Is Justified True Belief Knowledge Summary

William K. Clifford sets out to show in “The Ethics of Belief” that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence…” In this assignment, I aim to show deficiencies in his argument, and lack of key definitions needed in order to find his assumption and that it begs the question as to what qualifies as insufficient evidence. Moreover, I will show that the primary issue is not the belief but the results of the belief that is important and that all judgment and interpretation should be based upon said results.

some more properties emerge. One of these can be identified as the simplicity of truth

In this paper, I’ll state, explain and evaluate Ruth Barcan Marcus’s argument in section 4 of her article “A Proposed Solution to a Puzzle about Belief”.

Lewis. This paper will analyze the argument of the passage above by parsing it, examining formal and informal proof, while also discussing its fallacies.

Q1A) In what ways does the biological constitution of a living organism determine, influence or limit its sense perception?

The short story Gryphon by Charles Baxter talks about a fourth grade boy named Tommy who has a substitute teacher, and how all the students think she is different from the other substitute teachers. Most of the students grow attached to Miss Ferenczi, even though she talks about random facts .Even if something is incorrect Miss Ferenczi is fine with it. Tommy especially is fond of her and when she leaves he is enraged. I think that Tommy believes and doesn’t believe Miss Ferenczi.

“I saw… it was between [Addie] and Darl that the understanding and true love was” (Faulkner 24). The reader could either take the words for face value as true, or discard them as utter fiction. The decision is based upon the credence of the speaker. In this case the speaker is Cora, the overly religious neighbor. Although not initially apparent, it is later revealed that her view of Addie’s affection towards Darl is completely inaccurate. Cora bases her verbal reaction on Addie’s physical response, but does not take into account Addie’s reasoning. This example makes the importance of credibility, especially based on knowledge of the situation, more pronounced.

Clifford’s central thesis is that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” (Clifford, pg. 101). He supports his argument with the example of a shipowner, who has doubts about the safety of his vessel. Rather than carrying out an investigation, the shipowner suppresses his doubts, believes the vessel is sound, and allows the ship to sail. The result is the ship sinks, and the owner is morally wrong. However, Clifford argues, whether the ship sinks or not, the shipowner is equally guilty because his belief was “entertained…on the wrong ground” (Clifford, pg. 98). Clifford argues it is the act of forming belief without sufficient evidence, not the necessarily the action or the outcome, that is morally unjustified. Contrary to Clifford’s strict doctrine, James proposes a more permissive position: in cases where an option is genuine such that it "cannot be decided on intellectual grounds" (James, pg. 105), it is justified

With this particular case, Gettier effectively challenges the relationship between the sufficient condition and the necessary conditions because Smith’s justified true beliefs are not jointly sufficient for him to know he is the man with 10 coins in his pocket who will get the job. In fact, even if Smith’s justified true belief turns out to be true; Jones actually gets the job, intuitively we are not convinced that his justified true beliefs is deemed as knowledge because in the case that he is correct, we intuitively regard his justified true belief as a lucky coincidence since he could have had a false justified true belief.

It is a Gettier case because it is a true belief that is accidentally correct, despite it being realistically believable. The pair clarifies that when Sally forgets her bad source she did not gain justification, however, she gained justification because she does not have a defeater for a justification for her broccoli

When it comes to kief, many don't know what it is. Then,there are people who do, but don't know what to do with it. Well, in this explanation of kief, you will learn how to utilize it, and understand where it comes from.

The Gettier Problem is a widely acknowledged philosophical question, named in honour of Edmund Gettier who discovered it in 1963, which questions whether a piece of information that someone believes for invalid reasons, but by mere happenstance is correct, counts as knowledge. Before the Gettier paper was published, it was widely believed that the Tripartite Theory of Knowledge- which states that Justified True Belief equaled knowledge- was fact. This means that with three conditions, one could know something. Firstly, if you believe something, secondly, if you have justification for believing, and thirdly, that your belief is in fact true. If all three of these conditions were met, then this amounted to knowledge. However, with the publication of Gettier’s paper, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”, he attempted to prove, with the aid of a number of problems, that it was not sufficient to have only these three conditions in order for a belief to become knowledge.

In this counterexample of the traditional view of knowledge that Gettier illustrates, a true justified belief evolved from a false justified belief. What the Gettier problem shows us is that in order for a true belief to qualify as knowledge, it must satisfy two conditions; it must not be a lucky guess (that is, it must be justified), and it must not be a lucky truth. A true belief that isn't a lucky guess, it may still be a lucky truth, and thus fall short of being knowledge. So where must knowledge come from?

In his book ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’, Descartes writes that all beliefs, even the most irresistible convictions, may not correspond to how the world really is; and this is something that defenders of the correspondence theory are arguably unable to dismiss. As a result, the coherence theory takes a different approach and argues that a proposition (truth-bearer) is true if it ‘fits’ or coheres with a specific set of beliefs (truth-maker). These beliefs may belong either to the individual (and include the laws of logic, for example), to human beings at the ultimate stage of historical development, or to a system of beliefs held by a God or the Absolute (Walker, 1989). So in the example where Billy believes that ‘dogs have five legs’, his claim can be assessed by considering if this statement coheres with a specific set of true beliefs. For instance, it may be commonly understood that dogs have four legs not five, that there has never been a dog with more than four legs, and that no one apart from Billy has ever claimed that dogs can have more than four legs. Thus, it follows that the key to determining whether Billy’s statement is true or false is “internal consistency and logical standards” (Dunwoody, 2009, p. 117).

Knowledge is considered accurate when there is sufficient evidence that it is the truth. Over time, methods of verifying the accuracy of knowledge change. As learners, we often equate accuracy with the value of knowledge, however, the value of accuracy is dependent on the area of knowledge under consideration. Today, accuracy in the natural sciences is vital as any error can be catastrophic. In 1986, a flawed reactor and human error caused the Chernobyl disaster that exposed millions to radiation and had significant long term impacts. However in history, complete “accuracy” is almost unattainable. As historians cannot first-hand experience past events, they can only try to make connections with available sources to suggest what happened