamental to understanding things.

I don’t think this is a question of true or false, right or wrong. Your way of describing things, like Punos’, has its advantages. For example, it gives a basis for respecting everything in the world and that would be a great improvement in the way that humans live; exploiting the planet’s resources and dominating each other and the non-human world are a big problems for us now. But I don’t think that’s enough to justify your approach, since it sweeps all differences and details under a carpet labelled “the will” and prevents understanding the phenomena in detail and working out what we can do something about and what we cannot change.

An observation: – we started out, didn’t we? – asking what the will is. We’ve identified lots of things that the will does. But have we answered the question what it is? In the case of the train driver, I can identify the driver independently of his activity. How can I identify the will? If we can't do that, then the will becomes just a disposition (or potentiality) to do certain things and a label for what we do not understand.

I hesitate to add to your discussion which is difficult enough already. But perhaps it has got to the point where there is not much to lose.

You seem to be disagreeing about the criteria of identity of beliefs. But there are none, so far as I know. People seem happy to accept that belief, like knowledge and a number of others, is a "propositional attitude" and I use that term because it groups together a number of concepts which have interesting features in common, as well as a striking grammatical feature - the "that" clause.

So it seems to be widely accepted that a belief is an attitude to a proposition, and hence that identity of proposition is the criterion of identity of beliefs. Fair enough. What is/are the criteria of identity for propositions? The only one that I've ever seen is sameness of meaning. And the criteria for that?

My point is that there are no criteria of identity for beliefs. The best I can do is define a proposition as a sentence together with its use in a given context. But then we have to face the fact that the context of a belief-sentence is complicated, so that we have to take account of, for example, the de dicto/de re distinction, where the speaker may be the believer, but may be someone reporting the believer's belief to someone else.

In spite of all this, I'm still confused about whether "John is a bachelor" and "John is unmarried and male" are the same proposition or different ones. A complicated definition may not be fully known or understood by a particular speaker, or a speaker may not be aware of the definition of various terms s/he uses, so you can't take for granted that the two sentences will mean the same to everyone.

Another feature which is not clear affects your discussion directly - and analysis of the Gettier problem. Standard definitions would say that the truth-conditions of a proposition/sentence are part of its meaning. It is perfectly possible that a proposition can be verified by quite a wide range of states of affairs, not all of which are required at the same time. So you might recognize me by my face or by my voice. If you recognize me by one of these - say my face - it is called a truth-maker or truth-making condition. Now, what is not clear whether the truth-maker on a particular occasion of a proposition is part of the meaning of the proposition in that use. If it is, I expect you can see that this dismembers a Gettier package so that the paradox does not work.

But your argument seems to be yet more complicated because it is a case like to the colour exclusion problem. Forgive me if you know about this already. It was the turning-point or the rock on which WIttgenstein eventually began to abandon the logical atomism of the Tractatus. In essence "this is red (all over)" and "this is blue (all over)" cannot both be true, yet they are not contradictory. Similarly, "Michael was born in France" and "Michael was born in Germany" exclude each other and yet are not contradictory. This problem is created by treating simple propositions as atoms, which are completely independent of each other, logically speaking. WIttgenstein finally developed the idea that propositions are not true or false independently, but as part of a system - i.e. there are no atomic propositions.

I've gone on for long enough, but I hope this helps to clarify why you could not agree.

I am asking whether the initiation of action goes like this, at least sometimes: -

(Act of Will) leads to (Reasoning) leads to (Act of Will) leads to (Judgement/Choice) leads to (Act of Will) leads to (Action)

Or a variation.

You say that the will is continuously active and even while asleep. That is a surprise to me. On the other hand, sleep is not like a coma, though there is a question whether what I do while asleep is really an action comparable to an action while conscious. Actually, I would think that when I do something absent-mindedly, my will not engaged (the clue is in “absent”), but I suppose you would disagree. I assume, though, that if someone is in a coma, you would agree that the will is not active.

But I don’t see what the activity of the will consists of once it has started an action off. Are you saying that the will is like the driver of a train, who always monitors, but only acts when required, or that it is like the driver of a car, who has to control the car every second it is moving? I assumed the will just gave a push to start things off and the action was performed without its intervention.

Two other points: -

1) I don’t think there is any problem about how habits are acquired. A repeated cycle of stimulus and response is enough. Pantagruel was right about that. Practice is needed for a different group of activities – skills. Admittedly they enable automatic actions and are displayed in specific circumstances, so they are like habits. Instincts are different and are often prompted by specific stimuli; in a sense, they are not actions, although, insofar as we can control them, our responses might be classified as actions.

2) I’m not at all sure that Plato’s "thumos" is equivalent to our will. For one thing, Plato does not think that "thumos" is the only precursor of action. "Epithumia" is another. But that’s a side-issue. It was a surprise that you think that my will doesn’t necessarily align with my desire. I think most people think of the times when physical events take over, as in addiction, extreme hunger, pain, what I then do is not done by me, hence not the result of my will.

I think that the role of belief is to believe accurately. So when people pour extravagant amounts of energy into defending the belief that the earth is flat, for example, they are mis-believing, or believing in bad-faith. — Pantagruel

Yes, that is a case where there are serious questions to be asked and there are conspiracy theories about that give me the same feeling. But I'm an agnostic, so I think that the amount of time and effort people spend on their religious beliefs is disproportionate. But I don't necessarily think that they are in bad faith. (I don't know what mis-believing means, I'm afraid.)

Yes, as I describe in people who can violently defend clearly absurd positions, will can be misused. For me, they would be self-consciously acting in bad-faith at some level. — Pantagruel

I'm not sure that I can be described as using or misusing my own will, because that implies an act of will as the beginning of the act of will, which will give rise to an infinite regress.

You are very trusting of people's rationality and your own if you are sure that people defending positions that you find absurd must be self-consciously acting in bad faith.

The judgement does not necessarily lead to further action, so it is not properly called an act willing. It is the result of an act, the effect, rather than the initiator, or cause of an act. The act of willing is properly positioned as prior to the reasoning process which result in the conclusion, as initiating, or causing that process. — Metaphysician Undercover

So the act of will starts a reasoning process which can lead to a judgement, but the judgement doesn't necessarily initiate any action. So is it correct to say any action must be initiated by another act of will? Does there have to be another reasoning process for this second act of will?

This leaves the will as separate, being the source of actuality, which is responsible for the act, as cause of it. — Metaphysician Undercover

So am I right to conclude that an act of will is necessary to start even a habitual action? So how come I find myself carrying out habitual actions even when I don't want to?

If I imagine myself driving a car along a road, I think of myself carrying out all sorts of actions, cognitive and executive, all of them habitual. Are they the result of a single act of will, for example wanting to go to the supermarket, or are there multiple acts of will? Does each adjustment of the steering wheel involve an act of will?

Forgive me if these questions are naive. This is new territory to me.

If we focus too closely on the idea of will - pure or not - we will simply circle round the mystery. If we explore allied topics, we will get a better perspective and maybe some enlightenment. But there is a lot going on here.

On altered states of consciousness, there are phenomena here and a self-certifying experience is hard to resist. But not all self-certifying experiences are what they seem, so both Zen and Carlos Castaneda (not that I would trust him very far) identify the need for a guide or guru. There's a similar story in connection with the introduction of LSD into Western Culture; the first pioneers thought that one should always have an experienced guide when taking it until one had acquired experience. It's a difficult choice to make, but if one can find the right person, outcomes will be better - or so it is said. The experience of total certainty also falls into this category.

In the end, it all comes back to ordinary life and the effect on the people around you.

The existentialists were right to high-light the importance of commitment (or leap of faith) as a way of dealing with the absurdity and confusion of the world as we are thrown into it. However, as far as I know, which is not far, they aren't very explicit about how commitment is reached. They seem to want to treat it as something that we can decide to do, but that doesn't make any sense to me; I'm inclined to see it as something that happens. We can decide to try to be committed, but whether that sticks or not is another question and only the outcome will answer it.

A leap of commitment is just as dangerous as being swept away by a self-certifying experience.

I'm not well read on Fichte, but the act of self-positing is important here. There is something that is right and important in this idea, but it would be a mistake to think that making oneself is anything like making a cake.

It seems to me that this is all the territory of the concept of will. The concept of the will encourages a strong focus on the individual as in control and capable of making choices. I feel that the role of the social and physical world in which we live in making us who we are is very important and should not be neglected.

Does that take us any further forward?

Intervention by someone else may or may not be helpful. But one can at least try.

There are great differences in the determination that people display in pursuing their aims and objectives. We often refer to that difference by talking about strength or weakness of will. But that, so far, is just a name. One wants an analysis of it. That’s where the mystery comes in.

It is odd, I think, that we usually seem to think that a strong will is a good thing and a weak will is a bad one. I’m not at all sure about that. It is easy to come up with examples in which a strong will is not a good thing, but actually destructive. If the determination of an addict or an obsessive to get or pursue whatever their object is the result of a strong will, it is clearly a bad thing. Yet I find it difficult to come up with examples in which a weak will is a good thing. Perhaps this is a side issue at this stage.

If the language we use in relation to actions is anything to go by, this is bound to be a complicated enterprise.

I can offer three observations which may or may not help.

1) Thinking about the will in relation to actions, it occurred to me that it is not always associated with determination. For example, if I’m willing to move to New York (in pursuit of career advancement), that is quite different from wanting to move to New York. If I’m just willing, I will move in pursuit of something, but I won’t necessarily actively pursue it. If I want to, I will actively pursue it. Again, if I’m offered a plate of cakes and point to one and say “I’ll have that one”, I’m not necessarily expressing any great determination. Or am I misinterpreting something?

2) The basics of motivation are values and reason, which together make up a practical syllogism. That seems quite clear. The mystery is, however, that one can put together a perfectly clear rationale for an action, but yet fail to undertake it. Sometimes, this can be explain by reference to priorities, but not always, as anyone who has tried to break a habit knows. Perhaps the will bridges that gap?

3) Do we need to understand the will in relation to all the other terms we have to point to the origin of actions – I mean wanting, wishing, desiring, yearning, intending and so on? Willing something doesn’t quite fit alongside them, which is puzzling. The closest I can think of is what people sometimes say about willing something to happen. The odd thing is, they usually say that when they can’t actually bring it about.

Does any of that help at all?

Aren't you forgetting that God loves us (at least the Christian God does - I don't know enough about the other candidates), even though that's an incomprehensible mystery. I'm sure you're familiar with the way that loving somebody makes everything they do and say fascinating.

I'm not sure whether to take Popper's remark seriously. Anyway, what he actually says is that the most improbable theory is to be preferred because it is the easiest to falsify. That's a good reason if one's project is to falsify theories. One could chalk up many successes quite quickly that way. However, colleagues might feel that I had misunderstood the point of research. But I suppose one might gradually zero in on something that was hard to falsify.

If Popper's point is that a good theory needs to take risks in order to score, there is something to be said for this. Safe theories are easy to construct, but not very helpful. Surely, in the end a theory needs to be assessed on its relation to the evidence and to the problems it is meant to solve. Wild guesses might meet Popper's criterion, but they wouldn't get far on the grounds that they are risky alone.

I've just spent 10 minutes trying to believe the theory that the moon is made of cheese. I couldn't. Does anyone know any exercises (apart from Lewis Carroll) that would help me improve?

Thanks very much for your explanation. It seems to me that is close to my approach, though I can't describe how it all fits together clearly.

"Of that piece of cloth" opens up another issue. I mean that as well as "believe of that piece of cloth", there is the use of believe as in "believe in". I'm not at all sure that either has any relevance to Gettier, and most people, confronted with them, want to reduce them to propositional beliefs of the traditional kind. I'm not at all sure about that. There are nuances going on here that I don't have any grip on.

I'm afraid I don't have any ideas about where we should go next.

I do understand and share the difficulty you have in fitting in the demands or ordinary life alongside pursuing philosophy. They explain why I sometimes disappear for a while. It's an inevitable part of the medium we are working in.

Smith believed the disjunction was true because Jones owned a Ford (because P was true). The disjunction was not true because P was true. It was true because Q was true. Smith's belief was false. — creativesoul

I agree with this. There's a question you don't include in your summary - whether Smith was justified in believing that Jones owned a Ford. Gettier's answer is that he was. That's the situation that generates the confusion that people feel about these cases.

Belief that "'P or Q' is true because P" is not equivalent to belief that "P or Q" is true. — creativesoul

But surely is one part of a disjunction is true, the whole disjunction is true. "Jones owned a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona" is true if Jones owned a Ford. Yes? Also "Jones owned a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona" is true if Brown is in Barcelona. Yes? That's all I'm saying.

Seems to me that all Gettier cases show problems with the conventional accounting practices. — creativesoul

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by conventional or unconventional accounting practices. Can you please explain?

I agree to the extent we can derogate to the de-dicto way of reporting beliefs, as explained. — neomac

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by the de dicto (or de re) way(s) of reporting beliefs. I do know what di dicto and de re mean. Can you please explain?

My apologies for not recognizing what all you've said here. — creativesoul

No problem. Thanks for your reply.

Ought we report what the farmer believes (that a piece of cloth is a cow), or what the farmer would likely say at that particular time (that he believes a cow is in the field)? — creativesoul

"Report" implies that we are talking to someone other than the farmer. So we report in the first way. If we were talking to the farmer, he would obviously not recognize what we would say. But to repeat to him the words he would use would suggest that we share his belief, so I can't use those. Before I can say anything to him, I have to ensure that we both understand the reference of the sentence. I must correct his mistake. “You know that cow in the field? Well actually it’s a piece of cloth.” or “I’m afraid that cow in the field is actually a piece of cloth” would do the trick.

I'm afraid I'm one of those who people who see every sentence as a (potential) speech-act so the context, including the audience, always needs to be considered.

I don't understand your diagnosis of Gettier's case 1. I think you've misremembered it. If I understand you rightly (and I'm not sure I have), your diagnosis of Case 2 is complicated by the fact that "P or Q" is true iff P is true or Q is true. So, according to Gettier and me, if Smith believes that P, they are justified in believing that P or Q. But, as you say P is false, yet, as Gettier tells us, Q is true. Smith's justification relies on P and the truth relies on Q. It's that mismatch that creates the problem. My solution to this example is to point out that Smith's justification fails and so he cannot know P or Q, which can be summarized as "no false lemmas".

I agree that at first sight it seems possible to construct an example without false lemmas. On second thought, however, I can't see how an example could be constructed without a false belief, so I am very sceptical of the possibility. There are some attempts, but they haven't convinced me.

In short, it seems to me that Gettier case ought to be possible. Perhaps the real Gettier problem is why it is so hard to develop one that commands general agreement or to articulate a general solution.

I used to think like you, but then I looked it up in a dictionary which clearly suggested two senses of justification.

Statistics - If something is 95% likely to happen, most people would consider themselves justified in predicting that it will happen, and most people will agree.

Or consider this. The standard format for establishing who committed a crime is means, motive, opportunity. Suppose I establish means and motive beyond doubt and establish that there is no evidence against opportunity. Not quite conclusive, but enough to justify belief - or so many people would say.

I'm not sure what the point of constructing another Gettier example would be. There are, I understand, 100 or more examples to be found in the literature already.

In any case, the template does not reflect their history (unwritten, so far as I know). You can see the changes (mostly unexplained, which is annoying) develop and evading one problem after another. For example, Gettier's own examples posit a conscious and deliberate process of inference, but later examples posit a perceptual basis, to avoid objections to that. Hence our discussion about a piece of cloth that's not a cow. But other examples posit a dog disguised as a sheep or a robot dog to get round objections - a different kind of mistake. Russell's clock and Havit's Ford try to get round mistaken perception altogether. The most recent example that I have seen posits a perfectly standard case of knowledge, which is subjected to a barrage of disinformation; "everybody" believes the disinformation, but our S misses the barrage and so only "knows" by luck. For my money, this isn't a Gettier case at all.

Long story short, after 60 years of trying no convincing Getter example has been produced. Experience suggests that they can't be. I can't help feeling that this is suggestive. Perhaps I'm not very good philosopher, but I'm inclined to predict that people are moving on.

That's why I think that talking about partial justification makes more sense in ordinary contexts as a way to acknowledge some limits in our cognitive competence. — neomac

I see your point. But there's an issue about how far philosophy needs to cater for ordinary use of words. For example, I have no doubt that someone who says "I knew that horse would win the race. A tipster told me so." did not know. That person is (misusing "know" to express subjective certainty and so undermining the distinction between knowledge and belief. But someone who claims to know on weak evidence.... that's a different issue. I don't think it is possible to develop a clear criterion.

I don't think we can escape the problem because knowledge based on statistics is everywhere in our lives.

I do think it is appropriate for philosophy to have criteria somewhat stricter than ordinary language but insisting that all justification is conclusive would result in two senses of "justification" and hence two senses of "know".

One point about the analysis I was offering is that it is deductively more palatable. Whenever we've talked about Gettier on the forum, or introduction is a real sticking point, and thus existential generalization is. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't teach logic and never have, but I do know that I had trouble accepting existential generalization, but I encountered it in the deduction from the particular to "some", and finally accepted it because "Daisy is in the field" clearly implies "There is one cow in the field" and I had to accept that "some" could include "one" at least for the purposes of logic; that then validated "There are some cows in the field". (Strictly, of course the fact that "cows" is in the plural excludes "one", so it was a stretch.) Anyway, once one has that, it is relatively easy to argue that "some" implies a disjunctive list of them.

I still feel uncomfortable with it, because there is something odd about saying that there is a cow in the field when you know perfectly well it is Daisy. One might do it if it would be a bit awkward to admit exactly what I'm going to the chemist for. But under normal circumstances, I think it is just weird. But logic doesn't take account of that.

I wouldn't discourage you from trying to construct a Gettier case that doesn't involve any false lemmas. The only one I've seen (and I've forgotten where I saw it, sadly) was clearly not a Gettier case. The problem for me is that one can construct an endless array of possibilities and lose the plot in the resulting complexity. Perhaps that's just me. I wish you luck.

I'm sorry, I just posted in reply to you but omitted to include a "reply to"

But let me add a comment on

In this case, it's the cow that he saw that establishes his conclusion that there's a cow in the field. He is mistaken about which cow he saw, but that doesn't undermine his conclusion. — Andrew M

Yes, I think I contradict myself in my account of this.

In this case, it's the cow that he saw that establishes his conclusion that there's a cow in the field. He is mistaken about which cow he saw, but that doesn't undermine his conclusion. — Andrew M

In the presented case, the farmer does misidentify the cow as Daisy, and so thinks that Daisy was the cause of his perception. — Andrew M

I'm sorry, I thought the causal theory of perception was about what actually caused the perception and that what the perceiver thought was the cause was not relevant. That's a very different theory.

Gettier certainly knew what he was talking about, if he was talking about logic. The question is, how far is formal logic relevant to this. IMO, formal logic contributes to the muddle and confusion that surrounds this.

Of course Gettier problems are real. The question is whether they have a solution.

If you can come up with an example in mathematics of a Gettier problem, then you will have demonstrated that his observations apply to mathematics.

I hear it's a 2.5k year old definition attributed to Socrates, no less. :chin: — Agent Smith

I'm afraid Socrates/Plato rejects the JTB definition. Check out the Theaetetus.

The target proposition is always false, one of which the believer cannot possibly be justified in believing. — creativesoul

The target proposition in the farmer example is "There is a cow in the field" and the story tells us that there is a cow in the field. How is that false? However, it is true that the farmer is not justified in believing it. But Gettier has an argument that he is justified in believing it nonetheless, so you need to show that argument is invalid. You are advocating a version of the "no False Lemmas" reply, which I agree with. I'm not clear whether you agree with my argument for that reply and it would be interesting to know whether you agree or have a different argument to refute Gettier's argument.

How to determine whether you were or were not "really" justified in believing P1 then? — Janus

There's no alternative to gathering as much information as you can and then deciding whether the failures were few enough to count as exceptions. There could not be a determinate answer to this, so the justification would be partial. So you could get it wrong and still be justified. That makes Gettier cases possible. (Actually, the doctor is almost certainly in the same situation, that the tests and evidence will only give their answer on the balance of probability.)

I believe he was. He does seem to have developed that sense of mischief that some logicians have. But there is some fun to be had, as well as the irritation.



It seems to me that some consensus is developing around No False Lemmas, and of course I agree with that. There are detailed points that could be made about each of your messages. But that would be too much work for me, and would likely make for a boring read, so I'll just make some general comments.

It has been suggested that NFL should be added to the definition, whether as a separate clause or a condition within another clause, probably J. I don’t think it is necessary to do that, because it is simply a result of getting straight about the logic of the existing rules.

It is tempting to think that when a flaw has been found in a bad argument, it is not necessary to pursue the matter further. But there is more than one problem with Gettier cases, and the expectation that they either meet the definition criteria or they do not is another one; the target proposition is always partly right and partly wrong. I think that recognizing this and allowing them (when and if they really exist) to sit in their own category is a perfectly reasonable position. Indeed, a special class has already been invented – “Gettier cases”. No more needs to be done.

My final point is this - The cases that we argue about take advantage of the context of telling a fictional story (which is a very complicated and paradoxical practice, if you think it through - far more complicated than telling lies) to put us in the curious situation of knowing something that is supposed to be unknown to anyone. Gettier cases rely on the various circumstances not being known to anyone, and so will in real life always exist unknown to anyone. As soon as they become known, they can be resolved, so I can’t see that they can be very important. Some people worry about this, but that's only because they can imagine something that's not known to anyone. That's not real life.

I agree with Srap Tasmaner. X's belief that C is true is not justified because P1 is false.

But you only take account of conclusive justification. The awkward bit in the Gettier cases is the possibility of partial justification.

I just posted a post in reply to Srap Tasmaner. I meant to copy you in because I thought you might be interested. Forgive me if I'm wrong.

(Srap Tasmaner) I think you are identifying the right problems, but I would suggest rather different solutions. I’m not happy with the causal theory of perception (though I’m not up to date with more recent ideas about it.) because what we see is so heavily dependent on interpretation, which doesn’t fit happily with causality.

Many Gettier problems depend on an inference typified by existential generalization in formal logic. We can infer from “Alice is in the field” to “There is a cow in the field” The catch is that if Alice is not in the field (or even if it isn’t Alice that the farmer saw), the inference collapses, and yet “Daisy is in the field” (if true) is a truth-condition for “There is a cow in the field.” The same applies if the farmer does not know which cow he saw or thought he saw. If the farmer saw a cow, there is a specific cow that he saw. If the cow that he doesn’t know about is the one that establishes the truth, then he didn’t know there was a cow in the field.

“A cow” is ambiguous between “a certain cow” and “a cow” as in “some cow or other”. If the farmer sees a cow, there is some specific cow that is seen, even if he doesn’t know which one it was; the scope of “a” is limited. However, suppose that the farmer has told one of his workers to put some cows in the field without specifying which ones or how many, and says to someone else “There is a (i.e. at least one) cow in the field.” That would be “cow” in the sense of “some cow or other”, which would be made true by any of the cows in the field, so it wouldn’t be a Gettier problem. The reason is that the scope of the justification matches the scope of the proposition. In Gettier cases, it doesn’t, and that’s the root of the problem. This may not apply to some cases proposed as Gettier cases, such as Russell’s clock. But those cases seem to me to have a different format.

I would like to pursue Gettier’s belief that it is possible to be justified in believing that p even when p is false. After all, this is where the door opens for Gettier cases.

Clearly, this falls away when justification is conclusive because falsity does not arise. (If one thinks one has a conclusive justification and it turns out that p is false, one needs to downgrade the justification to partial.)

Partial justification will undoubtedly always be more common than conclusive justifications, so it is worth considering in more detail than Gettier provides.

I can’t see that there is a problem with Gettier’s point when the falsity of p is merely a possibility. Even when p is false, but unknown to anyone, I can't see that it would affect anyone's belief or knowledge.

What matters is what happens when the falsity of p is known, and who knows it.

First, the clearest case. If S knows that p is false, S needs to consider this evidence in relation to the justification for believing that p. Since p is (by definition) conclusively false, the new evidence will outweigh any possible justification available to S, so S will cease to believe that p (or continue to believe that p on irrational grounds). In other words, S cannot believe that S is justified in believing that p and p is false; it is a variant of Moore’s paradox. Hence, of course, Gettier cases always specify that S does not know that p is false. (I have never seen this explained.)

Second, what happens when we know that p is false, but S doesn’t? Gettier cases never specify whether the falsity of p is known to anyone, but it has to be, because we could not appreciate the problem if we don’t. Can we, do we simply say that S is justified in believing p and p is false?

It seems pretty obvious that it is not entirely a matter for S to decide whether we accept his justification; if it were, then any old rubbish could be counted as a justification, and that’s precisely what the J clause was invented to exclude. So, if p is false, then either S’s evidence does not support p, or S’s evidence is false. So the fact that p is false does undermine S’s justification.

@creativesoul There certainly seems to be a problem about the farmer’s belief that a piece of cloth is a cow. You seem to be assuming that in reporting the farmer’s beliefs, you need to use words that he would have done, and he certainly wouldn’t have said that a piece of cloth was in the field. The tricky bit is that that is exactly how we would formulate his belief and we can’t say that there’s a cow in the field (unless we are referring to the cow that is in the field, which would be very misleading.)

First off, “see” is a factive verb. In reporting what people see, we need to report what they actually see, not what they think they see. When we report what they think they see, we have to make it clear, so we need to report, not that he sees a cow in the field, but that he believes he sees a cow in the field, or that he sees what he believes is a cow in the field.

We focus too much, in these discussions, on what people say in reporting their own beliefs. But that is only one way that people show what they believe. Their beliefs also show in what they do and in other things that they say. That’s how we know that he believes that a piece of cloth is a cow. But I would use that way of putting it only to other people, not to the farmer himself. Curiously, if I was telling the farmer about his mistake, I would say “you know that cow in the field? Well actually it’s a piece of cloth.” Or “I’m afraid that cow in the field is actually a piece of cloth”.

Or at least that’s my solution to your problem.

Everything can be identified under many descriptions. We use the one that is most appropriate for the context, including the method of identification that works for our audience. When we come to reporting the belief (and knowledge) of other people, we do not stick to the reference that they are using or would use; we use the reference that works for the audience we are reporting to. After all, the point is to enable our audience to understand.

It is complicated, so I hope this is reasonably clear.

1. Ronald Reagan's bulletproof limo deflected a bullet into his chest.
2. From wikipedia: Gettier created a tradition in the epistemology of JTB by destroying it. Justified False belief: "Gettier's formula creates a clear barrier in analyzing knowledge: Actuality: is a new area of epistemology for analyzing knowledge. Truth: the formula is a criticism of epistemology — introbert

Is it not ironic in the Gettier problem John thinks Jack will get the job and that he has ten coins in his pocket, so the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket, but in fact John gets the job but unknowingly also has ten coins in his pocket? — introbert

I see the story about Ronald Reagan as ironical in the first sentence, but if you consider the whole story, it isn't. The second similarly - the first sentence is ironical, but overall it is not. The last quotation is a version of Gettier's first example, and I agree that it is ironic. But none of the other examples deployed in these arguments seem at all ironic to me. It takes more than a discrepancy between idea and actuality to create an irony. The first two stories report an attempt to do one thing but achieving the opposite, which is similar. The Gettier example is similar. But I see the core or paradigmatic meaning of irony as saying one thing and meaning the opposite. One of the peculiarities of irony is that it enables us to say things that would be socially inappropriate to say in the context but in such a way that the underlying meaning can be detected, so it isn't really concealing anything.

I don't have a problem with anything you say. One could argue that philosophy is a context that does require relatively fixed meanings to what we say (unless you are Kierkegaard or Socrates) However, one of my complaints about the Gettier business is precisely that it pushes us to give a binary answer where it is not appropriate.

In that case it's better to "suspect" its P because the partial knowledge that you have doesn't exclude the possibility that thus potential P is indeed an actual P. — Benj96

Yes, it probably is wiser to suspect rather than believe. But it is the farmer to suspect or not, not us, and if the farmer decides to believe, it's up to him.

Further to the question whether justification needs to be complete or not, we've already discussed it, and I said: -

where justification falls short of certainty, it may be inappropriate (depending on the circumstances, such as what is at stake and the probability of error) to rely on it. I’ll admit that “justification” is sometimes used to mean “show” or “prove” and so requires certainty. But I also think that sometimes it is used to mean “reasonable”, which doesn’t. For what it’s worth, I think you’ll find that dictionaries agree. — Ludwig V

I don't have any serious problem with your suggestions. Since I'm suggesting a way that you could better reformulate your point, I think it's up to you if you want to use it with some changes.

But we need to keep clear whether we are talking about the J clause or the T clause. What you say is certainly relevant to the T clause, but if you are talking about the J clause, you are saying that S's justification must be conclusive if it is to satisfy the definition. That's controversial and Gettier does not accept it. So you need to explain why you reject Gettier's definition. Sadly, he doesn't explain his reasons for adopting it, so it's hard. I do accept Gettier's definition because your strict definition would rule out many ordinary uses of "know" and transform "know" into a jargon concept useful only to philosophers.

Is it not ironic in the Gettier problem John thinks Jack will get the job and that he has ten coins in his pocket, so the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket, but in fact John gets the job but unknowingly also has ten coins in his pocket? — introbert

In a sense, yes. (Though I seem to remember that Gettier bothers to tell us whether Smith has ten coins in his pocket.) But this irony is not fundamental to, or even characteristic of, Gettier problems.

The justified false belief that people should not use technology is falsified by the use of technology — introbert

There is an irony of a kind in this, but it is a not a very good argument, because the idea that people should not use any technology at all rules out clothes and simple tools like hammers and cooking. I'm certain that what these people mean is that people should not use certain technologies. So there can only be a falsification if you know what technologies you have in mind. I certainly don't see a Gettier problem in this.

Your other cases are certainly examples of irony. But I don't see them as Gettier problems.

On truth

I’m sorry. I didn’t put my point clearly enough. I certainly did mean what I said that truth is discovered.

On “justify”, “believe”, “know”

I hesitate to accept your way of using the words. You want us as observers to have a say in whether S suspects or believes that p. But deciding to suspect something is deciding to believe that p may be true or may be false and is up to S. If S decides (whether on the basis of more evidence or not) to believe something, which means committing to the view that p is true, that is also up to S. When I report that S believes that p, I am reporting S’s commitment without endorsing it myself. The difference between suspecting and believing is a fact about S and not up to us as observers. We can certainly use the words in a different way, but I’m reluctant to do so because most people don’t and I want to communicate with most people.

On the other hand, if I decide that S knows that p, I am endorsing S’s commitment to p and committing myself to p. So that is up to us observers. But that’s not relevant at this stage.

I would say that the same is true of "evidence". When I classify S's reasons as evidence, I am committing to the view that it does go to demonstrating that p - not necessarily all the way to certainty, but partly. You could put your point in something like the following way.

"The farmer has some evidence that the familiar silhouette is a cow, but the evidence is unreliable. The evidence does not justify his conclusion and further evidence is required. As it happens, further evidence will reveal that his belief is false. "

There are some complications, but I think that would stand up. What do you think?

The main objection that may be raised is that no process of deduction is involved in seeing, so the argument doesn’t apply. That’s why I prefer to object that one cannot see something that isn’t there, so the farmer hasn’t seen a cow – he just thinks he has seen a cow.

Another example: justification (to imprison someone) is still justification even when the belief (that they committed a crime) is false. Yikes. I think not. — Benj96

I was impressed by this. It certainly shows that where justification falls short of certainty, it may be inappropriate (depending on the circumstances, such as what is at stake and the probability of error) to rely on it. I’ll admit that “justification” is sometimes used to mean “show” or “prove” and so requires certainty. But I also think that sometimes it is used to mean “reasonable”, which doesn’t. For what it’s worth, I think you’ll find that dictionaries agree.

Not an infinite regress. Just a regression to the truth. Where one's belief/ collection of beliefs about what is true matches what is actually the case. That is knowledge. — Benj96

But doesn't that mean that all knowledge must start from knowledge? Where do we get the knowledge we start from? Surely that's clearly an infinite regress.

Indeed. The claim can no longer be justifiably held at that point since knowledge does require truth and the claim in question is now known to be false. — Andrew M

Yes, I agree they deserve separate treatments. In my view, contextualism is a satisfactory response to both. — Andrew M

Agreement in philosophy is not easy to achieve, which makes it all the more satisfactory. Sadly, it means that I need to find a new thread, though, as you see, I'm still engaged with Benj96.

A persuasive argument. However,

You are right that what is at stake is the meanings of "belief", "justification" and "knowledge". But that just means that you need to engage with Gettier's definition of justification which specifies that a justification may be a justification even when the belief is false. One problem is that if no belief can be justified unless it is true, all claims to knowledge must be based on an infinite regress and it is hard to see how new knowledge could ever be acquired by anyone and your use of the words would be very different from ordinary use.

You are right that the devil is in the detail here. But the Gettier problems are based on the fact (at least I think it is a fact) that truth and falsity do not wait for our actual and empirical process of learning what they are. We discover truths. I mean that if we articulate a possibility, either it is true or it is false, there and then. Suppose I believe, as I sit here, that there is a beer in the fridge. Either there is a beer in the fridge or there is not. I can only know which when I get to the fridge, but the beer is already there or not.

I think that the Gettier cases are generated in the gap between objective truth/falsity and awareness of truth/falsity. I mean it is set up by the situation that we know something that S does not; the problems disappear as soon as S is aware of the truth and abandons the false belief. They also depend on the exact formulation chosen for the justification and the knowledge, which I think is suspicious, though I don't think I can prove anything. Neither of these is a conclusive argument, but I think they at least defuse the issues; it is significant that most people do not want to abandon or even modify the JTB.

The question of context is obviously very important in all this. It seems to me that two important features of the context are the probability of being right and the risks if we are wrong.

I haven’t got any interesting conclusions about S is justified in believing that p and p is false. Just muddle.

There is so much going on now that I'm having trouble keeping up. It is a great problem to have. Thanks to you all.

Here are some comments:-

As Williamson notes, "Knowledge doesn’t require infallibility. What it requires is that, in the situation, you couldn't too easily have been mistaken." — Andrew M

All right. But when you find you are mistaken, you need to withdraw the claim to know.

Which is the Harman-Vogel paradox that Ludwig V referred to. Jennifer Nagel has a useful survey of some of the responses (contextualism, relativism, interest-relative invariantism, error theory) and her own solution (dual-process theory) in "The Psychological Basis of the Harman-Vogel Paradox". — Andrew M

I’m not sure whether to classify the classic Gettier cases as variants of that paradox or a completely different variety. But I am sure that this paradox is much more difficult and more important than the Gettier cases. I have looked at some of what Jennifer Nagel has written about this. I didn’t find any of the theories particularly appealing. I’m certain it deserves treatment separate from the Gettier cases.

Moore's paradox has him wondering why we can say something about someone else that we cannot also say about ourselves. He offers an example of our knowing when someone else holds false belief and then pointing it out while they still hold it. He asks, "why can we not do that with ourselves?" or words to that effect/affect. — creativesoul

I read Moore's stuff about this so long ago that I'm afraid I can't remember exactly what he said. But I would have thought that that the answer was pretty clear. Once you recognize that a belief is false, you have to abandon it.

And I'm sure you know that there are other paradoxes of self-reference which he must have been aware of. (e.g. The liar paradox and Russell’s paradoxes about sets that are members of themselves.)

One of the differences between those two cases is that in the case of the liar paradox, the contradiction is created in the act of asserting it, not by the proposition itself. Moore’s paradox is like that.

What we cannot believe is that "a piece of cloth is a cow", or "a barn facade is a barn", or "a stopped clock is working" are true statements/assertions/propositions/etc. If we do not know that we believe a piece of cloth is a cow, if we do not know that we believe a barn facade is a barn, if we do not know that we believe a stopped clock is working, then we cannot possibly explicitly verbalize it. — creativesoul

You are right in the first sentence. In the second sentence, while we cannot verbalize that belief to ourselves, other people can, and they can prove that what they say is true by observing what you do. When I have realized what the situation is, I can verbalize it in various ways without any problem.

It is true that it is odd to describe this as a propositional attitude (and it is also odd in the case of language-less creatures). I don't really know what a proposition is. I just use the term because it is a grammatical feature that conveniently groups together certain words that see to belong together. So I'm not in a position to explain.

This seems a reasonable argument. — Michael

Yes, it is a reasonable argument. I didn’t pay attention to the point that if S is justified in believing that p, S is justified in asserting that p.

It’s not really a surprise that a blanket refutation like that doesn’t work. It would have been noticed long ago if there were such a thing.

But I do stand by my opinion that “S is justified in believing that p and p is false” is problematic. I’m still working this through, so I’ll say no more here.

It doesn’t rescue my argument, because in a Gettier case, the falsity of p is not known to S.

I stand by the observation that S is not the final authority whether p does entail q. So justification is not simply up to S’s say-so.

Which doesn’t rescue my argument either.



You raise the problem of certainty.

I see it this way. If we accept “S knows that p” when p is false, the concept of knowledge has lost what makes it distinct from belief, so I’m very reluctant to do that. Perhaps it sets a high bar to knowledge, almost certainly higher than everyday non-philosophical use would expect. It is not fatal. It just means that any claim to knowledge is open to revision unless and until certainty is achieved, (and it may never be). (And I’m using “certainty”, not in the sceptic’s sense, but in the sense that certainty is defined for each kind of proposition by the language-game in which it is embedded.) In normal life, we have to determine questions of truth and falsity as best we can, withdrawing mistaken beliefs when they appear. Final certainty as regulative ideal, not always achieved.

One may be justified in believing that p even if p is false. This opens the door to Gettier cases, no matter how stingy or generous the criteria are. The problems actually arise when S believes the right thing for the wrong, but justifiable, reasons.

How to respond? Well, my response to your farmer is 1) he thought he saw a cow, 2) he didn’t see a cow, 3) there was a cow. I observe that a) 1) and 3) are reasons for saying that he knew and that b) 2) is a reason for saying that he didn’t. I conclude that it is not proven that he knew, and that it is not proven that he didn’t, so I classify the case as unclassifiable.

Unclassifiability is not that uncommon, and there are various ways in ordinary language of dealing with it. Within philosophy, there is no appetite for abandoning the JTB (not even Gettier actually suggests that). There is no consensus agreement on what modification or addition to the JTB would resolve this (and anyway philosophers aren’t legislators except within their own discipline (or sub-discipline)). Perhaps the suggestion of treating “know” as primitive could help but failing that there is no solution.

I don’t know what you mean by “making JTB-NFL work”. But I think this is a description of the situation. If you have a better one, I would very much like to know it.

I agree that

It is humanly impossible to knowingly be mistaken(to knowingly hold false belief). — creativesoul

But I don't quite understand why you say it is humanly impossible. It seems to me self-contradictory to assert "I believe that p and it is not the case that p". It is equivalent to "p is true and p is false." (Moore's paradox, of course.)

And I don't understand what you mean when you say

Beliefs are not equivalent to propositional attitudes. — creativesoul

I was under the impression that belief was one of the paradigmatic propositional attitudes.

Perhaps you are referring to your point that

Believing that a cloth is a cow is not equivalent to believing that "a cloth is a cow" is true. — creativesoul

It is true that sometimes people explicitly verbalize a belief, whether to themselves or others and sometimes they don't - and of course, animals believe things, but clearly don't verbalize them. But I don't understand why that makes any difference here.

I’ve read all your posts and I think you’ll find replies or reactions in what follows.

I would like to explain why I said that the mistake is to answer the question.

Faced with a problem like this one, it can be helpful to look at things from a fresh perspective. That can be achieved here by putting oneself in the place of the subject and considering the situation, not so much from the question whether it counts as knowledge or not but considering the related question “was I right or not”.

Take the Gettier case at the beginning of this thread:-

It's dusk, you're a farmer. You go into your fields and see a cowish shape (it actually happens to be a cloth swaying in the wind). You conclude that there's a cow in your field. There, in fact, is a cow in your field. — TheMadFool

If you know that you didn't see a cow, but just a cowishly shaped rag, you will withdraw your claim that there's a cow in the field. But you will notice that there is a cow in the field, but that you couldn’t have seen it. So you were right, but for the wrong reasons. If it had been a bet, you would have won it. But it is precisely to differentiate winning a bet from knowing that the J clause was invented. So it is clearly not knowledge or even justified true belief because the J clause fails.

Now, Gettier stipulates that it is possible for one to be justified in believing that p even when p is false. This opens the door to his counter-examples, but I am reluctant to find fault with it.

However, there is a problem with the next step. He further stipulates that if one believes that p and if p entails q, one is entitled to deduce that q and believe it. He does not say that it is sufficient to believe that p entails q. Hence, even though we must accept the belief that p, if it asserted by S, we must agree that p entails q, if the justification is to be valid. Assuming that we are not talking about the truth-functional definition of implication, it is clear that even if p does entail q, one is not entitled to deduce q if p is false. So the cases all fail.

Russell’s clock is not a classic Gettier problem (and Russell himself treats as a simple case of true belief which is not knowledge). It raises the rather different problem, that we nearly always make assumptions which could be taken into account, but are ignored for one reason or another, or even for no particular reason. Sometimes these assumptions fail, and the result is awkward to classify. Jennifer Nagel calls this the Harman Vogel paradox.

The classic example is parking your car in the street to attend a meeting or party or whatever. If all goes well, you will be perfectly comfortable saying that you know that your car is safe. But suppose the question arises “Is your car safe? Are you sure it hasn’t been stolen?” You ignored that possibility when you parked, assuming that the area was safe. But perhaps you aren’t quite sure, after all. It is perfectly possible that my car will be stolen while I’ve left it. I do not know how to answer this. Our yearning for certainty, for which knowledge caters, collides with the practical need to take risks and live with uncertainty. One might point out that we take risks every time we assert something; if it goes wrong, we have to withdraw the assertion. But that is just a description of the situation, not a solution.

I think there may be something to be said for the knowledge-first view, but I haven’t done any detailed work on it. It might well be worth following up. It occurs to me that it would be much easier to teach the use of “know” to someone who didn’t know either “know” or “believe” than the other way round.

The J clause is a bit of a rag-bag and I’m not sure it is capable of a strict definition. But I’m not sure how much, if at all, that matters.

The one thing everyone agrees on is that there is no knowledge here, so I wonder why you think there's a problem saying there is or isn't.

I'm sorry I wasn't very clear. Some people think that there is no knowledge in Gettier cases, but that there is justified true belief. Hence they conclude that the JTB definition is inadequate. Others, like me, think that the JTB is correct, (subject to some caveats). They think that if there is no knowledge, there cannot be justified true belief. The question comes down to whether the main character's belief is justified or not; the stories create situations in which it isn't possible to give a straight answer. Or that's my view.

I was aware that not everyone agrees with "no false lemmas". I confess that I don't know what the full definition of a lemma would be so I'm not in a position to argue with them. For the sake of brevity, I ignored them. The "apparent dog" is not an impressive counter-example. An apparent dog is not a dog. One might argue that a robot dog is a kind of dog, but that would blow the point of the story, so we don't need to worry about that.

I agree with you that it is strange that so many people think that Gettier is important. But somehow the problem gets under one's skin. I think it's because the solution seems so simple, but then turns out to be so hard to pin down. I agree with you that believing that one knows is not sufficient for knowledge. It has to be endorsed by someone else. That's the effect of the T clause in the JTB. But Gettier doesn't claim that his characters know. On the contrary, he claims that they have a justified true belief and not knowledge. That's the point.

And its a feature of the stories that the main character doesn't know the full circumstances; I assume that is because if the main character knew the full circumstances, they would immediately recognize that their justification is not a justification and would then not even believe.

So although I agree with your conclusion, I don't agree with your diagnosis. Sorry.

Excuse me joining this so late in the day. I wasn't a member nine months ago.

I certainly don't agree that the Gettier problem is solved by relativism about truth. I think that if relativism is true (which I don't accept) then the concept of knowledge is meaningless.

Gettier creates the problem by offering a justification based on a false belief. Which seems to me not a justification for anything - even if it is a reasonable belief. He combines this with a story that provides a truth-condition for the proposed knowledge quite independent of the justification. The result is a set of conditions that escape the definition. The story is not catered for by the definition. The mistake is to try and classify it as knowledge or not.

I think what I have said falls under the slogan "no false lemmas".