Revisiting the Gettier’s Problem

Anyone who has been schooled in the analytic tradition of doing philosophy would most probably have spent considerable time pondering over Gettierization’s onslaught against the old Platonic analysis of knowledge. This is a philosophical problem that has occupied epistemology when Edmund Gettier examined Plato’s analysis in 1963.

As I was sipping a glass of brandy while seated outside my house last night, I saw a dog urinate on a tree; and that reawakened my old epistemological passion on analyzing the quiddity of knowledge. But let me tell you first why a dog peeing on a tree stirred my old passion,lest anyone misconstrue me being a zoophiliac.

I remember an old Gettier example that was posited by Louis Pojman in his book ‘A Theory of Knowledge.’ The Example goes like this. Assuming that you (Winston John Romero Casio aka WJRC) were watching outside through a window and saw a dog urinate on a tree. Having seen what recently transpired, then you would say ” I saw a dog there.” while pointing at the direction of the tree. Unknown to you, what you see was actually a cleverly crafted robot that was made to mimic a dog’s ability to urinate. As far as the said robot’s appearance is concerned, it looked just like your ordinary mutt except that it really was not a biological robot. Let us assume further that a biological dog was actually sleeping behind the tree seemingly oblivious to the robot dog’s peeing on his territory. Question, when you said that “there is a dog there”, did you actually KNOW that there is a dog there.

Let us recall Plato’s Justified True Belief (JTB) account for Knowledge. Plato say’s, so does Roderick Chisholm though in a bit refined presentation, that

S knows P iff  (S=the knower; P= knowledge claim)

i. P is true. (truth condition)

ii. S believes P is true. (belief condition)

iii. S is justified that P is true. ( justification condition)

therefore, S knows P.

Let’ go back to Pojman’s example.

S=WJRC; P= There is a dog there.

i.  There is a dog there is true.

ii. WJRC believes that he knows that there is a dog there is true.

iii. WJRC is justified in his belief that there is a dog there is true.

therefore, WJRC knows that there is a dog there.

But wait, Gettier says let us examine how the entailment came about. Or how did S infer that he knows P.

P is true because there is indeed a biological dog there.  Keep in mind that though that it was the robot dog that moved WJRC to say that there is a dog there. The second condition on belief is also met because WJRC believes that there is a dog there is true. And the third justification is met because it is justified to believe that there is a dog there is true given that there is a biological dog, albeit sleeping behind the tree and not the robot dog that WJRC was alluding to when he said “there is a dog there”.

Gettier’s point then is this, even if you are able to satisfy all the three conditions of Plato for knowledge, the three condition are insufficient because of the so-called gettierization examples that he has shown.

He, therefore, calls for a revisiting of the old analysis of knowledge.  Thus, the question begging to be asked given the aforementioned example is this, “Does WJRC know that there is a dog there?”

And many have take on the cudgels either for Plato or Gettier. For those interested in a more thorough reading of this philosophical issue. Click here.