The Gettier Problem: Is Justified True Knowledge?

The Gettier problem, in the field of epistemology, is a landmark philosophical problem with our understanding of knowledge. Attributed to American philosopher Edmund Gettier, The Gettier Problem challenged the long-held notion that justified true belief was knowledge. In the account of JTB, to have a proposition show knowledge one must have met all 3 conditions (Justification, truth, and belief). The Gettier Problem challenged this with two counter examples showing that some have justified true belief and do not know it, proving the JTB argument to be inadequate. Some have rejected these “Gettier Cases” while some have sought to transition from JTB to the Gettier Problem outlook. In his work “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Gettier uses …show more content…
This first example of the Gettier Problem was very necessary for the furthering and development of the Epistemological/Philosophical community. In an attempt to cover every bit of ground possible to define knowledge, Gettier brought to our attention the possibility of “accidental correctness” or “correct as a matter of pure coincidence” which showed that even if someone is correct, sometimes they are without knowing it. Although the many Gettier Cases differ in their details, there are a few key characteristics that tie them all together: Each case contains a belief that is true and well justified, but is still not knowledge. Fallibility and luck are two features of Gettier Cases, with the latter being the most distinctive. An example of these two features in the Smith, Jones, and The Job case is …show more content…
In this way, Gettier did not really come up with a completely new system to define knowledge, he simply refined Justified True Belief by showing that not all JTB’s are knowledge, making JTB almost correct when it comes to being accurate most of the time in cases of knowledge. For the most part, Gettier cases do only show that not all actual or possible justified true beliefs are knowledge. However, most epistemologists tend to view the impact of Gettier cases in a stronger way by saying these cases proved that being justified and true is never enough to make a belief knowledge. The reason for this is that they wish to have a universally applicable definition, formula, or analysis to understand knowledge in all of its actual or possible instances and manifestations, not only in some of them. Therefore, epistemologists strive to understand how to avoid ever being in a Gettier situation. That same goal is also the aim of understanding what it is about most instances not having Gettier situations. If we do not know what makes a situation a Gettier case and what changes to it would work for its no longer being a Gettier case, then we do not know how to describe what separates Gettier cases and other situations. Attempts have, however, been made to try and rid the argument over knowledge of Gettier