Thinker · TH-0136
Edmund Gettier
Edmund Gettier was an American philosopher who taught at Wayne State University and later at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His three-page paper of…
Also known as Edmund L. Gettier III
1927 – 2021 · Detroit (Wayne State University); Amherst, Massachusetts
Traditions: Analytic
Edmund Gettier was an American philosopher who taught at Wayne State University and later at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His three-page paper of 1963 presented cases in which a person has a justified true belief that is plainly not knowledge, because the belief is true only by luck. The paper broke the standard analysis of knowledge as justified true belief and launched decades of work on the 'Gettier problem'. He published almost nothing else.
Key ideas
- Justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge.
- One can be justified in believing a falsehood and validly infer a truth from it.
- In such cases the belief is true by luck, so it is not knowledge.
- Any analysis of knowledge must explain what rules out this kind of luck.
Major works
- "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" Analysis 23 (1963)
In the conversation
- Question If a stopped clock happens to show the right time, why don’t I know the time?
- Question My model was right for the wrong reason. Which answer to Gettier explains why that matters?
- Discussion A verdict that was right by accident: did the court know he was guilty?
- Debate Dharmottara’s mirage is not really a Gettier case, and calling it one flattens both traditions
- Reading group Reading group: Gettier’s three pages, with Russell’s clock and Dharmottara’s mirage alongside