False Bases for True Beliefs: Gettier Applied.

Assessment Question 2: Epistemology and Mind; Topic (1): Knowledge and

Justified True Sureness Charles Gregory St. Pierre October 2016
Most of us cope with our reality reasonably well. In order to do so, it is necessary that, in
general anyway, what we are confident is true is in fact, actually true. That is, what we are sure
is true constitutes actual knowledge of the world. Formally, philosophers frame this in
propositional form:
For some P, which we are considering to be a fact:
Proposition 1: P is True.
Proposition 2: You are confident, or sure that P is True.
To this, they add a third proposition: Justification. You must have good reasons to be confident
that P is True. Thus:
Proposition 3: You are justified in being sure that P is True.
Conclusion: P constitutes (a fact of) knowledge.
This is framed as Justified True Belief, and this was pretty much the state of the analysis of the
nature of knowledge for around 2500 years, from Plato until the 1960's when Edmund Gettier
presented two counterexamples. In Gettier's examples, the three propositions are true, but
the conclusion, that what the individual believes to be true actually constitutes knowledge,
cannot, with a reasonable definition of knowledge, be accepted. Many other counterexamples
have been presented since. These demonstrate the possibility of the existence of a false basis
for a true belief, and stand opposed to the idea that such a belief, however it may be true,
constitutes knowledge.
We will explore one of Gettier's examples, (one counterexample is sufficient,) and his argument,
and examine various ramifications in the individual's understanding of his world. In particular
we will discuss approaches to true knowledge in two different domains: The one of
Propositional Truth, and the domain of Truth of Acquaintance.* (Hume categorized these
domains respectively as the one of relationships of ideas, and the other as matters of fact.)
Gettier's examples are in the domain of Truth of Acquaintance.
Gettiers story: Smith and Jones are interviewing for the same job. Before Smith goes in to his
interview, Jones reveals to Smith that he has 10 coins in his pocket. Smith goes into his
interview, and gets the clear impression that he is rejected, and that Jones will get the job.
Therefore, he believes that the person who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket.
Unbeknownst to him, he, Smith, also has 10 coins in his pocket. Also, despite his impression of
his job interview, he, Smith, will get the job. Smith is thus correct, confident, and justified in his

belief that the person who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket, but it is based on the false
belief that it was going to be Jones who was going to get the job.
Gettiers claim is that Smiths belief, while it satisfies the above three propositions, does not
constitute knowledge. Thus, a fourth proposition (at least,) is required:
Proposition 4: Your belief in P is not inferred from some false belief.
While the example of Smith and Jones is rather contrived, it is clear in demonstrating the
inadequacy of the three classical propositions in defining whether something constitutes
knowledge.
And the issue is one of definition. With the above four propositions, (and at least the three
others Professor Hare has acquainted us with.) one attempts a more refined, and hopefully
more useful, definition of knowledge, by drawing hard, and ever more restrictive boundaries
about what qualifies as being knowledge.
But is the calculus of propositions the best way to go about delimiting what constitutes
knowledge? Nozick, by questioning the issue of closure, has raised the issue that knowledge
may not strictly follow the demands of propositional logic, but instead requires looser
operations. This suggests that something other than some intersection of propositional
conditions may be more useful in describing knowledge.
For propositional logic to (strictly) apply to knowledge, the Closure Principle must be true:
Whenever you know that A and you know that if A then B, then you know B. To distinguish
from strict propositions, below we will use K[] as the knowledge operator. Thus: K[A]; K[if A
then B]: K[B]. expresses the closure principle
However, it is almost never the case that we know anything in the world of acquaintance with
absolute certainty. Not only is K[A] always slightly suspect, but the K[ if A then B] statement is
also suspect. And the longer the chain of implication: K[if A then B}; K[ if B then C] => K[if A then
C], etc., the more fragile it becomes, the more questionable the conclusion, and properly so.
In using propositions, a similar fragility arises and increases as more and more propositions are
required to define, in knowledge, the conclusion. We have: K{A i ]; K[if{A 1 AND A 2 ANDA i}]
then K[C.] The larger i is, the less confidence we have in believing C. In the domain of Truth of
Acquaintance, there are just too many conditions for it to be likely True. This is in distinction to
the domain of Propositional Truth, where the strength of a chain is independent of its length.
Thus, a theorem in, say, Euclidean geometry, no matter how complicated and distant from its
axioms, has just as much Truth as those axioms.
So while serial operations such as those shown above weaken our confidence in what we know,
parallel operations may strengthen it: Thus: K[A]; K[B}, K[if A then C] AND K[if B then C]: K[C].
gives us a stronger confidence in C than either A or B separately. Each imply C separately.
Together the implication is stronger. This assumes that A and B are in some measure

independent. In general, the more independent facts with implication C , or to put it another
way the more perspectives on C, we can marshal, the greater our confidence that C constitutes
(an element of) true knowledge about the world.
However, parallel operations do not guarantee that C constitutes knowledge. The separate facts
and implications may all be subject to some same systemic error, and so then also C.
Back to Gettier. In the examples we are presented, as the result of the false basis underlying our
conclusions, we infer as True a mixed bag of both True and False statements about the world.
And in accepting False statements, we reject the contradictory statements about the world that
are True. Now so far as these statements are about the world, they can (but need not) be
resolved by further experience. The True statements may be verified, the False statements may
be opposed by new evidence.
Statements in Gettiers examples deal with facts in the world. However, suppose these
statements are not about the world directly, but about how to describe the world. Such
statements would be statements in science, for instance, or, say, the role of God in making and
running the world. They might be a persons understandings about how their society works and
interacts. Underlying errors in these kind of statements would tend to persist, because they
would be held together by an inner coherence. They may correspond to immediate experience,
but such statements about the world, even the immediate world, would be True only by
coincidence. The erroneous structure would, however, be applied to explaining the world
beyond the immediate. Some distant events would fit into the erroneous framework, and these
would reinforce it. Other events would not, and would tend to be discounted, dismissed, and
avoided. Explanations of these events, where found necessary, would tend to the ad hoc and/or
convoluted. Indeed, attention to and thought about these events, where they cannot be
shoehorned into the accepted system of explanation, might be avoided and repressed
altogether. Thus a life may be lived, the attention focused as if with blinders.
So it is hard to conclude that such an erroneous information structure qualifies as knowledge at
all. Yet, at least to the persons experience, it enables them to function within their own world.
Roughly, we might say that its inner relationships, and its relationships with the immediate
world, were correct, that is were True, and constituted knowledge, while the relationships with
the wider world were not, and so were not knowledge.
A question arises: How completely is knowledge defined by relationships, rather than based on
some foundation of what might be called things in themselves?
Consider a dictionary. It has no center, and no edge. Each word is ultimately defined by the
definitions of all the others words. Does a dictionary constitute a model of the world, and the
knowledge of that world?
As may be. The high standards set by the propositional delineation of knowledge may
constitute some approach to some sort of ideal. We may perhaps imagine some sort of ideal

TRUTH, awareness of which constitutes knowledge, through which we all move, each of our
understandings of this TRUTH dependent upon the path of our lives through it, and colored and
shaded by what we have attended to, and what we have overlooked or denied. And, while we
might all agree on events in the world, on how many coins a person might have in his pocket,
and who gets the job, on the larger matters of how to describe the world, of what constitutes
True knowledge of the world, agreement may not be so easy.