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[Here is a link to Gettier's classic -- and very short -- paper, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?": http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html ]
In the 1963 essay œIs Justified True Belief Knowledge? the American philosopher Edmund L. Gettier makes a striking case for the insufficiency of justified true belief as knowledge. Known as the 'Gettier problem,' if conclusive it turns the traditional account of knowledge on its head. However, at least one of the assumptions upon which Gettier™s case rests is controversial, in particular, that it is possible for a person to have a belief that is both justified and false. The aim of this paper is to show that it is indeed possible for a belief to be false and yet justified. To this end I will focus on two main points: (I) justification; and (II) justified false belief. The first centres on the nature of epistemological justification itself and the latter on the reasonableness of our assertion, all in support of the Gettier problem generally.
(I) Justification
As hinted at above, the traditional account of knowledge in Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Roderick Chisholm and A.J. Ayer, is that it involves three elements: (a) belief; (b) truth; and (c) justification. These elements comprise what we call knowledge and have widely been considered to be both necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge. The meanings of (a) and (b) are clear enough -- S believes/accepts/is sure that P, and P is true, respectively -- but (c) needs clarification. What does it mean to say that a belief is œjustified? I propose a traditional practical-externalist understanding: a belief (P) is justified insofar as the believer (S) possesses evidence for the belief which renders the denial of or agnosticism toward it unreasonable, that is, makes S believing P more reasonable than S either denying or suspending judgment about P. Note that justification does not involve S being certain of P or S lacking all possible doubt regarding P (in which case it would cease to be œbelief from the outset and we could ignore the conditions [a] and [b], for [c] would in fact encompass them), but just that P is beyond all reasonable doubt for S. (In the same way, P could well be false.) Thus, evidence in the sense of the courtroom or œit is evident that this is the case is what is at work in epistemological justification. For instance, I am justified in believing that the defendant is guilty (and in condemning her) when the evidence for the defendant™s guilt is of such a weight that believing that the defendant is innocent or withholding judgment regarding the defendant would be an irrational act. I could be wrong in any case (the defendant could be innocent); but, as noted, justification does not deal in certainty. (Whether or not knowledge does is another subject for another paper.) Here we have a workable outline of justification.
(II) Justified false belief
(a)
Once more, the Gettier problem is that it is possible for S to œpossess (a), (b), and (c) -- the traditional elemental triad of knowledge -- and yet not possess knowledge. Gettier purports to show, therefore, that justified true belief, although necessary for knowledge, is not sufficient for knowledge. What more is needed for knowledge is beyond our scope. What is at issue here is Gettier™s normative assumption that S may possess justification in believing P even though P is false. And to indicate the truth of this assumption I first make a non-deductive appeal to the nature of scientific/philosophical inquiry. Throughout the history of science and philosophy researchers and thinkers have formed popular doctrines about Nature -- such is the goal of these endeavours -- and continually the advent of new discoveries, due to better technologies and more reasonable insights, have shown that the former doctrines were muddled or plainly incorrect, and corrected or new doctrines are born. This is what is called the rectification and progression of knowledge, without which this paper would be chiselled on a stone tablet. A modern example of this development is the œeclipse of Aristotelian physics by Newtonian physics, and again of Newtonian physics by the quantum mechanics of Einstein and others. As brilliant and groundbreaking a scientist as Newton was, we now know that he was off-the-mark and simply wrong in some of his teachings. Yet he also apparently had a lot of good evidence for holding what he did; indeed, the best evidence available to him. Given the circumstances, would it not be unreasonable to deny that Newton™s false beliefs here were justified? Further, consider the discoveries of our greatest contemporary scientists, widely accepted doctrines which will (if science continues to progress) be rectified and even proved false despite having the best evidence behind them at this time. Are not these false beliefs justified just in case the evidence behind them makes holding the doctrine more reasonable than either rejecting them or withholding judgment? Responding in the affirmative seems to be the reasonable answer for epistemological non-sceptics; in fact, rejecting justification here would seem to resign one to a form of scepticism, for then no one, all of us lacking the ability to see future evidences, could confidently call any present empirical belief justified.
(b)
Moving now to deductive territory, I turn to the nature of propositions generally. Now, it is undeniable that every true proposition expresses either a universal truth (œ7+4=11) or a contingent truth (œJohn crossed Bloor Street). What separates universal truths from contingent truths is that the latter always could have been otherwise; singular contingents happen to be true but do not have to be, insofar as rejecting them does not lead to logical contradiction. But if this is true of true propositions, it must also be the case for propositions which are false (such as S™s belief that P). For instance, a universally false proposition is œ5-2=17 while œSenator John McCain is an African-American is a false contingent; the latter is not necessarily false (McCain could have been an African-American), but the former is incorrect always. Yet if this holds, then it is clearly possible for S to be justified in believing P despite P being false -- which is our thesis -- for, as the nature of propositions shows, false contingents are not necessarily false (or, it is not a universal truth that S™s false belief that P is unjustified). Here, however, some might object that this is true only in a strict logical sense and it may have little bearing on the truth of œpractical epistemological justification: there is a difference between œit is possible for S to be justified in believing false-P and œpeople can have justified false beliefs. But is there a significant difference here, philosophically speaking? Anglo-American philosophy since Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein has been preoccupied with the logical coherence of every day linguistic propositions, and in this vein if and only if a proposition is logically coherent then there is nothing wrong with expressing it. The truth or falsehood of any practical proposition comes down to its logical coherence, and œpeople can have justified false beliefs is technically not false (not wrong), for, as we have seen, logically œit is possible for S to be justified in believing false-P. Is this not equivalent to saying that the former is true? This is a big problem for those who deny the possibility of justified false belief.
(c)
But perhaps, as Gettier felt, the most compelling case in support of the possibility of justified false belief lies within the power of the experimental example. I give here two of them. (1) Jones (S) believes that it will rain heavily tomorrow (P), because the weatherman said that œtomorrow will surely be a really wet one (Q). Further, S consulted all other weatherman for his area (V) and each also basically said Q. Thus, S holds on the best available evidence that P, and resolves to bring his umbrella and galoshes to work (R). When morning comes, the clouds seriously threaten to storm (U) but there is in fact only very light precipitation throughout the day (T), and therefore P was a false belief. So S, on the basis of Q and V, believes that P, and because of P resolves to R, and U further warrants the belief that P, but T renders P false and R, stemming from P, unnecessary. In this case, was S believing that P justified? Yes, for, despite the falsity of P due to T, S™s being faced with Q, V and U rendered S™s belief that P more rational than denying P and/or being agnostic about P (R being just the result of this most reasonable belief). Again, we are not discussing knowledge here, but just simple belief -- while the falsity of P would bar P from contributing to knowledge, it does not stop S™s believing that P from being justified insofar as S™s denial of/scepticism toward P would be unjustified, given the evidence at hand. (2) Meanwhile, across town, Smith (S) believes that he will not see Christmas in eleven months (P) because not one but three doctors (V) at separate offices told him that he has between one and two months tops to live (Q), so œterminal is his disease, diagnosed as late-term leukemia (R). S has all of the symptoms of R (X). However, S has not R but rather an extremely rare, non-terminal and temporary condition with similar symptoms to R (U) and does in fact live to see Christmas and beyond (T). So, even though P is false because of (unknowable to all at the time) U and T, S believes that P on the basis of R, Q, V and X. But what are R, Q, V and X other than justification for belief that P? Here again, given these evidences, it would be highly irrational for S either to disbelief that P or to withhold judgment regarding P, and therefore believing that P, despite the falsity of P, is justified.
Considering the nature of epistemological justification in itself (not as a component of any knowledge, but just regarding simple belief) and examining the conception of justified false belief in relation to it, we can see that it is indeed possible for a person to have a belief that is both justified and false. What is the significance of this? As the more controversial of the two normative assumptions in Gettier™s essay, it lends much support to the philosopher™s thesis that justified true belief, while necessary for knowledge, is insufficient for knowledge. And this is obviously important for epistemology in that the Gettier problem poses arguably the greatest challenge to the traditional account of knowledge in the history of Western philosophy, a confrontation which still demands our attention. But just the possibility of justified false belief is equally important for science, Ethics, law, and politics: abandoning it may, if consistency is to be the order of the day, lead to some rather interesting realignment of some traditional accounts in these areas of knowledge.
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