What are the difficulties with understanding knowledge as

justified true belief?

For most philosophers, what constitutes as knowledge is some variation of the justified true
belief model. This essay shall show how this model for defining what is knowledge is wrong.
This will be done by looking at factors such as the Gettier problems and its following
consequences, as well as
Prior to a challenge by Gettier, in reply to what constitutes as knowledge, most
epistemologists would normally have given a somewhat more or less detailed version of the
following three rules for what it is for a person to have knowledge that p (where p is any
statement):
1. Belief: The person believes that p. This belief might be more or less confident. And it
might, but it need not, be manifested in the persons speech, such as by stating that p
or by saying that they believe that p. All that is required, essentially, is for their belief
to exist.
2. Truth: The persons belief that p needs to be true. If, instead, it is wrong, then - no
matter what else is valuable about it - it is not knowledge. It would be something else,
something less significant. It is the case though that even when a belief is incorrect, it
can appear as if it is true to the believer. But in that situation the appearance of the
belief would be false; and so the belief would not be knowledge, despite how much it
might feel to the believer like knowledge.
3. Justification: The persons belief that p needs to be well supported, usually by being
based upon some good or well-reasoned evidence, or possibly some other type of
rational justification. Otherwise, the belief, despite it perhaps being true, is essentially
a lucky guess. Therefore it would be correct without being knowledge. It, again,
would only be something else, something less significant.
The third rule was basically an addition by Plato in Meno and Theatetus to counter the
problem of people who, by chance, gets something right based on strong beliefs which are
false. To get past this Plato added that we have to have a justification for believing what we
believe; we have to be able to give a sufficient account of why we believe a thing. So even a
strong belief that happens to be right isnt really knowledge. However, in 1963, Edmund
Gettier published two counterexamples to knowledge being defined as justified true belief
which showed even Platos added third rule didnt fully define knowledge. His
counterexamples were true, but, as they were not for the reasons cited as the evidence for
justification, the result of the counterexamples was a justified false belief or, perhaps,
simply not knowledge. The conditions hypothesised in Gettier-type examples are
extraordinarily unlikely to occur. Yet the mere possibility of them demonstrates the difficulty
of possessing knowledge and not just a belief as it demonstrates the flaws in the prior three
rules of knowledge. The responses to Gettiers counterexamples are generally to try to add a
fourth rule to the list. However, the fourth rule always creates further problems. For instance,

that the justification must be infallible, although it does the tricks creates more problems. It
makes knowledge the basis of knowledge, thats to say that for us to know something we
must be certain of another thing which causes problems of circularity and means it is nigh on
impossible to know anything as scepticism shows how there are doubts even about evidence.
A.J. Ayer is sometimes read (he is so read by Gettier) as defending the justified,
true belief theory or something close to it, though in place of (iii) above Ayer
would say S has the right to be sure that p. In fact, however, Ayers notion of
having the right to be sure differs significantly from the traditional conception of
justification. When Ayer says that S, in order to count as knowing p, must have
the right to be sure that p, what Ayer means is that we, the people attributing
knowledge to S, are thereby expressing a sort of attitude of approval towards Ss
belief.
Faced with the skepticism of Hume which put into doubt all phenomenal knowledge gained
by perception alone, he postulated a noumenal world accessible to the mind by
introspection. There the "things themselves" exist along with God, human freedom, and
immortality. But since they are outside the phenomenal world - the physical world governed
by strict causal deterministic laws of motion - Kant's claim to knowledge was as weak as
Hume's skeptical claim was strong.
Logical truths like the Principles of Non-Contradiction and Bivalence (Excluded Middle)
might be true in all possible worlds, but they tell us nothing about our physical world, unless
they are applicable and empirically verified.

As to Descartes' search for indubitable certain knowledge, Peirce agreed that any
knowledge can be doubted. But, explaining Descartes' error, Peirce says first that everything
can not be doubted at the same time. And second, that nothing is ever certain because the
method of science always leaves open the possibility for improvements in our knowledge.
His pragmatic "truth" is something that is only asymptotically approached over time by the
open community of inquirers.
Peirce's "pragmatic" philosophy identified truth with beliefs that informed action and had
valuable consequences. This led to John Dewey's idea of truth as "warranted assertability,"
with the warrants to be found in the empirical consequences.
Bertrand Russell declared that science is the only source of knowledge, "What science
cannot discover, mankind cannot know." This came to be called "scientism."