My position is that the way you are using 'truth' results in this state of affairs. — AmadeusD

I don't yet follow: I don't think you are here saying that the use of epistemic truth of itself results in the ontic state of affairs which the given truth references. This would be the quite literal position that "It is so because I/you/we/they so say it is", i.e. that one's affirmation of itself causes that affirmed to be or else become real. (This very much like the omni-creator deity concept and his supposed "word".)

Nevertheless, this is how your statement so far reads to me.

I agree. But we can never know if such is the case. — AmadeusD

We always (fallibly) know if such is the case. It's just that, being fallible, our knowledge is subject to the possibility of being wrong - but, until our justifications for it being right fail, there is no reason whatsoever to presume that our fallible knowledge is not in fact right. In other words, not in fact conformant to the ontic reality it references - and, hence, true.

We can never infallibly know if such is the case. Yes. But this plays no part in fallible knowledge of any kind - this as just addressed.

Every so-called “well-grounded claim” in non-static environments rests on credence and is therefore never absolutely certain. JTB can't handle this truth.

Present a counterexample: — DasGegenmittel

So I don't, and can't, fallibly know as JTB that the sun will rise once again tomorrow? This where (fallible) JTB: signifies: non-complete and hence fallible justification for a belief being conformant to that which is, was, or will be ontically real.

Your notion of "change" is untenable. I'm reminded of Heraclites' river.

Change is irrelevant to JTB. At time t1(insert well-grounded true claim here) and viola! — creativesoul

So, if knowledge is JTB, and change is irrelevant to JTB., am I correct to conclude that we cannot have knowledge of change, therefore?

My notion of change is untenable to you, because change is unintelligible to you.

I don't yet follow — javra

Your use of Truth precludes us from ever having it. Nothing to do with our influence on it.

We always (fallibly) know if such is the case. — javra

Contradiction, on your own terms. That's my entire point. We don't know anything if our knwoledge is, at base and always, fallible. That's why 'T-Truth' is nonsense as far as JTB can go (on my view!).

But this plays no part in fallible knowledge — javra

Knowledge requires infallibility, on your terms. I am struggling to understand how your responses to me (nad Clark, i guess) run in tandem with your explications of your own points. They seem contradictory to me, so maybe i'm not seeing something.

To respond to a point you made to another commenter: No, You cannot 'know' the Sun will rise tomorrow, because it hasn't happened you. You can expect it to, with certainty (which is about your belief, not about whether it refers correctly to anything). You cannot know if you're going to involve fallibility.

I don't know what you're getting at here. If someone knows something is false, they don't believe it, and if they don't believe it they don't know it.

that's exactly right! If you have two beliefs, both with equal and very strong epistemic justification, but one of which turns out to be true, one of which turns out (obviously unbeknownst to you) to be false, you're going to call both of them knowledge. Because... why wouldn't you? You don't know the false one is false. By what criteria could you decide to call the false one not knowledge? You can't decide what to call it based on information you don't have.

So since you can't actually use the T to actively decide what to call knowledge, but you can use the J, the T seems.... weird. It's not clear what it's doing there.

We call stuff knowledge, and some of the time, that knowledge is wrong.

@javra

We cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow — even if it seems rational to believe so. The first major reason is the classic problem of induction, as formulated by David Hume. There is no logically necessary connection between past experiences and future events. The fact that the sun has risen every day in the past only gives us a strong expectation — not certainty — that it will rise again tomorrow. Our belief is inductively justified, but not logically or metaphysically guaranteed.

Example: A turkey is fed every morning by a farmer. It expects food each day — until one day, it is slaughtered. Its belief was based on past regularity, but ultimately false.

Secondly, the Gettier problem shows that even a belief that is true and justified may not amount to knowledge if it is accidentally correct. Suppose someone uses a flawed astronomical model to predict that the sun will rise tomorrow — and it does. The belief turns out to be true, but the justification was faulty. In such cases, the truth and justification align by coincidence, which undermines the epistemic link required for genuine knowledge.

Example: A student looks at a broken clock and says, “The bus will come in three minutes,” because the clock coincidentally shows the right time. The bus does come — but not because the reasoning was valid.

In Short: verification bad, falsification goooooood. KarlPopper approves this Message & JTB is not a fan of this. She becomes a dogmatic diva if father falsification rumors on her virtues.

Third, statements about future events are not timelessly true — and thus do not fulfill the Platonic standard of knowledge embedded in the traditional JTB (Justified True Belief) model. A statement like “The sun will rise tomorrow” is contingent, dependent on temporal and physical conditions. In contrast, real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths.

Example: The proposition “2 + 2 = 4” is true in all places and at all times. “The sun will rise tomorrow,” however, is true only if certain physical systems remain undisturbed — making it dependent, not eternal.

A fourth reason lies in the dynamic and unstable nature of reality. We do not live in a static world. Even if past evidence strongly supports tomorrow’s sunrise, unpredictable cosmic events could disrupt it — like solar anomalies, gravitational shifts, or even the philosophical possibility of simulation. This unpredictability introduces a layer of epistemic risk that undermines absolute claims.

Example: A massive volcanic eruption could darken the sky globally. The sun might rise, physically — but it would not be perceived. In this case, the meaning of “sunrise” itself becomes unstable.

Finally, we lack epistemic certainty because our access to the future is inherently limited. Our astronomical models are well-tested, but ultimately hypothetical and fallible. There is always a non-zero chance that new information or events could invalidate our predictions. Therefore, the statement “The sun will rise tomorrow” is a well-justified expectation, but not knowledge in the strong, infallible sense.


Conclusion: Although our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is highly reasonable, it fails to meet the strict criteria of knowledge due to its reliance on induction, vulnerability to coincidence, temporal contingency, and the unpredictability of the world. What we have is not certainty — but a well-grounded expectation that remains, in the end, fallible.

Response (JTC Perspective): From the standpoint of Justified True Crisis (JTC), the expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow qualifies not as infallible knowledge of a future fact, but as conceptual knowledge: the justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, while remaining open to epistemic revision. Within this framework, knowledge is not about asserting timeless metaphysical truths, but about maintaining orientation through conceptual structures that are coherent, context-sensitive, and situationally valid.

It is not knowledge of the world directly, but of its conceptual derivatives — the structured ideas we abstract from experience in order to navigate reality.

This belief is therefore not treated as ontically absolute, but as a fallible, yet operationally reliable assertion— justified within a defined scope. That scope is not “what will be,” but rather: “Given current knowledge and absent disconfirming information, the concept of ‘sunrise tomorrow’ remains applicable.” Within that conceptual and temporal frame, the belief is in fact infallible relative to its defined conditions, because it makes no claim beyond them.

In this way, JTC redefines knowledge as a dynamic epistemic performance, where infallibility is not global, but internally consistent within bounded, crisis-aware justifications. The key is reflexivity: JTC acknowledges the limits of what is known, and treats conceptual knowledge as both actionable and self-limiting — true not in spite of its limits, but because it defines them.

@JuanZu

Your answer avoids the core of both questions by replacing epistemological accountability with vague functional metaphors. If transcription rejects representation, how can it be assessed as true or false? Saying “it simply works” is not an answer—it’s an evasion.

1. Truth is reduced to function.
You compare transcription to translation or communication and argue it “works” by producing effects. But epistemic truth is not about effects. A placebo pill works—but it’s not what it claims to be. A broken clock shows the correct time twice a day, yet it doesn’t know the time. A political speech can move crowds and still be full of lies. Functionality is not sufficient for truth—and certainly not for knowledge.

2. You smuggle representation back in.
You claim transcription avoids representation by being a causal process, but even “causing understanding” requires structure, differentiation, and encoding—i.e., a representational system. A musical score is not the sound itself, but it represents it. A map is not the territory, but it represents spatial relations. Even a simple “yes” only means something because of its embedded structure. There is no escaping representation in language—there is only denying it while depending on it.

3. Ontological generalization doesn’t solve the epistemic issue.
Referring to “genetic transcription” or ontological transformation shifts the discussion from epistemology to biology or metaphysics. But biological processes don’t make beliefs justified or true. DNA transcription can be error-prone—mutations happen. So even your analogy proves the point: transcription doesn’t guarantee correctness. It’s a process, not a standard of epistemic evaluation.

Iiiiiiiiiin sum:
If transcription neither represents nor distinguishes truth from falsehood, it can’t be part of a knowledge theory. Your response replaces justification with causality, and epistemic evaluation with metaphor. Knowledge, however, is not what simply happens—it is what can be justified, challenged, and revised. Without that, we’re not doing epistemology—we’re doing poetry.

Still, it was genuinely cool to think about. The idea of reframing epistemic acts in terms of transformation instead of representation was provocative. Thanks for that impulse.

Knowledge requires infallibility, on your terms. — AmadeusD

We cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow — even if it seems rational to believe so. The first major reason is the classic problem of induction, as formulated by David Hume. There is no logically necessary connection between past experiences and future events. The fact that the sun has risen every day in the past only gives us a strong expectation — not certainty — that it will rise again tomorrow. Our belief is inductively justified, but not logically or metaphysically guaranteed. — DasGegenmittel

You both hold knowledge to be an epistemically infallible given. I'll just re-post this and call it a day:

Man, I'm a diehard fallibilist. To me the cogito is fallible as well. And I fallibly maintain that we can never be infallibly certain of anything, period - not even that we exist. That said, yes I'm (fallibilistically) certain of this. And a whole lot more. Including that we're now communicating in the English language. To not even mention things such as that the sun will once again rise tomorrow.

The type of "truth" you're here implicitly addressing would be an intrinsic aspect of what the OP terms 'static knowledge". But, while epistemic truths can only be fallible to different degrees and extents, this in no way takes away form the fallible certainty that there does occur such a thing as ontic reality. To which all epistemic truths need to conform. — javra

In other words, there can be no infallible justification, no infallible truth, and no infallible belief. This just as much as one cannot grasp the horizon were one to run fast enough toward it. Ergo, there can be no infallible "guaranteed" knowledge as JTB. All the same, I very much know that this conversation has so far been in the English language just as much as I know that the sun will rise again tomorrow. This knowledge that I do hold then being "fallible beliefs which are fallibly justified and thereby fallibly true". To say that this is then not "real" knowledge is to then insist that "real knowledge" equates to "infallible knowledge" Good luck with that then.

I don't know what you're getting at here. — flannel jesus

Never mind, then.

I mean, what does J mean? Obviously justified, but justified in what? Justified in thinking the belief is true. — flannel jesus

Yes, but there's a wrinkle. Obviously, if the justification in question is conclusive, then it follows that the belief is true. But what if the justification is not conclusive? It follows that you may be justified in believing, but wrong. Are you then justified in believing or not? For me, you are still justified in believing, but the T clause means that I can't be said to know. Without this clause, knowledge simply becomes equivalent to belief. I don't think any philosopher would buy that. (Gettier says you can be, and that's the basis for his paradoxes.)

Maybe knowledge should be SJB, sufficiently justified belief. — flannel jesus

But does sufficiently justified mean that the belief cannot possibly be false? Anything less than that leaves you open to thinking that you know, when you merely believe.

So what work is T doing in JTB, since the only access to truth you just laid out is a matter of justification, and not truth itself? — flannel jesus

You are right to think that the T clause is not doing any work if you are asking yourself whether you know that p, given that you believe it. But if you believe it, then you have already decided that the belief is true, and justified, so yhe T clause is indeed redundant.
But when you are asking whether someone knows that p, it is a different ball game. You might endorse S's justification, but that's not automatic; you might disagree with them. You have to decide for yourself, and when you say that they know that p, you commit to asserting that p is true. When you say that they believe that p, you are witholding that commitment. (If you say that someone thinks that p, you are (normally) asserting that p is false, or that S's justification is invalid or unsound.)
Granted that there are problems about the J clause, I can't see that SJB any of the problems about the J clause, but just collapses knowledge into believe. Your point that a T clause is always in practice applied by individuals in the light of their own judgements is a general comment on the concept of truth, and so has no special force in this context.

Therefore we cannot ever adequately describe active change, or becoming, in terms of states-of-being. — Metaphysician Undercover

You seem to leave open the possibility that we might adequately describe change in some other way. It occurs to me that we do already describe change in terms of processes.

The solution to this problem is dualism. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think that's a solution - especially as I'm not clear what the problem is. We have two different ways of describing the world. End of story.

We could all be dreaming - so what? Without an indication that's happening, and plenty that it's not, why question? — AmadeusD

Yes. "We might all be dreaming" implies "We might all not be dreaming" or even "We might all be awake". If the weight of all the evidence is in favour of the latter, it is not rational to believe the former. To put the point another way, to acknowledge a possibility imples recognizing the ability to distinguish what is possible from what is the case.

A student looks at a broken clock and says, “The bus will come in three minutes,” because the clock coincidentally shows the right time. The bus does come — but not because the reasoning was valid. — DasGegenmittel

Well, if the clock was working, it would still not come because the student correctly predicted it's arrival. What this case does show is that there are almost always many unspoken and unthought-of assumptions in any reasoning. In this case, suppose that the clock was working. The student's assumption was valid. Is that any more or less a bit of luck? Do we say that the student didn't know?

“The sun will rise tomorrow” is contingent, dependent on temporal and physical conditions. In contrast, real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths. — DasGegenmittel

So are you endorsing Plato's definition of knowledge?

The proposition “2 + 2 = 4” is true in all places and at all times. — DasGegenmittel

I've never understood the concept of a proposition. But I don't see how "2+2=4" could be either true or false in a world in which it didn't exist, couldn't be formulated*. We are able to do that, and we apply it retrospectively.

This unpredictability introduces a layer of epistemic risk that undermines absolute claims. — DasGegenmittel

If you mean by this the situation in your shattered bottle example, I don't see any epistemic risk at all. At 12:00, I knew that the bottle on the table. At 12:02, the bottle wasn't on the table and I had heard it fall. I knew that it was no longer on the table.
However, at 12:00 I was probably assuming that it would be there when I returned. Given that I didn't know about the forthcoming crash, did I know it would be there when I return? That does need thinking about. This a variety of Russell's clock and of the Harman-Vogel paradoxes, and probably relates to Aristotle's point that judgements about the future are contingent (which you mentioned on page 1 pf this thread).

A massive volcanic eruption could darken the sky globally. The sun might rise, physically — but it would not be perceived. In this case, the meaning of “sunrise” itself becomes unstable. — DasGegenmittel

That doesn't impact what we know about the sun in current circumstances. BTW, Hume's response was to say that we will continue to rely on the past, whatever the sceptic says. After all, there is - there can be - no more rational alternative. So it is not irrational to do so.

Conclusion: Although our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is highly reasonable, it fails to meet the strict criteria of knowledge due to its reliance on induction, vulnerability to coincidence, temporal contingency, and the unpredictability of the world. What we have is not certainty — but a well-grounded expectation that remains, in the end, fallible. — DasGegenmittel

So perhaps it is not appropriate to apply your strict criteria for knowledge.

From the standpoint of Justified True Crisis (JTC), the expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow qualifies not as infallible knowledge of a future fact, but as conceptual knowledge: the justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, while remaining open to epistemic revision. Within this framework, knowledge is not about asserting timeless metaphysical truths, but about maintaining orientation through conceptual structures that are coherent, context-sensitive, and situationally valid. — DasGegenmittel

If "the sun will rise tomorrow" is a justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, it is knowledge of a fact. To be sure, it holds under current conditions, but that just means that it is true here and now. Things may change, and we will revise our opinions as required in the new circumstances and it is not inconceivable that such things may happen. But those are just possibilities. That it is true now will not change.

JTC acknowledges the limits of what is known, and treats conceptual knowledge as both actionable and self-limiting — true not in spite of its limits, but because it defines them. — DasGegenmittel

I can see that this is different from a platonic view of knowledge. But I don't see any radical difference from "our" concept of knowledge. It certainly reflects our practice better than the platonic view. Are you sure that you are not criticizing a straw concept of knowledge?

You are right to think that the T clause is not doing any work if you are asking yourself whether you know that p, given that you believe it. — Ludwig V

Not just about your own beliefs, about anybody else's too.

If someone else believes something, and they call that belief 'knowledge', you're going to judge that statement by the same criteria as your own so-called "knowledge", which is to say, you're going to judge the justifications for it being true. You don't have access to the T, you can only access the J.

“The sun will rise tomorrow” is contingent, dependent on temporal and physical conditions. In contrast, real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths. — DasGegenmittel

So are you endorsing Plato's definition of knowledge? — Ludwig V

And, as per my first post in this thread, perhaps so affirming that "real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths" is of itself a gross misattribution of what of what Plato, an Ancient Skeptic, in fact described. Here granting that epistemic truths - prone to the possibility of being wrong as they all ultimately are - nevertheless do occur in the world. From the last paragraph of the SEP entry (boldface and underlining mine):

The official conclusion of the Theaetetus is that we still do not know how to define knowledge. Even on the most sceptical reading, this is not to say that we have not learned anything about what knowledge is like. As Theaetetus says (210b6), he has given birth to far more than he had in him. And as many interpreters have seen, there may be much more to the ending than that. It may even be that, in the last two pages of the Theaetetus, we have seen hints of Plato’s own answer to the puzzle. Perhaps understanding has emerged from the last discussion, as wisdom did from 145d–e, as the key ingredient without which no true beliefs alone can even begin to look like they might count as knowledge. Perhaps it is only when we, the readers, understand this point—that epistemological success in the last resort depends on having epistemological virtue—that we begin not only to have true beliefs about what knowledge is, but to understand knowledge. [...] Perhaps this is the somewhat positive conclusion Plato reaches in the Theaetetus, suggesting that absolute knowledge requires a metaphysical framework that even the best and truest logoi can only approximate. [...] — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-theaetetus/#Con

... here, with "absolute knowledge" being synonymous to the more modern expression of "infallible knowledge" ... this rather than to knowledge which is real. And with the second of the two boldface portions of the quote only reemphasizing the first.

Going by at the very least this one SEP entry, Plato then in fact did not describe real knowledge as based on eternal, immutable truths. (See, for example, the first of the two boldfaced portions of the quote in which Plato's conclusion is quite blatantly expressed as: "we still do not know how to define knowledge".) Nor to the best of my knowledge did he at any point specify absolute knowledge to be real knowledge such that all non-absolute forms of knowledge then equate to non-real knowledge. The latter formulation, instead, being a rather Cartesian interpretation of Ancient Skeptic perspectives ... the latter of which philosophers such as Cicero very much exemplify.

As you may have noticed I talk about something that works rather than something being true and false. In any example you give we can make the conversion: For example when you speak of a placebo pill, it does not act objectively like a non-placebo pill, they are simply different ways of working. Here the pill is a sign that is introduced in a certain context that gives it all its significance, this is transcription, in the cases that you would believe that there is a falsehood of the placebo pill what there is in reality a different functioning. Like the psychological which is a different context of transcription than the physiological.

Encoding something is but one step in transcription. As I say this requires a use of signs where the space and time assigned to the sign takes place. But of representation there is nothing, since there is no sense or meaning that travels with the physical signs, and to the extent of that is that we cannot speak of representation but of the effects that produces an encoded message in another person, moreover the very notion of message is problematic, since there is no message until there is decoding. But decoding is nothing more than introducing a system of signs in a context, another system of signs, which gives it a meaning.

Correctness? No, it works. Once we abandon the idea of representation something can work well or it can work badly according to our expectations. Like a broken clock; the clock is a system of signs that produces a meaning, but we transcribe it into our language with which we have expectations no longer that the time is correct but that it works according to different contexts, such as world time. Is there representation between a clock and world time? No, each one is a different context and what we believe to be representation is tuning, a matter of time, which we associate with expectations such as the arrival of a train.

Theory of knowledge? This approach denies epistemology, since epistemology is from end to end based on the idea of representation. But in reality it gives us an idea of how the world works without this idea. Above all it gives us the idea that the world doesn't really change much for practical purposes. The only thing that really changes is the work of philosophers who believe in the idea of representation as true and talk about things like right and wrong.

If someone else believes something, and they call that belief 'knowledge', you're going to judge that statement by the same criteria as your own so-called "knowledge", which is to say, you're going to judge the justifications for it being true. You don't have access to the T, you can only access the J. — flannel jesus

Well, at worst, you're going to get two evaluations of the same justification or of two different justifcations. Two evaluations of the same by the same person is not very convincing. ("Marking your own homework")
A justification that can't get us to truth or at least towards the truth is no justification at all.
But sometimes, there is no gap - as in conclusive justification.
I include in "justification" here includes questions about the skills and competences of the knower, not to mention their good faith.

perhaps so affirming that "real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths" is of itself a gross misattribution of what of what Plato, an Ancient Skeptic, in fact described. Here granting that epistemic truths - prone to the possibility of being wrong as they all ultimately are - nevertheless do occur in the world. — javra

That's putting it a bit strong. But the Theaetetus is indeed striking in that it does seem to include truths about the world we live in as not mere illusions. It is also striking that the dialogue is aporetic; people don't often recognize that.

Perhaps this is the somewhat positive conclusion Plato reaches in the Theaetetus, suggesting that absolute knowledge requires a metaphysical framework that even the best and truest logoi can only approximate. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-theaetetus/#Con

That paragraph is a brave attempt to extract something positive from the aporia and the suggestions are quite plausible. But I don't find them in the text and it's really not necessary to find a positive conclusion in an aporetic dialogue. Socrates was, in a sense, quite happy to end with aporia.

Socrates was, in a sense, quite happy to end with aporia. — Ludwig V

While I'm not certain in how you intend the term "aporia" in this context (example: resulting in insoluble contradiction?), I do fully agree in terms of Plato's description of knowledge in effect being that "we still do not know how to define knowledge". This then being the gist of my previous post.

Which, then, is in no way an affirmation or else description of what "real knowledge" is.

The burden here is yours, not mine. The assumption you're working from is misguided. You're assuming that Gettier showed a problem for the J in JTB. You're not alone. Most convention agrees. I've mentioned the problem. I've shown otherwise. If justification is not the problem with Gettier cases, and it's not, then the Gettier 'problem' dissolves completely, and it does. I roughly sketched this case, to which you seemed to agree with the heart of it. Now follow it through. In both Gettier cases, S's belief is not true, and Gettier's account/report of/on that belief was inaccurate(as already argued in my first post).

It's justified false belief.

If it is the case that both Gettier examples are cases of JFB, then the Gettier problem dissolves completely. Barn facades, sheets blowing in the wind, and broken clocks all suffer much the same fate. They dissolve when S's belief is more accurately put and then reexamined.

@creativesoul
I can readily accept that we don’t share the same conviction. I don’t find your argument convincing, and it’s perfectly fine with me if you don’t share my position. So far, I haven’t had the impression that you’ve taken the underlying dualism seriously (or at least contingency); instead, you seem to stick to your line of thinking, which is inevitably paradoxical. I don’t have the time right now to go into detail, and I don’t believe you’ve thoroughly examined the arguments I’ve presented. For further questions read the introduction piece, my comments or the essay with which I made my case and lost any burden whatsoever.

I don’t find your argument convincing — DasGegenmittel

What argument? Set it out.

Hey Ludwig! Hope you are well in this unsettled world.

@creativesoul One example is the claim that "change is irrelevant for JTB," while arguing for a monistic definition of knowledge and disregarding the role of (epistemic) time in Gettier cases; see contingency.

Good night sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite.

I don't think that's a solution - especially as I'm not clear what the problem is. We have two different ways of describing the world. End of story. — Ludwig V

Not "end of story". The two different ways correspond with two distinct aspects of the world. If it was simply a matter of two different ways of describing the same thing, we'd choose the best for the purpose at hand. But the two different ways correspond with two different aspects, that which stays the same as time passes, and that which does not stay the same as time passes.

that which stays the same as time passes — Metaphysician Undercover

Can this even be, given time passes? What could stay the same?

Lot's of things stay the same as time passes. Look around you. Don't you notice a lot of aspects which are not changing as the time passes. But if that doesn't convince you, we could look at some simple arithmetic. Do you believe that the truth of "2+2=4" could change as time passes?

Are you suggesting there is some other type of knowledge that approximates truth? Or is the breadth of 'scientific knowledge' peculiarly narrow here? — AmadeusD

I got a little behind here.

I think most of what we know is not specifically justified. In my personal experience, most of what I know I know by what I would call "intuition." It has no specific source, although it is based on my general understanding of the world and how it works. As I understand it, that general understanding is something we build for ourselves over a lifetime of experience in the world.

Here, now I'll give you an example. Judging by what I've read of your posts, I think, believe I guess, you are someone who does not hold much truck with intuition. Under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn't bother justifying that. That's consistent with my way of seeing knowledge, since the consequences of being wrong are probably minor. The important thing here in the context of this discussion is that my belief is not based on any specifical evidence or reasoning.

Another related way of knowing - trial and error. "Screw it, let's just do it and see what happens." In engineering we pretty that up and call it the "observational method." Justification and action are an iterative, circular, process.

Can this even be, given time passes? What could stay the same? — AmadeusD

Changeability is a spectrum.
Some things—like 2 + 2 = 4 or the concept of “1”—are unchanging. Others transform so quickly that we barely notice them: electrons or quarks in the cup of coffee you’re looking at right now, for instance. And then there is everything in between—changes that unfold over seconds, minutes, hours, days, or years.

This spectrum applies to knowledge in correspondence as well. Some knowledge is immutable; other knowledge evolves over time. While all forms of knowledge share the same demand to truth, they must be approached differently. Justified True Belief (JTB) may suffice for static knowledge, but dynamic knowledge—knowledge of change—requires a different framework. The very recognition of change is a kind of knowledge in itself, much like your knowledge of yourself as a changing being.

The underlying question, then, is: How can change be grasped as knowledge at all?
This is precisely what Justified True Crisis (JTC) seeks to address.

Incidentally, this is also where the Ship of Theseus paradox becomes relevant—something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same. In that sense, this is not just a side topic, but a foundational philosophical theme.

While I'm not certain in how you intend the term "aporia" in this context — javra

I would include insoluble contradiction (normally) as one kind of aporia. I would also include a simple case of ignorance (of the facts in a particular debate). So I understand it as "not knowing how to go on".

If it is the case that both Gettier examples are cases of JFB, then the Gettier problem dissolves completely. Barn facades, sheets blowing in the wind, and broken clocks all suffer much the same fate. They dissolve when S's belief is more accurately put and then reexamined. — creativesoul

I would agree that they are cases of false belief, but a rather specialized kind, because they depend on the ambiguity of a proposition. That why I prefer not to count the clock as a Gettier problem. I do so, because those kinds of case turn on an assumption which is generally reasonable, but which is false in the particular circumstances of each case. (Harman-Vogel paradox). They are much less spectacular than Getter cases, but much more difficult. (Rusell didn't find the clock case difficult - with his usual decisiveness, he is clear that S does not know the time.)
Thanks for asking. I am as settled as one can expect in this unsettled world. But, as they say, one mustn't grumble - even though that is one of the most popular pastimes in the world.

The two different ways correspond with two distinct aspects of the world. If it was simply a matter of two different ways of describing the same thing, we'd choose the best for the purpose at hand. But the two different ways correspond with two different aspects, that which stays the same as time passes, and that which does not stay the same as time passes. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, I see - aspects. That makes a difference. I think of Wittgenstein on "seeing as.." and the puzzle pictures. I can buy that - with some qualifications in this particular case. (See below)

The important thing here in the context of this discussion is that my belief is not based on any specifical evidence or reasoning. — T Clark

I agree. The philosophers paint a particular picture of knowledge to suit their project(s). They think of people discovering things - the origins of knowledge in an ideal world.

I think most of what we know is not specifically justified. — T Clark

Quite so.

Incidentally, this is also where the Ship of Theseus paradox becomes relevant—something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same. In that sense, this is not just a side topic, but a foundational philosophical theme. — DasGegenmittel

You are right that it is an important philosophical theme. I don't think that you describe Theseus' ship correctly. Theseus' ship is not something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same, because that implies that the ship does not stay the same. Theseus' ship really changes and remains the same. It remains Theseus' ship throughout - until it is dismantled or sold - neither of which are the kinds of change envisaged in the example. We pay attention to the change or the stasis as suits our project at the time. You are adopting what you probebly call a strict sense of "same". But it applies to almost nothing in that sense. Most things change in some respects while remaining the same in other respects. They are a "mixture".

@Ludwig V
My wording was chosen deliberately and corresponds precisely to the intended meaning. Had I meant to say “identical,” “equivalent,” or intended another specific distinction, I would have expressed it explicitly.

There are multiple versions of the Ship of Theseus – the classical one from Plutarch and a more developed version by Thomas Hobbes. Plutarch poses the question of whether an object that has all its parts replaced over time can still be considered the same. Hobbes intensifies the thought experiment by suggesting that the original, removed parts are reassembled into a second ship – resulting in two ships, each of which could claim to be the original.

Against this backdrop, your statement – “Theseus’ ship really changes and remains the same” – lacks precision. The ship does not remain the same; rather, it appears to remain the same. And this is precisely where the philosophical challenge lies: how can identity persist despite complete material transformation? The question is not whether change occurs – it clearly does – but how it is possible that such change does not disrupt the impression of continuity or sameness. Hobbes’ version highlights this issue even more sharply by introducing not just transformation, but the problem of competing claims to identity.

Nice work! I basically agree with you. I think the two issues are, as you say, timestamping and justification. I would not want to discard truth—we know many truths. I know it is raining as a I sit at my desk writing this. I can see the creek from my window—I know it is flooded and up about two metres from its average level.

Of course, this knowledge and the truth of it applies to what for me is the present moment—the truth of the situation and the knowledge of it may be quite different in a couple days. But I can say that it is and will remain true that on 28/03/2025 at 12.42 EST at my then location it was raining.

The problem I have always seen with the Gettier examples is that there is no objective measure of just what counts as justification. Taking the fake barn example, I might have no reason to doubt when looking at the facade that I am looking at a real barn, so in the context of the everyday I might say that belief was justified. But if I didn't walk around the back then it might be said that I didn't investigate the situation adequately. Same with the cut-out sheep example.

Thank you, @“Janus”. :)

The thing is that JTB is still necessary; but with variations. The modern discourse is misled. What needs to be addressed is the changeability of objects and time. This is something that has not been seriously examined so far—and that’s why, as I’ve argued, the Gettier problem remains unresolved.

The Gettier problem cannot be solved because, as humans, we cannot attain absolute knowledge, and therefore our assertions might always be false, no matter what we do. Knowledge is not something necessary or certain—it is only an expectation. Our (sensory) experience is a factor influenced by this uncertainty. We can be wrong: we can be deceived by illusions, trapped in a simulation, or misled in countless other ways. This is not what we want, but it is what we are thrown into. And that’s okay—but unsatisfying.

Even the rain could be an illusion, but we can still reasonably claim that it is not: see reliabilism as a tool. There may be no defeater, but if one appears, we must adjust. That is the best we can do. What is needed is an epistemological humility that is aware of this human condition.

It might be the case that the barn façade is an illusion, but we have no compelling evidence that it is. This is the best we can do. And that’s why, in my opinion, Socrates says, “I know that I know nothing” (with regard to the real world of shadows), despite Plato’s reliance on eternal ideas. But my skeptical argument goes further: we can’t even claim absolute knowledge of the present or the past—let alone the future, which is marked by contingency.

As I argue, there are not one but three distinct induction problems:
Retrospective Induction Problem (Past):
• Smith believes Jones will get the job because Jones has ten coins. Later, Smith himself unexpectedly gets the job and realizes his original assumption was incorrect—he must now retrospectively reevaluate his initial belief.

Present Induction Problem (Identification; Present):
• In the context of Gettiers application scenario.. a security guard is told: “Let in only the sole person who has exactly ten coins.” Two individuals arrive, each carrying exactly ten coins. The guard faces a problem of faulty identification due to limited criteria. There is as this variation of the situation reveals a hidden Leibniz law violation within the Gettier cases. All such cases have insofar a problem with their the truth-makers.

Prospective Induction Problem (Future):
• Every morning, the sun rises, so one assumes it will rise tomorrow as well. However, despite consistent past experiences, there is no absolute guarantee this prediction will always hold true.

Accordingly, there is always the chance of being right and the risk of being wrong based on available information—but there is never a necessity that our belief is correct in dynamic scenarios. Every assertion we make involves a fork in the road—a crisis.

The objective measure, insofar as we can achieve one, lies in having the most information and processing it adequately. This is what we often see in Gettier cases: the observer knows more than the individual making the assertion.

Moreover, there might be concurrent JTBs (Justified True Beliefs) that cannot be reliably judged—this is what the Rashomon effect illustrates.

JTC responds to this with its dualism, crisis-awareness, and the concept of conceptual knowledge—which, in my opinion, represents the best we are capable of: to show epistemic humility and cast the most reliable net we can over experience, through reflection and dialogue with others.