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".