Can Knowledge Be Justified

The word “philosophy” is normally associated with questioning and discovering the truth behind topics such as reasoning, existence, and knowledge. Philosophers ask questions left and right in order to gain more knowledge about the world, leading them to become known as “lovers of wisdom.” This ultimately leads to the question of “What is knowledge or wisdom?” Philosophers ponder over what it is to truly “know” something, and how trustworthy are the facts that humans thought they knew. Over the years, countless theories about knowledge arose until one definition of knowledge became widely recognized: Justified, True, Belief. The concept of justified, true, belief is centered around conditions that must be fulfilled in order for someone to know …show more content…
In order for X to be justified in believing P, X has to rule out other alternatives that might make P false. For instance, assume that X took an exam in college with twenty nine other classmates. The teacher announces that only one student was able to get an A on the exam. The chances of X being the student who got an A would be one out of thirty, or about three percent. At this point, X does not know whether he was able to get the A. Assuming that there was an even separation of girls and boys in the class, the teacher announces that the student was a boy. Now X’s chance increased to one out of fifteen, or approximately six percent. but X still doesn’t know if he got an A. Finally, the teacher reveals that the student who got an A was either X or Y. X’s chances of being the A student has increased to fifty percent, yet X still does not know if he is the student because he hasn’t rule out the possibility of Y being the A student. As seen from the example, justification comes in degrees, which means that X can be less justified at some points and more justified at other points in time. But for X to know that he was the student who got an A, X needs to rule out all other possibilities and have absolute justification that the A student was really him. This idea of absolute justification can be associated with infallibilism, which states that X cannot make an error in his justification for him to know P. …show more content…
The justified, true, belief theory states that in order for X to know P, P must be true, X must believe in P, and X must be very justified in their belief of P. However, the Gettier example shows that X can be justified in their belief for P, and P happens to be true, yet X still does not know P. The point of the Gettier example was not to show that humans do not know anything. It was suppose to demonstrate that no matter how many different conditions are added to the definition of knowledge, there will always be a counterexample. The definition of knowledge is always a work in