Edmund Gettier - Wikipedia Edmund Gettier From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Edmund Gettier Born Edmund L. Gettier III (1927-10-31) October 31, 1927 (age 93) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. Era Contemporary philosophy Region Western philosophy School Analytic philosophy Main interests Epistemology Notable ideas Gettier problem Influences Roderick Chisholm Influenced Robert Nozick, Colin McGinn Edmund L. Gettier III (/ˈɡɛtiər/; born October 31, 1927) is an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is best known for his short 1963 article "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", which has generated an extensive philosophical literature trying to respond to what became known as the Gettier problem. Contents 1 Life 2 Work 2.1 Gettier problem 3 Selected works 4 See also 5 References 6 External links Life[edit] Gettier was educated at Cornell University, where his mentors included Max Black and Norman Malcolm. Gettier was originally attracted to the opinions of Ludwig Wittgenstein. His first teaching job was at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan in 1957,[1] where his colleagues included Keith Lehrer, R. C. Sleigh, and Alvin Plantinga. Philosophers often suggest that because he had few publications, his colleagues urged him to publish any ideas he had just to satisfy the administration. The result was a three-page article that remains one of the most famous in recent philosophical history. The article was published in Analysis. Gettier has since not published anything, but he has invented and taught to his graduate students new methods for finding and illustrating countermodels in modal logic, as well as simplified semantics for various modal logics.[citation needed] In his article, Gettier challenges the "justified true belief" definition of knowledge that dates back to Plato's Theaetetus, but is discounted at the end of that very dialogue. This account was accepted by most philosophers at the time, most prominently the epistemologist Clarence Irving Lewis and his student Roderick Chisholm. Gettier's article offered counter-examples to this account in the form of cases such that subjects had true beliefs that were also justified, but for which the beliefs were true for reasons unrelated to the justification. Some philosophers, however, thought the account of knowledge as justified true belief had already been questioned in a general way by the work of Wittgenstein. (Later, a similar argument was found in the papers of Bertrand Russell.[2]) Work[edit] Gettier problem[edit] Main article: Gettier problem Gettier provides several examples of beliefs that are both true and justified, but that we should not intuitively term knowledge. Cases of this sort are now termed "Gettier (counter-)examples". Because Gettier's criticism of the justified true belief model is systemic, other authors have imagined increasingly fantastical counterexamples. For example: I am watching the men's Wimbledon Final, and John McEnroe is playing Jimmy Connors, it is match point, and McEnroe wins. I say to myself: "John McEnroe is this year's men's champion at Wimbledon". Unbeknownst to me, however, the BBC were experiencing a broadcasting fault and so had broadcast a tape of last year's final, when McEnroe also beat Connors. I had been watching last year's Wimbledon final, so I believed that McEnroe had bested Connors. But at that same time, in real life, McEnroe was repeating last year's victory and besting Connors! So my belief that McEnroe bested Connors to become this year's Wimbledon champion is true, and I had good reason to believe so (my belief was justified) — and yet, there is a sense in which I could not really have claimed to "know" that McEnroe had bested Connors because I was only accidentally right that McEnroe beat Connors — my belief was not based on the right kind of justification. Gettier inspired a great deal of work by philosophers attempting to recover a working definition of knowledge. Major responses include: Gettier's use of "justification" is too general, and only some kinds of justification count. Gettier's examples do not count as justification at all, and only some kinds of evidence are justificatory. Knowledge must have a fourth condition, such as "no false premises" or "indefeasibility". Robert Nozick suggests knowledge must consist of justified true belief that is "truth-tracking" — a belief such that if it was revealed to be false, it would not have been believed, and conversely. Colin McGinn suggests that knowledge is atomic (it is not divisible into smaller components). We have knowledge when we have knowledge, and an accurate definition of knowledge may even contain the word "knowledge".[3] A 2001 study by Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich suggests that the effect of the Gettier problem varies by culture. In particular, people from Western countries seem more likely to agree with the judgments described in the story than do those from East Asia.[4] Subsequent studies were unable to replicate these results.[5] Selected works[edit] Edmund L. Gettier, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" Analysis, Vol. 23, pp. 121–123 (1963). doi:10.1093/analys/23.6.121 See also[edit] American philosophy List of American philosophers References[edit] ^ "Faculty page Edmund Gettier at UMass". Retrieved 17 November 2020. ^ Russell, Bertrand (1912). The Problems of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 131f. Citation taken from Kratzer, Angelika (2002). "Facts: Particulars of Information Units?". Linguistics and Philosophy. 25 (5–6): 655–670. doi:10.1023/a:1020807615085. S2CID 170763145., p. 657. ^ McGinn, Colin (1984). "The Concept of Knowledge". Midwest Studies in Philosophy. 9: 529–554. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4975.1984.tb00076.x. reprinted in McGinn, Colin (1999). Knowledge and Reality: Selected Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 7–35. ISBN 978-0-19-823823-2. ^ Weinberg, J.; Nichols, S.; Stich, S. (2001). "Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions". Philosophical Topics. 29 (1): 429–460. doi:10.5840/philtopics2001291/217. ^ Nagel, J. (2012). "Intuitions and Experiments: A Defense of the Case Method in Epistemology". Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 85 (3): 495–527. doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2012.00634.x. External links[edit] Gettier's paper, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" on PhilPapers v t e Epistemology Epistemologists Thomas Aquinas Augustine of Hippo William Alston Robert Audi A. J. Ayer George Berkeley Laurence BonJour Keith DeRose René Descartes John Dewey Fred Dretske Edmund Gettier Alvin Goldman Nelson Goodman Paul Grice Anil Gupta Susan Haack David Hume Immanuel Kant Søren Kierkegaard Peter Klein Saul Kripke Hilary Kornblith David Lewis John Locke G. E. Moore John McDowell Robert Nozick Alvin Plantinga Plato Duncan Pritchard James Pryor Hilary Putnam W. V. O. Quine Thomas Reid Bertrand Russell Gilbert Ryle Wilfrid Sellars Susanna Siegel Ernest Sosa P. F. Strawson Baruch Spinoza Timothy Williamson Ludwig Wittgenstein Nicholas Wolterstorff Vienna Circle more... Theories Coherentism Constructivism Contextualism Empiricism Evolutionary epistemology Fallibilism Feminist epistemology Fideism Foundationalism Holism Infinitism Innatism Naïve realism Naturalized epistemology Phenomenalism Positivism Rationalism Reductionism Reliabilism Representational realism Skepticism Transcendental idealism Concepts A priori knowledge A posteriori knowledge Analysis Analytic–synthetic distinction Belief Common sense Descriptive knowledge Exploratory thought Gettier problem Induction Internalism and externalism Justification Knowledge Objectivity Privileged access Problem of induction Problem of other minds Perception Procedural knowledge Proposition Regress argument Simplicity Speculative reason Truth more... Related articles Outline of epistemology Faith and rationality Formal epistemology Meta-epistemology Philosophy of perception Philosophy of science Social epistemology Category Task Force Stubs Discussion Authority control GND: 129098868 ISNI: 0000 0000 2582 7654 LCCN: n88117413 PLWABN: 9810676334805606 VIAF: 1081947 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n88117413 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edmund_Gettier&oldid=997638667" Categories: 1927 births 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American philosophers 20th-century essayists 21st-century American philosophers American male essayists American male non-fiction writers American philosophers American philosophy academics Analytic philosophers Contemporary philosophers Cornell University alumni Epistemologists Living people Metaphilosophers Metaphysicians Ontologists Philosophers of culture Philosophers of mind Philosophers of social science Philosophy writers University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty University of Massachusetts Lowell faculty Wayne State University faculty Wittgensteinian philosophers Writers from Baltimore Hidden categories: Articles with hCards All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from June 2013 Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version Languages العربية Català Deutsch Eesti Español Esperanto فارسی Français Íslenska Italiano Nederlands Polski Português Русский Slovenščina کوردی Suomi Svenska 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 1 January 2021, at 14:50 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Mobile view Developers Statistics Cookie statement