Arrested Development and Philosophy_ They've Made a Huge Mistake - Kristopher G. Phillips [73]
With this lack of consensus in mind, we can characterize three different approaches to resolving the Gettier problem. First, we might reject the project of offering an analysis of knowledge altogether, and by doing so dissolve the motivation for considering Gettier-style cases. Second, we might refine how justification is understood so that Gettier-style cases are blocked. Third, we might try to find a fourth condition that, when taken along with JTB, provides what we’re looking for in an analysis of knowledge.
Philosophers who adopt the first approach argue that Gettier-style cases show us that the project of analyzing knowledge in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions was doomed from the start.5 We might even argue that every epistemologist is committed to taking some epistemic concept as unanalyzable, and perhaps there are reasons for us to think that knowledge should play that role. Of course, such a view is at odds with many of our intuitions about what knowledge is. After all, it seemed obvious that at the start of this chapter we could take belief to be a necessary constituent of knowledge. If we can get one constituent that seems to be obviously required for knowledge, then it would be awfully weird if, in reality, we couldn’t offer any analysis.
Perhaps, then, we should reconsider what these Gettier-style cases taught us. Maybe, the problem is that our notion of justification needs refinement. We can go about this in a number of ways. One proposed solution to the Gettier problem is to raise the degree of justification required for knowledge. On this view, the justification required for knowledge is certainty (or evidence that implies the impossibility that the belief is false). As a result, Gettier-style cases are avoided because knowledge requires certainty, and each of the Gettier cases seems to rely on the possibility of false belief, where the belief just happens to be true. Yet, such an answer to the Gettier problem would have devastating consequences when it comes to the extent of our knowledge. Surely, there are many things we know, but aren’t certain of. Indeed most of the examples that we took at the outset of this chapter (George Michael’s love for Maeby, Buster’s extensive and useless academic “knowledge”) would fail if this were the requirement. Alternatively, Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) suggested that we maintain fallible justification, but require that knowledge cannot come by way of false premises.6 On such a view JTB is necessary and sufficient for knowledge, but a belief is only justified if it is not inferred by a faulty line of reasoning. On this type of view, the Gettier cases fail to be counterexamples since they involve the bad kind of inferences. Such a solution, however, requires locating the illicit inference in Gettier—and that’s no easy task.
Finally, one might proceed by trying to locate a fourth condition necessary for knowledge. Proponents of this view also differ wildly in what they take to be the fourth condition, and a survey of such views would be far beyond what we care to do here. However, we can briefly consider one type of approach, where the necessary addition to JTB is that the belief in question be caused in the right kind of way.7 Thus, it could be argued that in the Gettier cases, the belief fails to be knowledge because it was not caused in the right kind of way. In effect, the belief only turned out to be true due to sheer luck, and not because of an appropriate belief-forming process. Clearly though, this approach requires an adequate analysis of “appropriate belief-forming processes,” which is far from easy. Finally, solutions of this sort take as necessary for knowledge something external to the knower. As a result, such a view is at odds with much of the history of epistemology. After all, don’t