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Ideas

Experiments In Thought

The cow in the field - problems with Justified True Belief

Written by: William Owen

Reading time: 2 min

I bet there are lots of things that you think you know. But what does it really mean to know something? The concept of knowledge is actually quite confusing when you think about it. For example what is the difference between knowledge and belief?

You might say that you believe things when you aren't sure but you think they might be true; but that you know things when you are certain they are true. Another way to think about this is that something is considered knowledge you believe it and that it is true.

This is quite a common definition of knowledge and is often referred to as .It's really what most people think aboutwhen they think about knowledge.But unfortunately it doesn't really make much sense.

What if you were justified in believing something that was not true.For example if you were to look at a clockand it told you the time was 12:00 PMhowever what you do not know is that the clock is brokenand the time is actually 2:00 PM.Do you presently know that the time is 12:00 PM.I think you would act as if you knew it,and you would probably tell people that this was knowledge and not a belief.But as this is not knowledge of a truestate of thingsit's really a false belief.

I bet you know, or at least think you know, lots of things. But do you know what it means to know things? What do we mean by knowledge?

A common idea about the nature of knowledge holds that a person has knowledge when they hold an idea that meets the following criteria: -

The idea the person holds is true
The person believes the idea to be true
The person is Justified in believing it to be true

This ideas is know as Justified True Belief. A person who has a justified true belief, can be said to have knowledge... or can they?

The Gettier problem

American philosopher Edmund Gettier

1963 three-page paper titled "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?"

Gettier himself was not actually the first to raise the problem named after him; its existence was acknowledged by both Alexius Meinong and Bertrand Russell, the latter of which discussed the problem in his book Human knowledge: Its scope and limits. In fact, the problem has been known since the Middle Ages, and both Indian philosopher Dharmottara and scholastic logician Peter of Mantua presented examples of it.[3]

The broken clock

The Cow in the field

The tob interview

The idea the person holds is true
The person believes the idea to be true
The person is Justified in believing it to be true
When the assumptions used to justify the belief are true.