Tutorial #16. Epistemology: What is Knowledge? Gettier Problem. Discussion Questions

After having read Edmund Gettier, ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’, think about these questions.

• Do you think that Gettier cases are successful in showing that knowledge is not justified true belief? Try to come up with a counter-argument.
• What is the best way to respond to the Gettier problem?
• What conditions would you add to the definition that knowledge is justified true belief, to counter the Gettier cases?
• What’s the role of justification in knowledge? Consider different cases of knowledge (e.g. common sense knowledge, scientific knowledge, mathematical knowledge, "artistic" knowledge)?
• What is the role of evidence and methodology in all these different cases?
• Would you claim that you are more justified to believe that carbon has a standard atomic weight of 12.0107(8) g·mol−1 than to believe that Inter Milan is a great football team?
• Do you think that by adding some kind of causal condition (that is, an appropriate causal relation between the belief that X, and X itself) would help?
• Do you think that the difference between true belief and knowledge involves things beyond our control (i.e. beyond your mental states)? Make examples.
• Were people in the xv century justified in believing that witches exist?
• Can we really say that we know that the universe is geocentric, until we have another truth (heliocentric) which destroys this view?
• What’s the role of intuition in the Gettier problems?
• How would you account for cross-cultural differences in the Gettier problem (see the post on Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich (2001) experiment)?
• Would that mean that the appeal to intuition is not a sound philosophical methodology?
• Why should we care what the concept of knowledge is?