The purpose of this paper is to show that Goldman's causal theory of knowledge does not solve the Gettier problem. First, I will reiterate the Gettier problem. Second, I will show how Goldman's theory attempts to solve the Gettier problem. Next, I will show how over determination points out a major flaw for Goldman's theory. Finally, I will demonstrate that Goldman's theory does not work if the world we live in is not one of absolute truth and void of deception.
First, when looking at the causal chain theory it is imperative that we understand the basis of what it is trying to do which is to attempt to solve The Gettier problem. So, in order to continue in the building of my argument I will briefly cover what said problem was in an effort to show how the causal theory of knowledge fails to solve the problem that Gettier proposed. In brief: the Gettier problem pointed out that knowledge requires more than a true justified belief. An example that Gettier provides is one where a man: Smith, is told by a potential employer that the man that will be getting the job has ten coins in his pocket, Smith then is justified in believing that Johnson: another man who interviewed for the same position, will be the one getting the job as Smith knows without a doubt that Johnson has 10 coins in his pocket. However Smith ends up getting the job as he unknowingly also had ten coins in his pocket. Smith was justified in believing that the man that has ten coins in his pocket will be getting the job, however we cannot say that Smith truly had knowledge based on this account because he wrongly assumed that Johnson would be getting the job. Hence Gettier said that there must be more to knowledge than true justified beliefs.
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...hain would solve the Gettier problem.
At this point in Goldman's paper he begins to examine knowledge through testimony stating: "This too can be analyzed causally. p causes a person T to believe p, by perception. T's belief of p gives rise to (causes) his asserting p. T's asserting p causes S, by auditory perception, to believe that T is asserting p. S infers that T believes p, and from this in turn, he infers that p is a fact."which simply means that p causing T to believe it and T stating said belief in front of S leads S to believe that p must be a fact. After stating this Goldman points out that if miscommunication is somehow involved in this transaction, such as the accidental removal of "not" when referring to p in a newspaper article, then S will not have the correct causal chain leading to his belief therefore he would not have knowledge on p.
In 1980 a book by U. Pothast came out with the provocative title 'The Inadequacy of the Proofs for Freedom'. (2) Its merit consisted in the fact that it runs through and refutes all the known types of proofs for freedom in the philosophical tradition. Pothast's arguments, which thereby amount to determinism, are in my opinion basically sound, but surely also need a discriminating judgement, which is treated in the following discussion.
Also John Martin Fischer offers the idea of semicompatibilism, an idea that allows us to confidently attribute moral responsibility to agents even if we are unsure whether determinism is true.
Parsons, T. (1963). On the Concept of Power. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , 107 (3), 232-262.
Williamson in his book Knowledge and It’s Limits primarily seeks to support his novel perspective of “knowledge first” epistemology (v). This approach sets forth the idea that knowledge cannot be analyzed into more basic concepts, such as belief or truth. The basis for this argument is that knowledge is a mental state, and thus it cannot be broken down into the combination of external conditions – like the state of the world such that it makes a proposition true – and internal conditions – like belief in a proposition or the justification of that belief (6). Certainly, Williamson is able to illustrate in his introduction the way in which he equates belief and knowledge as mental states, and refutes the idea that belief is conceptually prior to knowledge. However, Williamson takes the assertion that knowledge is a general factive mental state and supports this claim by offering it as a new approach to epistemology that avoids the problems of trying to analyze knowledge, and instead allows for knowledge to be the central concept used to elucidate others, like justification and eviden...
John Perry’s argument in “the Problem of the Essential Indexical” is very long winded. He goes through numerous points and counterpoints before coming to a conclusion about belief states. Staton begins her essay by explaining Perry’s original issue with the essential indexical. An essential indexical is a term that when replaced by other terms “destroys the force of motivation” (Staton 2017, 1). One possible solution to the problem of the essential indexical is a de re belief. Staton summarizes using an
American Philosophical Quarterly 21, no. 3 (1984): 227-36.
One of the most widely debated philosophical questions is that of the existence of free will. There are three main positions. Determinism - free will is impossible and Libertarianism-free will is possible and Compatabilism seeks to reconcile the conflict by proposing that the diametrically opposed positions are compatible with one another. The deba...
The true-justified-belief theory of knowledge is an attempt to subject knowledge to analysis. The theory falls under the category of Epistemology, a branch of philosophy dealing with knowledge. The theory, in short, seeks to answer the question, what does it mean to know something? What parts lead up to a point, when someone can claim to have knowledge of something? The true-justified-belief theory of knowledge or “JTB” has three such components seeking to answer the aforementioned questions. The three components make up the theory’s analysis of knowledge. The analysis claims to demonstrate that in order to have sufficiency for knowledge, there must be a necessary justified, true belief.
...finition is not guaranteed to fail,” we must understand that saying a definition is not guaranteed to fail is different from saying it satisfies the criteria for always working. Given a situation where the agent utilizes double luck to acquire knowledge when a virtue-based act replaces justification makes us dissect the aspect of arrival. If the agent arrived to the truth and the motivation for doing so was not virtuous, then the same double-luck example could occur, the truth could be arrived and the knowledge acquired could not be good true knowledge. This is because the component of arrival does not entail the virtue. Therefore, there is no truth involved, but just luck. In this account her definition seems incomplete. If the truth of knowledge is virtue-based and all people are not virtuous agents, then how to we account for the knowledge of the non-virtuous?
After reviewing the skepticisms that arise from the standard philosophical approach, Davidson suggests that we need a theory that will accommodate all three models while making sense of their relationships among each other; anything else will leave us with the question: how can we know the world in three completely different ways? Davidson’s argument begins with an exploration of why the three kinds of knowledge are each in their own right necessary and irreducible to the other two forms. His argument is on the basis that we simply could not go on without knowledge of the mental states of others, or knowledge of our own mental states.
Danto, Arthur. The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 61, No. 19, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty- First Annual Meeting. Oct 15, 1964. Pp 571-584. Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
In this paper, I offer a solution to the Gettier problem by adding a fourth condition to the justified true belief analysis of knowledge. First though, a brief review. Traditionally, knowledge had been accounted for with the justified true belief analysis. To know something, three conditions had to be met: first, you had to have a belief; second, the belief had to be justified; third, this justified belief had to be true. So a justified true belief counts as knowledge. Gettier however showed this analysis to be inadequate as one can have a justified true belief that no one would want to count as knowledge.
Question No. 5 “No knowledge can be produced by a single way of knowing.” Discuss.
Gettier undermines the traditional understanding of knowledge by showing that a person can make an apparently proper inference from a belief one is justified in holding, but which is false. He proves that we can arrive at a justified true belief, but the truth of which is unrelated to the premises that it was inferred from. It is “possible for a person to be justified in believing a proposition that is in fact false”. In his first example Gettier shows that one can infer a true statement from a false proposition. To briefly outline the case, Smith has strong evidence...
...rly refutes the tradition definition of knowledge. As earlier stated, many attempts have been made to repair or replace the definition of knowledge; hence the theories such as, the Casual Theory, to use as a solution to an ambiguous problem. However, there is still no positive and certain solution to the Gettier problem as effective as his challenge may be in order to define knowledge.