So what are you willing to assert about the present that you don't presently believe? — sime

Nothing. What relevance is that?

That is my point. — I like sushi

Plenty of our beliefs are justified. It's just that beliefs about aliens probably aren't.

But that means that the claim 'I know it's raining' contains the claim 'it's raining', which itself can never be anything more than the claim 'I believe it's raining', which is just the first part of the claim. — Isaac

"It is raining" doesn't mean the same thing as "I believe that it is raining". The former is a claim about the weather, and is true if it is raining. The latter is a claim about my belief, and can be true even if it is not raining.

'I know it's raining'

...differ from...

'it's raining'? — Isaac

The former is true if 1) I believe that it is raining, 2) I am justified in believing that it is raining, and 3) it is raining, whereas the latter is true if 1) it is raining.

The former is about both the weather and my belief, whereas the latter is only about the weather.

It is very simple for me to point out that WE DON’T KNOW EITHER WAY. — I like sushi

Because, arguably, none of our beliefs are justified, and so the second condition isn't met. And in the case of the flat-Earthers, they don't have knowledge because their belief is false, and so the third condition isn't met.

Remember that your original claim was that flat-Earthers have knowledge simply because they believe that their beliefs are justified and true. I'm simply pointing out that this isn't sufficient for knowledge. They only have knowledge if the Earth is in fact flat.

How do we determine what the 'strict meaning' of sentence is outside of its use? — Isaac

Not really sure. I just know that there's a difference in meaning between "it is raining" and "I believe that it is raining". The former is a statement about the weather, and is true if it is raining. The latter is a statement about my belief, and can be true even if it is not raining. However, I also know that if I assert that it is raining then I am implying that I believe that it is raining.

So if something is ‘justified’ it is ‘true’? — I like sushi

No. Being true and being justified are two separate conditions.

So, if you ask 'where's the pub?' and I say 'I think it's at the end of the road', I'm implying that my belief is neither justified nor true?

If so, why on earth would I have said it? — Isaac

You're conflating the strict meaning of the sentence with its use in practice. This is addressed in Moore's paradox: "It is raining, but I do not believe that it is raining". The sentence is consistent, and possibly true, but not something that anyone would say in real life as assertions of something's truth tacitly imply that one believes that thing to be true.

If you just want to argue for an ordinary language approach to the issue of knowledge then you can, but that's probably beyond the scope of this discussion. In this discussion a distinction is drawn between a true belief and a false belief. You might believe that my name is Andrew, but you don't know that my name is Andrew – in part because my name is not Andrew.

To use your example, how does...

1. I thought I knew that aliens exist, but aliens don't exist

...differ from...

1. I thought that aliens exist, but aliens don't exist — Isaac

In the first case I'm saying that I believed my prior belief was justified and true, whereas in the second case I'm saying only that I had a belief.

Take P1 to be 'I know the earth is flat'. We'd like to be able to say P2 'I thought I knew the earth is flat, but I was wrong, the earth is not flat'. — Isaac

If P1 is true then P2 is false; if P2 is true then P1 is false.

But P2 is contingent on knowing that the earth is not flat.

It's not. Consider this example:

1. I thought I knew that aliens exist, but aliens don't exist

The above statement can be true even if I don't know that aliens don't exist.

There is no problem. If aliens exist then nobody can know that aliens don't exist. If aliens don't exist then nobody can know that aliens exist. It's very simple. Whether or not something is true is independent of our beliefs, and knowledge requires truth. That's why the JTB definition of knowledge has three conditions, not just two:

1. I believe that X is true
2. I am justified in believing that X is true
3. X is true

1 and 3 are not the same.

Judge rules citizen enforcement of Texas abortion law unconstitutional

Peeples ruled that the law unconstitutionally gave legal standing to people not injured, and was an "unlawful delegation of enforcement power to a private person."

Trump’s White House Passed Around a PowerPoint on How to End American Democracy

The PowerPoint presentation, which spanned 38 pages and was titled “Election fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN,” was part of an email sent on Jan. 5, the day before the attack on the Capitol. The email pertained to a briefing that was to be provided “on the hill.” Hugo Lowell of The Guardian tweeted slides from the presentation on Thursday detailing a conspiracy theory-laden plan for Vice President Pence to install Republican electors in states “where fraud occurred,” and for Trump to declare a national emergency and for all electronic voting to be rendered invalid, citing foreign “control” of electronic voting systems.

In the 13 months since the election, no evidence has emerged that foreign entities influenced the election, or that any significant fraud occurred.

What you and I may deem to be an obvious and proven truth today may turn out to be partially/completely wrong in several generations. We are not privy to the machinations of the universe merely part of them. We can interpret our minuscule corner reasonably well, or so we believe … which is my point. — I like sushi

That has no bearing on what it means to be true. Either the Earth is flat or it isn't. It can't be both. It can't be neither. It can't be flat for some people and not flat for others. Either the people who believe it to be flat are wrong or the people who believe it to not be flat are wrong.

If the Earth is flat then nobody can know that the Earth is not flat. If the Earth is not flat then nobody can know that the Earth is flat.

what is considered ‘true’ in the lived world is open to some degree of doubt — I like sushi

What is considered to be true and what is actually true are two very different things. I can believe that something is true and be wrong. Knowledge requires both that we believe that something is true and that that thing is actually true (and that our belief is justified).

This is why flat-Earthers do not know that the Earth is flat. Even though they believe that it is true that the Earth is flat, it in fact isn't true that the Earth is flat.

Also from your link, immediately prior to your quote:

Something’s truth does not require that anyone can know or prove that it is true. Not all truths are established truths. If you flip a coin and never check how it landed, it may be true that it landed heads, even if nobody has any way to tell. Truth is a metaphysical, as opposed to epistemological, notion: truth is a matter of how things are, not how they can be shown to be. So when we say that only true things can be known, we’re not (yet) saying anything about how anyone can access the truth.

Whether or not the Earth is flat has nothing to do with whether or not anyone believes that the Earth is flat. The Earth isn't flat, and so flat-Earthers do not have knowledge that the Earth is flat. They in fact have an unjustified false belief.

Depending on how you want to think about it, you could claim that any belief is not justified, since it is not absolutely certain. — Janus

Why does justification require absolute certainty? The Cambridge dictionary defines it as "having a good reason for something" which is consistent with how I defined it and how I ordinarily understand it in everyday conversation.

If justification required absolute certainty then defining knowledge as justified true belief would be redundant; it might as well be defined as simply justified belief.

Gettier was arguing against those who claimed that knowledge is justified true belief, and such people accepted that there is such a thing as justified false belief, hence why they explicitly included being true as a separate condition to being justified. Disagreeing with what such people mean by "justified" seems to be missing the point. We can simplify it by saying that such people argue that one has knowledge if one has a true belief that one has good reasons to believe, and Gettier provided examples of where one has a true belief that one has good reasons to believe but that we wouldn't consider knowledge.

The fact that you seem to require certainty for knowledge shows that, rather than your prior claim that "there is no problem for JTB", you in fact agree with Gettier that the JTB definition of knowledge is deficient.

An infamous occultist named Aleister Crowley once defined magick as, "The science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will." Which is a definition many Pagans rely on to this day. So, generally speaking, we will also use this definition herein. — Bret Bernhoft

My arm moves when I will it. Is that magick?

Which doesn't matter at all when _you_ are the one who suffers the negative side effects of the vaccine. Such as paralysis after a stroke.


The same arguments that are good when applied to the population as a whole are not the same arguments as those that are good when applied to the individual person.
We see the former all the time, but not the latter. — baker

Unless you know ahead of time that the person is more at risk from the vaccine than the virus then the sensible advice is to get the vaccine.

You might as well argue that we shouldn't advise someone to fly rather drive across the country in winter because it's possible that the plane will crash.

Not telling people to get vaccinated throws a greater percentage under the bus.

In the 'bartender' case; his belief the person is 18 is not justified because it is based on a fake id. — Janus

What do you mean by a belief being justified? Because I understand it as meaning that, given the information available, a rational person can cogently infer the subject of belief. As such, a fake ID can be justification.

This, incidentally, is how the law would consider it.

People can die from surgery. I’m still going to suggest that people who have internal injuries or tumours or whatever have surgery. People can choke on a toothbrush, but I’m still going to tell them to brush their teeth.

Vaccines reduce the chance of death and serious illness from COVID, are less dangerous than COVID, and require minimal time, effort, and cost to get. So I’m going to tell people to get vaccinated, am not morally responsible if it harms them, and won’t pay them any kind of compensation if it does.

If people don't drive cars, the number of casualties will be reduced. — Cartuna

Yes, but driving cars has a legitimate purpose. Not being vaccinated doesn’t have a legitimate purpose. Except in cases where there is a medical reason to not get vaccinated, not being vaccinated is just stubbornness.

I don't go for small pieces of virus DNA though. — Cartuna

mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna don’t use a piece of virus DNA.

You should get vaccinated

It is also my understanding that the universe is hypothesized to be granular at a sub-sub-sub-sub atomic level. The planck length, 1.616255(18)×10−35 m, is considered by some to be the smallest meaningful dimension of space. — T Clark

That's the case according to loop quantum gravity. According to general relativity and string theory it's continuous.

That the person's age is under 18 in reality seems to be of little concern to the definition of knowledge - knowledge can be faulty. — I like sushi

Knowledge is being defined as justified true belief, not just as justified belief.

I'm with TMF; in this example there is no problem for JTB. The belief that there is a cow on his field is not specific enough. It's a fudge; what the farmer actually believes is that there is a cow in his field at the location of the cow-shaped cloth, so his belief, adequately specified, is false. — Janus

If one can infer B from A and if B entails C then one can infer C from A.

Take the example of the bartender given the fake ID. His belief that the ID is real is false, but his derived belief that the person is 18 is true.

You will claim to know that they are 18, and you will be wrong, but justified in thinking you are right. — unenlightened

And in the Gettier case they are 18. They bought the fake ID when they were 17 and haven't yet replaced it with a real one. So I have a justified true belief that isn't knowledge.

You are confusing what is a reasonable justification with what is a true justification.

I'm not confusing the two. The justified true belief account of knowledge doesn't distinguish between different kinds of justification. It simply argues that we have knowledge if we have a justified true belief. The above example is an example of a justified true belief that isn't knowledge, and so the justified true belief account of knowledge isn't correct.

Gettier cases showed that we need something else; a JTB+G account of knowledge, where "G" is some fourth condition, which in your case is that the justification is a "true" justification.

one can believe one is justified by X in believing Z when one is not, because X is false. — unenlightened

We can be justified in believing things even if our belief or its evidence is false. If I’m a bartender and someone shows me a fake ID that I believe to be real then I am justified in believing that they are 18 and so that I am allowed to sell them alcohol. That’s why I wouldn’t be charged with selling alcohol to someone underage.

Thankfully the legal system uses this common sense understanding of justification and not the sense that you and TheMadFool seem to use.

You should read Philosophical Investigations.

The standard, common sense understanding. If a calculator tells me that the answer to 123 × 123 = 15,129 then I am justified in believing that 123 × 123 = 15,129. If I tell you that my name is Michael then you are justified in believing that my name is Michael. If all the experimental data of the time supported Newton's law of universal gravitation then the people of the time were justified in believing Newton's law of universal gravitation.

The JTB definition of knowledge, insofar as deduction is concerned, has the condition true as redundant. — TheMadFool

According to what you mean by "justified". But that's not the meaning of "justified" as used by those who argue(d) that knowledge is justified true belief, and so not the meaning of "justified" as used by Gettier.

This is unjustified. We've already crossed that bridge. — TheMadFool

You're working from a very different understanding of justification, then. One contrary to proponents of the justified true belief account of knowledge.

The very fact that they propose that knowledge is justified true belief and not just justified belief is proof that they understand that false beliefs can be justified, too.

Gettier is arguing against what they mean by a belief being justified, not against whatever you mean.

Gimme an example of a false belief that's justified. Inductive arguments are not allowed. — TheMadFool

I use a calculator and it tells me that the square root of 2 is 1.41421356237.

If all my assumptions are true then P is true. — TheMadFool

But false beliefs can be justified, too. Again, that's why knowledge is commonly defined as justified true belief, not just justified belief.

Not justified. An assumption - the calculator is working - was false. — TheMadFool

You said it was justified.

And as above, a false belief can be justified.

The standard response to that would be a presupposition was wrong. Gettier isn't right still. — TheMadFool

Why isn't he right? You have a justified true belief but you don't have knowledge.

I believe I am (justified). The calculator nearly always gets basic math right. What's your point? — TheMadFool

What you didn't know is that the calculator you used is broken and always gives an answer of 15,129, regardless of the equation you enter.

You believe that 123 × 123 = 15,129, it is true that 123 × 123 = 15,129, and as per your own acknowledgement you are justified in believing that 123 × 123 = 15,129. But Gettier would argue that you don't know that 123 × 123 = 15,129. Your justified belief is only accidentally correct.

What I'm driving at is all Gettier cases seem to be such that they violate the proportio divina rule (the conclusion is disproportionate given the premises). — TheMadFool

Let's say that you put 123 × 123 into a calculator and it tells you that the answer is 15,129. Are you justified in believing that 123 × 123 = 15,129?