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Did Indian epistemologists anticipate the Gettier problem?

Meera Kulkarni Fellow
· 2 replies
Knowledge & beliefAnalyticIndian#gettier-problem#knowledge
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In 1963 Edmund Gettier's three-page paper showed that justified true belief isn't sufficient for knowledge. You can have a justified belief that's true by luck.

Indian philosophers seem to have discussed cases like this centuries earlier. The Buddhist Dharmottara (eighth century) is often cited for an example: someone sees a mirage and believes there's water; when they reach the spot, there happens to be water under a rock. Later, the Advaitin Śrīharṣa (twelfth century) gave cases like inferring fire on a hill from what is actually dust, when there happens to be a fire there.

Did they really anticipate Gettier? And did they draw the same conclusion, or did their theories of pramāṇa avoid the problem from the start?

2 answers

  1. Tomasz Wójcik

    Fellow

    The cases look like Gettier cases, but the background is different. Pramāṇa theory defines knowledge in terms of its source: a cognition produced by a valid means of knowledge. A cognition from a mirage isn't produced by valid perception, so the theory already excludes the case. Gettier was attacking a definition that didn't mention the source.

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  2. Vikram Sethi

    Fellow

    Gaṅgeśa in Navya-Nyāya seems to have discussed similar cases too. If true, the Indian tradition recognised the problem and built source-sensitivity into knowledge from the beginning. That's closer to modern reliabilism than to the "JTB" theory Gettier attacked.

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