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Card 2.1.1 · Root II — Epistemology

The Gettier Problem

Can you be right for the wrong reasons and still count as knowing?

The Gettier problem is the demonstration that a belief can be true, and justified, and still fail to be knowledge.

From The Coordinates of Thought by Syed Raheel Shahzad, card 2.1.1, page 88

On this card
  1. Where it sits
  2. The rival answers
  3. Key figures
  4. Connections
  5. On Coordinates of Thought

Where it sits

Under 2.1 Theories of knowledge. Borders 2.3 Structure of justification.

The rival answers

ResponseStrategy
No-false-lemmasKnowledge requires that no false belief figure in the reasoning
DefeasibilityNo further truth should undercut the justification
ReliabilismReplace justification with reliable production
SafetyThe belief must not easily have been false
Knowledge-firstAbandon the project of analysis
ContextualismStandards shift; in some contexts it is knowledge

Key figures

FigureDatesTraditionContribution
Edmund Gettier1927–2021AnalyticThe 1963 paper
Bertrand Russell1872–1970AnalyticThe stopped clock case, decades earlier
Sriharsac. 12th c. CEIndianArgued no definition of valid cognition survives scrutiny
Dharmottarac. 8th c. CEIndian BuddhistMirage case: true belief from a misleading appearance

Connections

→ 2.1 · ↔ 2.3.2, 2.4.1, 2.6 · ◇ reliabilism, safety accounts, knowledge-first · ○ Classical; Modern; Table 3

→ narrower questions · ↔ questions it borders · ◇ the positions, mapped in Part III of the book · ○ the eras and comparison tables (Parts IV and V)

The full card is in the book

In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 88.

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