How One Man Accidentally Changed Philosophy Forever

[@Knightfall8]

Gettier cases are hilarious because they're real, they happen all the time and are common occurrences, but almost every presented example will STILL somehow feel forced and contrived.

[@hugofontes5708]

We might need a Gettier case on Gettier cases to solve this one

[@APaleDot]

Yeah, like the clock one is so simple. Everyone understands the broken clock is right twice a day, but for some reason it's not the go-to example.

[@omp199]

@@APaleDot In my brain, it was the go-to example. As soon as Alex O'Connor started talking about justified true beliefs, I was thinking to myself, "Oh, he's going to bring up the stopped watch as a counterexample."

[@gristly_knuckle]

Is it like the Birthday Paradox, or is it more like people lying about knowing what they shouldn’t know?

[@grnarsch5287]

​@@gristly_knuckle if we have the same understanding of birthday paradox. This one isnt a real paradox. Its just basic math

[@edvardkvist3656]

Yes! Discussing Gettier I find Linda Zagzebskis paper "The inescapability of Gettier problems" (1994) very relevant, such a short but revelational paper and definitely helped me understand the nature of Gettier problems much better rather than just in terms of examples and thought experiments. In short the paper sheds light on how fallibilism, always, lead to the possibility of constructing a new Gettier case. Worth a read, not here to start a discussion but merely recommend a truly great philosophy paper.

[@TechnicallyTrent]

It seems like it is about being "correct" for the wrong reasons. The interesting thing is what happens when we are "correct" over and over again even though we are mistaken for the cause. For example, if you say "Heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones", you'll be correct the vast majority of the time. But your basis of understanding is fundamentally flawed.

[@adb012]

Like the whole world including the most brilliant minds was wrong with this for thousands of years, until Galileo.

[@krumbergify]

A pragmatist like William James would say that your belief is ”true enough” to get to the observation that you expect and that this is all we can ever hope for.

[@dogfaceonscreen2053]

so like humes induction problem?

[@Killerbee_McTitties]

yeah, the differentiation between knowledge and understanding is an interesting topic as well, as knowledge of a fact alone doesn't entail the individual being able to apply it in a variety of contexts.

[@AtheistReligionIsCancer]

According to atheist religion, What is evil about genocide? Should we ask mao?

[@psychonaut689]

False premises can lead to true conclusions - the problem then is "how do we know that the conclusion is true?"

[@geico1975]

Maybe it doesn't matter though, maybe "truth" matters least or not at all concerning knowledge. It could be a false knowledge although knowledge nonetheless? I dunno man, I just dunno:)

[@Unfunny_Username_389]

Is this partly because the conclusion could itself be a false premise in a subsequent cycle of "false premise -> coincidence -> true conclusion"?

[@AtheistReligionIsCancer]

like... when pdf file atheists claim that men can give birth?

[@Justacommentor777]

Here's an example- premise- bad air causes Malaria Conclusion- if you live near areas with bad air you will get malaria Truth- mosquitos cause malaria and mosquitos are found in large numbers in areas where air is generally bad. So you can see how the premise is wrong but the conclusion is true because we can observe and experience it.

[@fang_xianfu]

​@@geico1975 yeah, I think you need a very rigourous definition of truth. The problem with all examples of truth, when you're talking about knowledge, is that they're actually examples of knowledge. In the video Alex uses a fairly flippant example like "Napoleon existed", but that's something we know, not something that is necessarily true. If Descartes was right that "je pense, donc je suis" is the limit of actual truth, as in definitional necessary truth, then knowledge itself is actually the interesting thing, not truth itself, since real truth is completely outside our experience. I think the only thing that's left if you want to avoid an argument whose tail wags itself, is to abandon the idea of truth as a prerequisite for knowledge.

[@glorytoarstotzka330]

you gave that example of the voodoo witch and then you gave the raining example exactly when it started raining outside for me, that is insane

[@bubblegodanimation4915]

Isn't Seattle wonderful.

[@jimmygravitt1048]

Gotta be the supernatural. What other explanation could there possibly be???

[@paulwicht6294]

Must’ve been the witch.😂

[@jamesdewitt84]

Me too but I live in Wales so it wasn't weird.

[@shenanigans3710]

Carl Jung has entered the chat

[@primecat5433]

When i burned my hand on the stove, i realized that pain was a universal truth.

[@demarcoroyes526]

It literally struck half past three on my watch as soon as you said half past three

[@arushan54]

We live in a matrix

[@AtheistReligionIsCancer]

Everything in atheist religion is destiny. No free will exists.

[@guesswhomofo]

@@AtheistReligionIsCancer cool very relevant. though I guess you had to post this comment, you had no choice

[@AtheistReligionIsCancer]

@@guesswhomofo I made my choice myself, abdooool, because I'm not pdf file atheist. But according to atheist religion, mao had no choice when he did away with 70 million people. Lenin had no choice when he tortured people. Stalin had no choice when he enslaved people.

[@guesswhomofo]

@@AtheistReligionIsCancer very very strong arguments good job religious boy

[@natanbridge]

Gettier was on the faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit when he published his famous paper. Wayne is my local university (I live in a suburb of Detroit) and I take philosophy classes there all the time (I am currently taking an excellent class in Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility taught by a wonderful philosophy professor named Jada Twedt Strabbing). On the wall in the philosophy department lounge are pictures of the faculty from most (though not all) years going back to the early 1960s. Gettier is in several of those pictures. A strikingly handsome fellow. Another very famous philosopher who belonged to the WSU department in the 1960s was Alvin Plantinga. I can't remember at the moment if they were both at Wayne at the same time.

[@Appleblade]

Alvin is the philosopher this interview should have focused on. Gettier is important for fixing a very dumb notion of knowledge philosophers had no business accepting in the first place... one Descartes would have rolled his eyes over.

[@FirstLast-gm9nu]

Whoa, I read a paper of hers while doing background research for my undergraduate thesis on forgiveness! Its Cool to here about her in an unrelated context

[@perkinscurry8665]

The problem I have with JTB is that it seems inherently circular as a criterion for knowledge. When presenting it, just as Alex did, people always glide right over the truth part without addressing how one knows that the justified belief is true. The circularity is evident in the preceding sentence "knows that the JB is true". To use JTB as a criterion of knowledge presupposes that truth is accessible to us, i.e. that we can know the truth, but in that case we have to have JTB about the truth of the matter and, then, JTB about the JTB of the truth of the matter, and, then, JTB about ... etc.

[@fellinuxvi3541]

I disagree, what it tells us is that we can only have justification for our beliefs, and thus, when we call something "true" we're only agreeing to a statement, not tapping into some fundamental reality.

[@perkinscurry8665]

@fellinuxvi3541 I agree with where you're coming from. But I take a narrower view than you of what JTB advocates mean when they say a statement is true. I take justified true belief as a component of a correspondence theory of truth where the truth of a statement is measured by its correspondence to 'reality'. You seem to be espousing an correspondence theory of truth (which is my view) where the truth of a statement is measured against a whole body of other statements that we take to be true. I can see that if I allow JTB advocates a broader definition of truth that my concerns about circularity go away. I guess the real underlying problem I have when people talk about JTB is how casually they mention the truth part as if that's the obvious part and focus the discussion on belief and justification. Since the topic is knowledge and knowledge of the truth is a key component, I would expect more discussion of how we know what is true and what is not.

[@Censeo]

I think JTB can make sense in a hypersubjective sense. It is justified belief and it is true hypersubjectively means that it is knowledge. A bishop in a chess game can only move diagonally. Bishops can of course move to any place on the board in a game of chess, but hypersubjectively they can't. That is why we can know that Bishops can only move diagonally on the board when playing chess. If you see it raining outside and therefore believe it is raining outside, and hypersubjectively it is raining outside, then that is knowledge. It isn't about any truth with a big T. It is about what the human view of the world deem to be the case. Just like with that bishop.

[@9Ballr]

You don't have to know that the belief is true, it just has to be true. So according to JTB in order for my belief P to count as knowledge P has to be true and I have to be justified in believing P, but I don't have to know that P is true.

[@ryanonvr2267]

Bingo. Precisely. It's like they are completely ignoring Wittgenstein and the foundation of language in all of this. You're already using an abstractive map of the territory, why split further hairs?

[@BUSeixas11]

Hi Alex. I don't think you usually read comments, but the physicist David Deutsch made a pretty convincing argument against the "justified true belief" idea in his book The Beginning of Infinity. Maybe you should check it out.

[@juanbonami2182]

His theory of knowledge is absolutely fascinating to me!

[@monnoo8221]

LOOOL

[@Linguae_Music]

@@monnoo8221 Is it funny because it's David Deutsch? idk anything about him :0

[@taylorhornby7475]

This was my first thought as well!

[@Philognosis1]

@@Linguae_MusicYou should check him out. He’s a physicist by profession, at Oxford I believe, but a pretty good philosopher as well. He’s heavily influenced by Karl Popper. He’s a quick video of him discussing truth and knowledge. kzbin.info/www/bejne/aZaol5mYn9-Bracsi=VlgFvWIXQpX_sHtt

[@xyzbesixdouze]

Knowledge for yourself = a belief of something you think you can proove in your mind until disprooven.

[@robotermann]

It's synchronicity. Synchronicity is an inner event (a vivid, stirring idea, a dream, a vision or emotion) and an outer, physical event, which is a (physically) manifested reflection of the inner (mental) state or its equivalent.

[@JDyo001]

Do you believe reality to be a projection?

[@nova8091]

@@JDyo001doesn’t matter that’s all we can say about it

[@sheenapearse766]

Synchronicity is one of the keys that gives life meaning -it creates a sense of the numinous . Other keys to meaning are Meaningful work , Relationships ( loving) , the way we face suffering (Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning .), the power to determine who we are as spiritual beings =Freedom [ Viktor Frankl ] I think Mr O’Connor thinks too much “Trying to be rational about everything, is a special kind of madness “ David Hume

[@AtheistReligionIsCancer]

atheists are quite proud that they bone kids

[@KenmoreChalfant]

@@JDyo001 Yes.

[@Demonizer5134]

When I first read about Gettier's thought experiment about the cow in the field, it sent chills throughout my body. I absolutely love those kinds of deep and insightful contributions to philosophy. I also love that Alex O'Connor is covering this and educating other people about it.

[@KinnArchimedes]

What is the example trying to prove, that wasn't readily apparent to anyone with reasonable to good skills of reasoning/logic?

[@Demonizer5134]

@@KinnArchimedes It was refuting an established understanding of knowledge that existed for hundreds of years. Apparently, even skilled logicians were flawed in their methods. If you would like to know more then I would encourage you to look up other videos on the topic here on youtube.

[@KinnArchimedes]

@@Demonizer5134 So everyone was just using a flawed definition of "Justification" for 100s of years until some random publishes a two-pager giving examples of poor justifications? I'm finding that difficult to believe.

[@Demonizer5134]

@@KinnArchimedes That is exactly what I am saying, and that is exactly what happened, believe it or not. Gettier thought up a scenario that no one had ever considered before, challenging an established concept that had been in place for hundreds of years. You wouldn't have been able to think it up yourself. What Gettier demonstrated was brilliant and apparent to no one else.

[@Izurag]

Two things about this: Knowledge isn't just a JTB, it is a JTB in a certain context in the confines of space and time; in both attempts to disprove that is very obvious. If you look outside and it's raining at that moment - you have a JTB. But notice that with the interview and horse example these are both things you BELIEVED to be true, then parameters changed and you have a separate event. You can have two pieces of knowledge with similar parameters, but that doesn't make them both the same piece of knowledge!

[@Olyfrun]

Very good point!

[@CookiesRiot]

Essentially that something is true _in the exact way you think it is_ and also justified _in the exact way that you think it is._ Though this narrows the field significantly to the point that nearly anything which is said to be "knowledge" doesn't even meet the definition anymore. Pretty much any understanding that we have about life, the universe, and everything is an oversimplification to the point of being inaccurate in some sense and justified incompletely, if at all. If you have a JTB that the sky is blue because it scatters blue light, it is true in the sense that the sky [only as we perceive it, only for a specific range of cyan blue, because we can only see some bands of light, because mostly blue wavelengths get Rayleigh scattered which dominate the rest of the light, only for most of the daylight hours, only in locations currently facing the sun, except when there are clouds or an eclipse, etc. etc. etc.] is actually blue, and most people probably justify it mentally from past or present experience without the slightest awareness of most the myriad caveats and causes. I would hate to try to be philosophical, because it's absolutely not my area of expertise by any stretch of the imagination, but the entire "what is knowledge" question seems to be an argument over where to draw boxes around things in reality that don't fit in boxes. Like how defining "what is a planet" or "what are the colors of the rainbow" is a huge effort to conceptualize abstractions, and people could talk in circles around it for literally millenia without actually getting very far.

[@coloripple]

@@CookiesRiot amazing example! Looking back at the Gettier cases presented in the video, I completely agree with your viewpoint. Conteptualising abstractions is a great way to put it

[@psychonaut689]

Yes well said. Knowledge has something to do with categorising things, which inherently changes the nature of the thing observed@@CookiesRiot

[@dlevi67]

@@CookiesRiot "people could talk in circles around it for literally millenia without actually getting very far." Indeed.

[@tarqwar]

We would be very grateful and happy to see Steven pinker and David bentar on your beautiful channel 🙏🙏🙏

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

JTB has been so widespread that, in my opinion, it has become definitional. It can now be taken for granted as the definition of knowledge based purely on linguistics, not philosophy. I take Gettier to have actually challenged the concept of "justified." And he is far from the first or the last to challenge that term, which does not have a widely agreed upon definition. I take Gettier to have shown that "justified" must require some level of knowledge of each step in the justification. To know something that is a conclusion to a logical conclusion, you must be justified in the belief. To be justified, you must know each premise in the argument. And to know each of the premises, you must have a justified true belief in that premise. So for the horse, you know you are seeing a child bounce over the hedge, you know the movement and context justify the conclusion that she was on a horse. But it wasn't true, so you didn't know she was on a horse. You believed she was on a horse and that was your justification for believing you would see a horse. But that belief was false and so it was insufficient justification. There is nothing wrong with calling that a challenge to JTB, but because that term has become so definitional, I think it is more sensible to call it a challenge to the definition of justification and not to the sufficiency of justification as a part of the definition of knowledge. But technically, it could be either.

[@nelsonrushton]

Once I got pulled over for running a stop sign and was asked for my insurance documents. I had just cancelled my insurance and switched to a new company, but had not yet received my new documents. I still had my old documents, though they were no longer valid, though their expiration date was still in the future. So I showed those to the cop. He believed that I had insurance, reasonably, but not on evidence that was causally connected to the insurance I actually had. Real life Gettier case.

[@Simply_Jerry]

Loved this episode with Chris, you should get Chris on your channel Alex. I would enjoy watching you two talk again.

[@blacktea5501]

I had that idea also, didn't know it's worth publishing.

[@Ralphfili]

Sarcasm aside, I think the idea was held long before 'JTB' ever became accepted, and was likely immediately used to counter 'JTB' by many average critical thinkers the moment JTB became popularized. So much forced 'breakthrough' creation in the world of philosophy by nerds and their peers trying to scratch each others backs to get each other into the history books for shit average people already 'came up with' thousands of years ago.

[@ImHeadshotSniper]

knowledge is definitely fascinating. even in the case where you look outside and see rain to confirm a belief into knowledge, there is the possibility that this is some one-off illusion, in which case, what *appears* to be rain outside is *really* something else entirely. the weirdest part is that this illusion of reality is technically provably true everywhere. the fact that we can't see radio waves, infared, ultraviolet, etc. etc. with our eyes means that we're completely blind to everything which happens under those frequencies unless we build something to detect them and transmit them into a frequency we can understand, what we call "visual" and "audio" frequencies.

[@timmehtimmeh576]

I was at a philosophy conference when we all experienced the clock example together. Trippy...

[@IuliusPsicofactum]

Also, when will you talk about Wittgenstein?

[@lightningbolt4419]

Wittgenstein was a hack. No wonder his hand ran away from him.

[@johnotoole347]

I came across a getier occurance today. I was waiting for my bus and I saw another bus coming and I told my friend "our bus is here". I then it was not our bus, but I peaked my head around the corner and my actual bus was in fact right behind it

[@josephmiracle5382]

Getier Case: I was facing away from a co-worker who was talking to someone. I tried to identify the person based on his voice, (I thought it was a friend named Will Hawkins). I looked, and saw I was wrong. I didn’t know the person. After the person left, I told my colleague my guess, Will Hawkins. My colleague responded, “That was Will Hawkins” It was not the Will Hawkins I had guessed, but it was, correctly, another person named Willie Hawkins.

[@mcpkone]

The Theory of Holistic Perspective explains knowledge generation and different kinds of truths elegantly.

[@erberlon]

To be frank I don’t think JTB is a coherent definition of knowledge. Knowledge is just, and always has been, justified belief. We don’t have access to truth, everything we have is justification, when you see that it is raining outside, you are justified in believing that it is raining outside, but is it? You could go outside and experience rain, but you’re only getting further justification that it is raining, nothing more.

[@nothing29717]

How do you justify existence of external world then

[@jaegrant6441]

What is outside?

[@essewaxegard9423]

There are many incorrect justified beliefs, if we give a definition of knowledge that includes incorrect beliefs then that isn't a useful definition. Atleast for the generally accepted philosophical purpose of the term knowledge

[@rob-890]

Getta yourself our of my head!! 😂

[@ЯсенЧапкънов]

@@essewaxegard9423Just like you can't ever know with absolute certainty that something is true you can't know a belief is incorrect either. If you put a level of necessary likelihood to categorise something as true knowledge that would be pretty arbitrary.

[@EmperorsNewWardrobe]

“Knowledge is information with causal power” ~David Deutsch

[@APaleDot]

All beliefs have causal power. That doesn't distinguish belief from knowledge.

[@EmperorsNewWardrobe]

@@APaleDot how does my belief that the earth js flat have casual power?

[@APaleDot]

@@EmperorsNewWardrobe It will cause you to argue with people on the internet that the earth is flat.

[@IAmTheRealHim]

@@APaleDotnot necessarily true. Regardless, beliefs are not “information” by themselves at all. The only info would be that said belief is held.

[@legendary3952]

@@EmperorsNewWardrobe people who believe the earth is flat obviously act and behave differently _in virtue of_ the fact that their belief in the earth is that it’s flat

[@alvaromd3203]

I loved this explanation!!!

[@ezzthetick]

As people have pointed out, Russell actually came up with the clock example, but he used it to support the view that knowledge is a subset of true beliefs - not all true beliefs are knowledge, but all instances of knowledge are true beliefs. Gettier in some ways is more radical, because he seems to support the view that knowledge and true beliefs are entirely different things, because for any given knowledge claim, you can always give a counter example in which the claim is a true belief but not knowledge.

[@BowlerScott]

Not to be confused with a Gotye case, which is just some knowledge that you used to know

[@tieferforschen]

The best definition of 'knowing': Being convinced of something that is true because it is true.

[@jsmall10671]

No, because what is the standard for how long we wait to see if it's actually true? For example, you might say you know there are 4 fundamental forces. What if, 1,000 years from now, we discover there are 5? Did you know there were 4? Can anyone living today be said to know how many fundamental forces there are? Or to know anything? Knowledge is just a strong belief. As Gould said: "In science, 'fact' (or knowledge for our purposes) can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.'"

[@tieferforschen]

@@jsmall10671 True is referring to what is actually true. Not to some standard of time. Sadly we can never have 100%-certainty what is actually true. Therefore we cannot 100%-certain if we know anything.

[@Berliozboy]

There's an interesting story by Max Beerbohm called A.V. Laider, published in 1919, that delves into this idea in a witty way. One of my favorite interchanges: “You may think me very prosaic,” he said, “but I can’t believe without evidence.” “Well, I’m equally prosaic and equally at a disadvantage: I can’t take my own belief as evidence, and I’ve no other evidence to go on.” Edit: To clarify, the story doesn't have "Gettier cases", but deals with the idea of what we can and can't know and why we believe things. The story also gets into another of this channel's favorite topics: free will.

[@AtheistReligionIsCancer]

like... when pdf file atheist claim that men can give birth, and nowhere in history has this been true?

[@mr.lavander7145]

The broken clock has no predictive power because if you test it again it won't work

[@quantum_beeb]

Definition of knowledge to me is “the ability to identify and understand whatever particular thing/subject”

[@SawYouDie]

Knowledge to me is a body of “particular” information be it anything in existence

[@danielnofal]

Popperian epistemology does a great job in explaining how knowledge is created. And David Deutsch have even improved on it.

[@aleks0_o879]

is this kinda like in toystory when buzz light year impresses everyone when he thinks he is flying

[@michaeltranchina4427]

I quite like Quine’s web of belief / confirmation holism.

[@tTtt-ho3tq]

Recognizeing patterns is it all there is, is knowledge, is philosophy, is logic, no more no less. How do you know its raining outside if you've never experienced rains before? How do you know what rain is? You compare it to your experience, see the patterns and recognize what it is now. Nothing more, nothing less.

[@ChopStickRick]

I think the greatest contribution to philosophy is the Socratic method of thinking. If you can approach any topic with the mind set of socrates you will either leave the transaction with a better understanding of the topic, or you will realize it was a waste of time to begin with.

[@alegater19]

That last example is eerily similar to Bertrand Russells' famous stopped-clock example (human knowledge: its scope and limits/1948). Remember kids: always cite your sources.

[@JeffBedrick]

If you draw a conclusion based on a misinterpretation of data, then that is definitely not knowledge, even if your hypothesis turns out to be true by sheer coincidence. It's only knowledge after it has been verified. The example of the broken clock makes it crystal clear. Even if it's right twice a day, it is obviously not a reliable tool for determining the correct time. All this hardly seems like it rises to the level of some kind of perplexing philosophical paradox. It's just simple common sense.

[@marca9955]

I once forgot which bus I needed to catch until I saw its route number as it approached in the distance. But as it got closer I realised it had misread the number. I now knew the bus I needed again because I thought I knew it was coming. Didn't think it was 'revolutionary' at the time - because it wasn't. Redefining knowledge to be what we think we know isn't such a big deal.

[@ChocloManx]

I think Wittgenstein gets to the heart of this in his Philosophical Investigations where he goes against the idea that language and logic are somehow independent from human experience. In particular the beetle in the box though experiment

[@Happydrumstick93]

I think all these cases are examples of things not being "justified". What makes you "justified" in thinking you were going to see a horse? What makes you "justified" in believing the voodoo person? What made you "justified" in believing the clock was wound up? In all these cases you weren't "justified" you just asserted you were. It's unjust to say A was the cause of B when there is a confounding C that also acts on B.

[@jsmall10671]

What is enough for you to call a belief justified?

[@Happydrumstick93]

​@@jsmall10671 For you to say A causes B you need to say A is the majority contributor to B, and if there exists a C that also causes B you need to acknowledge it. The contribution of A to making B happen must also be three or more standard deviations away from the maximum second contributor (in this case C) if it isn't then you can't say it *caused* B. Finally, after the fact you can't suddenly decide your arguments were different all along. They are the same, they were false. The argument was: A. There is a kid bounding up and down A -> B. Kids bounding up and down means they are on a horse B -> C. if the kid is on the horse, I will see a horse Therefore A -> C After the fact it turned out the assumption A->B was wrong (It wasn't the majority contributor). So, the argument was unsound.

[@L.I.T.H.I.U.M]

In simple terms, the problem arises from scenarios where someone has a true belief about something, but they don't seem to have genuine knowledge despite their belief being true. These situations show that simply having a true belief isn't always enough to count as knowledge.

[@gregshirley-jeffersonboule6258]

You left out justification

[@Nerdality_Florian]

So the question is: Is it still knowledge if your reasoning is bad? It feels similar in maths, when you arrive at the correct answer by sheer happenstance. And just like in maths, I'd argue it's wrong if your justification is incorrect. In essence: No, it was not JUSTIFIED true believe, just believe that happened to be true (=match reality). But I am happy to hear contradictory opinions on that take.

[@frcrr]

I totally agree. In all these examples the *justified* part is not fulfilled. If a mad witch doctor high on drugs tells you that it's raining outside and you believe him - well, buddy, that's on you. If you believe you will get the job, you have failed to consider other possibilities and their probabilities, so there's no justification. If you see a boy riding something behind the bushes and jump to the conclusion of a horse, there is a doughnut link in your chain of reasoning. The pinnacle of this is the broken watch example. You can be right about the time twice a day, but never justifiably. You may not know that your justification is broken, but that's another matter.

[@Izurag]

This actually isn't the issue. You may have knowledge that isn't correct, but that doesn't mean it isn't knowledge. It is still "justified" in your point of view. I have explained the real (in my opinion) issue in a separate comment.

[@AnagramGinger]

I disagree slightly. You’re saying “it’s wrong”, but I would like to rephrase this as “that’s right but you’re wrong”. Yes it rains, but you were wrong in believing that it did. The fact that the clock is broken doesn’t make it not-half past three, and just because your calculations are off doesn’t mean that 2+2 is not 4.

[@craigmalcom6294]

@@frcrrin the broken watch example you are justified to believe the time at that instance is correct, only because the watch is assumed to be working correctly (and are given no reason to believe otherwise) but it actually turns out the clock is broken . I would argue that it is a justified true believe but doesn’t constituent knowledge because it was by sheer luck and not understanding. The other examples I agree with you, the 10 coins and horse one the person isn’t actually justified to believe whatever they did because they jumped to conclusions or didn’t analyse the situation properly

[@frcrr]

@@craigmalcom6294 what do you mean "watch is assumed to be working correctly, and there's no reason to believe otherwise"? Well, I am assuming that you are both wrong and stupid and there's no reason for me to believe otherwise. Therefore I am right, you are wrong and that's some knowledge for you. Good day, sir, I say good day to you!

[@joarborneland1708]

i love that alex sees what could possibly be expected to be a horse and immediately recognizes it as such because HELL YEAH i get to see A HORSE

[@mentalitydesignvideo]

Just the opening statement alone about a voodoo mystic in a windowless concrete box is a great illustration why analytic philosophy is (at best, a feeble attempt at) sophistry and should never be taken seriously.

[@ahartify]

But Socrates, Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein had similar ideas to this themselves, didn't they? Hardly explosive.

[@nilspetterlauvrak1942]

Seems like a lecture on the difference between reloability and validity. Interest ing.

[@IuliusPsicofactum]

I'd need more explanations to understand how these examples are relevant. It is clearly a coincidence, why would we ask if there was any knowledge? Just to show that it is not possible to justify all our other "knowlegde", how to know if every knowledge is a coincidence? Like, how do we know that our knowledge of the laws of physics is really knowing something or if it happens that so far, until now, it happened to be an infalible coincidence, and tomorrow it may not be the case? Sounds to me like the problem of induction. Why is this revolutionary? 👀

[@SpongeGod-YawehPants]

It's important because it highlights how vulnerable people are to believing the "right" thing for the wrong reasons. This kind of thinking is more "meta" or big picture which shows a leap in human reasoning because now it's very common for people to practice skepticism in their beliefs. For most of history, and for many peopke still (religious literalists, cults, race purists, nationalists etc) seem to be less able to recognize that they can occasionally be right about something but it doesn't mean their overall belief structure or mechanism of measuring the world is actually accurate. This is why the clock example is so important. Someone can accidently think they had an accurate tool for measuring time when it was coincidence. Likewise, a person, let's say religious, could accidently be right about a moral issue or a philosophical one, even though their tool (like a clock) is not calibrated or even functional. I'm just skimming the surface on this but it's actually super interesting when you dive into this kind of rationale

[@jsmall10671]

For example: Does knowledge about a fact mean the fact is true, or that you are justified in believing it's true based on the evidence at hand? Making the standard "A thing must be objectively true to say you know it" would be an impossible standard.

[@johnrichardson7629]

My own gettier example. For reasons I don't quite recall, I went to my bank to buy a $10 roll of quarters. I must have needed a supply of quarters for some reason. These rolls were $10 worth of quarters tightly wrapped in paper with partially opened ends that left a lot of the quarters at each end visible. As the teller pulled out my roll, I could see that the quarter at one end looked lighter and brighter than the quarters then in circulation and figured that, hey, I'm gonna get an older, silver quarter in the deal here! These are rare enough to be a cheap thrill. Well, it turns out that that end quarter was just a fairly new one whose appearance had been altered a bit by exposure to something oroither. But deep inside the roll, there was an older, silver quarter in it. I related thid to my brother, who was then my aprtment mate as we were in different grad programs in different schools in the same city and he was speficalky a Philosophy grad student. His immediate response was, "That's a Gettier example!"😂

[@SemiPerfectDark]

An example that I heard was you have a justified true belief that there is a sheep in a field. Because you look out into the field and you see a sheep. Except it turns out the sheep is a dog that looks like a sheep, but at the same time there is actually a sheep in the field that you just didn't see.

[@jsmall10671]

Sounds very similar to Gettier's cow in the field example.

[@KITLEVEY]

Knowledge, when subjective, can be very dangerous, even fatal. Knowledge, when objective and verifiable by secondary independent sources, can be depended upon and used as a foundational building block for additional knowledge. Trick lies in the verification process that is time dependent. The "rub" is that a lie travels so much faster than the truth. Politicians understand this better than anyone else.

[@BoRisMc]

I feel like the problem is that the justification is also taken as knowledge and therefore should undergo the same scrutiny as the knowledge such justification is used as element of proof for. Therefore, one enters an infinite loop which very much resembles that of Gödels incompleteness theorem. There simply is no knowledge (sorry about that).

[@darrennew8211]

I think there is no "knowledge" if knowledge is defined as only about "true" statements.

[@BoRisMc]

@@darrennew8211 good point. Are you hinting at the idea of false knowledge?

[@darrennew8211]

@@BoRisMc I'm saying that I don't know how useful an idea like "knowledge" is if you can't tell whether anyone has knowledge or not. One says knowledge must be "true" to be knowledge. But one has to be "justified" in judging it to be true. But one can be mistaken in ones justification. Thus, the very fact that one requires it to be true but also acknowledges that there's no infallible way of knowing that it is true makes the definition at least useless and most likely meaningless.

[@BoRisMc]

@@darrennew8211 oh yeah, that was exactly my point :)

[@gcewing]

Seems like there should be something in the definition saying that if the belief results from a deduction, then the deduction needs to be based on true premises and sound reasoning before you can call it knowledge.

[@Venaloid]

Every Gettier case seems like there's a bit of equivocation going on: the person with 10 coins in their pocket is just a roundabout way of saying, "I". The horse example is better, but surely it's understood that you were expecting to see a horse supporting the girl, not a horse somewhere else, even though you didn't spell this out explicitly, and that seems to make this not quite a direct counterexample to JTB in some way.

[@9Ballr]

"The person with 10 coins in their pocket" definitely does not express the same proposition as "I am the person with 10 coins in their pocket."

[@apm77]

Knowledge is a property of our models of the world, not of the world itself. It's an idealisation that ties confidence to truth. Ultimately, you have to abandon either the objective reality of knowledge as a concept or the axiom that false things cannot be known.

[@legendary3952]

English?

[@XOPOIIIO]

I don't see a problem here. When you think you know something, there's always a chance that you don't. Knowledge doesn't mean to be perfect and you're not supposed to be 100% sure in anything.

[@9Ballr]

It's not about how sure you are, it's about whether having a justified true belief is sufficient to have knowledge. According to Gettier cases, it's not.

[@keeshuunedited5678]

Reminds me of the saying "Correlation does not imply causation"

[@billwalton4571]

or it was a coincidence

[@FridoGrahnify]

Very interesting!

[@markrussell4682]

To know something - 1) you believe the something, 2) you have good reason to believe the something, 3) the something is true. This is the definition I learned from Dr. Sarkar.

[@9Ballr]

Yes, that's JTB, and Gettier examples seem to show that it is false.

[@stephenkeogh3287]

Just watched an episode of Only Connect and now this. I’m off for a lie down.

[@vagabondcaleb8915]

Seems like viewing truth this way treats every cause as proximal instead of looking for ultimate causes. And JTB idea seems to kind of be analogous to synchronicity. I guess it all kind of points to the differences between different domains of truths. There is behavioral, empirical, and ontological categories of truth for a start..And then you have to consider agent/process based truth vs objective truth because agents and processes seem to necessarily have a subjective component..

[@TheNaturalLawInstitute]

Know is a verb. Where know of, progresses to know what, progresses to know how progresses to how not to know how must. Philosophy is still stuck in set theory when we are in a world of supply vs demand.

[@HeIljumper]

Seems to me like the problem with every example is all of them are unjustified beliefs that happen to lead to true one They branch from the minds of people who create a false proposition based off of incomplete/faulty evidence, and then it happens to be true for unrelated reasons and we're left puzzled as to why that happened to happen

[@SquishypuffDave]

If the person believed they would get the job based on that interview, and then got the job, would that not be a justified belief? If the person looked at their watch and it displayed the correct time, and their watch turned out to be functioning properly, would their belief that the watch displayed the correct time be justified? If not, this seems to raise the bar so high that basically no belief can be justified by experience or perception.

[@joey3070]

@@tgeh448 No

[@joey3070]

​@@tgeh448 Yeahhhh man if you really think about it, everything's a statistic inference, man... pass me the reefer. Gettier problems never have unjustified speculation, because they involve a justified belief by definition. If it was explained in this video that the interviewee assumed when he really "shouldn't have", that was incorrect. You could actually even say that the interviewee doesn't even know if a meteor destroys the company building before he gets hired... so nobody can ever have knowledge of the future, man. Which makes you the "ultimate skeptic" in this, and you contributed nothing. You still haven't answered about the watch.

[@merengueatang4]

But then how do we distinguish between justified and not justified? Looking at the clock example, if the clock was working and it was the right time, Alex would have a justifed belief that it was working - the clock is the right time, therefore it is working. Sure, there is a slight possibility it is not, but how do you "know" anything if you have to be sure that it is true beyond any doubt? What would qualify as a justified belief that the clock wasn't working if it being the right time wasn't one?

[@joey3070]

@@tgeh448 No what isn’t??? And for the clock example, the belief is about the time, not whether the watch is functioning. Calling it early this guys just a troll as he’s not even engaging with anyone’s arguments. To reiterate, he checks a reliable watch, and thinks he _knows_ it’s 3:00, but it’s actually only 3:00 by coincidence since it was broken, so he didn’t truly know. The belief is that the time is 3:00.

[@natanbridge]

What about Phillipa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson and Trolley Problems? What about Thomas Kuhn and the ideas of normal science, revolutionary science, and paradigm shifts?

[@stephannaro2113]

Two. And. A. Half. Thousand. Years.

[@octaviolopes6843]

The clock case was first raised by B. Russell, sort of avant la lettre.

[@tomblackburnmusic]

Bertrand Russell raised 'Gettier cases' many years before Gettier. This shows that there's a lot of circumstance involved in big intellectual moments!

[@chriscanon8829]

The fourth condition is the premise of the justification has to be the reason the conclusion was true.

[@APaleDot]

Justification doesn't have to make something true, even in non-Gettier case. Consider a non-broken clock: the clock doesn't make it true that it is a certain time of day, it only informs you of the time of day.

[@chriscanon8829]

@APaleDot @APaleDot My argument is that a justification comes in the form of an argument that has a premise and a conclusion. I think we shorthand justification as just being the premise, and that's not technically correct. As you pointed out, the premise is just a fact. If we treat the justification as the full argument and not just the premise, it's not just a fact. it's the reason we believe the conclusion or truth claim to be true. So if we add the fourth condition I gave, with the true definition of a justification, it's impossible to get a gettier case.

[@chriscanon8829]

@APaleDot this could be simplified into sound justified true belief. Where the justification is a sound argument (true premise, valid argument, true conclusion) and someone believes the justification.

[@APaleDot]

@@chriscanon8829 Yes, if you require that the justification itself is true, it's impossible to get a Gettier case. That's one solution, but we can't know if the justification actually is true most of the time.

[@chriscanon8829]

@APaleDot if you require the justification is sound. Forgive me being technical, but with justification having three parts, truth and soundness aren't quite the same. Yeah, the question of whether we have knowledge is another question. It's kept us busy for a couple millennium, what's a few more lol

[@peterdegelder5224]

In my epistemology class we called this unit "Getting Gettier and Gettier" which I found hilarious

[@paulsmith1431]

If a tree falls in a forest ,does it make a fuss?

[@TeaParty1776]

If a tree falls on a nihilist philosopher, does it make a sound?

[@Robinson8491]

Gettier problems: you are focussing or aiming at a particular, which you could give a name, but in reality it turns out to have been a universal: because there is another identical one of that particular, but not the one you were aiming for. So if you think of a particular, that you would name like Kripke, but it turns out to be the same as, yet a different instance of that particular, it is a universal. The particular would have a different name. Hence the Gettier problem is the inverse of Kripke's Phosphorus en Hesperus from Naming and necessity. They are two side from the same problem: the problen of particulars, and naming and universals

[@cattywhompus1012]

There are few people that I respect for their linguistic honesty as much as Alex. I will know have my brain wired for these exceptions.

[@giventhamsanqa6517]

May seem unrelated but I have a question, Isn't the fact that we believe our minds are able to reason or find truth is an axiom by itself? In trying to prove or disprove this I seem to have faced a problem, the mere attempt to prove( or disprove) that our mind makes an assumption that we can find truth means I am assuming the very thing I am trying to prove since I am reasoning to find the proof(truth), which seems like an epistemic regress problem . So how can we get around this?

[@psychonaut689]

This is known as the principle of sufficient reason. You're right - it is really an assumption.

[@jessepgates]

The example with the coins is not knowledge because it is an example of chance. I don't see how it can be JTB if it only happened once.

[@BarriosGroupie]

I think the Sleeping Beauty paradox is related and more profound; but this came from the problem of belief formation in decision problems.

[@OrdenJust]

Is the problem of justified true belief a problem of knowledge, or a problem of justification? Along the same lines, I seem to recall Dancy's book on epistemology, in which he suggests that one might have knowledge WITHOUT belief. He cites an oral examination of a student, in which she answers every question correctly, but does so without any indication that she has confidence in what she says. Her manner of speaking sounds like she is guessing. For example, if she were asked, "Who painted the Mona Lisa?", her answer is, "DaVinci?" And it goes on like that for every question. But she gets every question right.

[@casualstone920]

For me it seems confusing THE WAY WE DECIDE whether something is justified or not. Gettier cases seem to not be justified enough since we do not take into account sheer coincidences, which modern science tries to take care of by, for example, conducting randomized controlled experiments. Therefore when you look at the broken watch that still shows the correct time twice a day it doesn’t necessarily mean that you acquired true knowledge at that moment.

[@mathew9851]

The watch example was the best one.

[@mlambrechts1]

Didn't Popper already mention this? I know another example: say you are sitting in the garden and you hear the bell from the front door ring, so you 're thinking: there's someone at the door. But in reality, you are wrong, the bell ringing was an auditive illusion or something else that you mistook for being the door bell. So you go inside and open the front door, and indeed, there's someone standing at the front door...: so, you "knew" there was someone at the door???

[@bagelj7011]

seems like the problem is that "well justified" is a subjective cutoff. as the degree of justification increases the likelihood that you have a false belief decreases but the only time it goes to zero is when the belief is "I think therefore I am." right? so... idk. is there any definition of knowledge that could get away from the problem of uncertainty?

[@pathfinding4687]

This logic is more like a game. It uses semantic tricks and also an incomplete understanding of the concept of knowledge. It conflates ‘knowledge’ with ‘accurate data’. In reality, the true nature of knowledge incorporates more than just information and logic. ‘Human knowledge’ is gained not just from data and ideas but from those put into practice as ‘experience’. We can never truly ‘know’ something unless we ‘experience’ it. You can ‘know’ a certain food has nutritional value from looking at chemical analysis of it. But it’s only when you consume and absorb it and your body uses it that the experience of it gives you true ‘knowledge’.

[@alena-qu9vj]

Morever, logic is not the only method to understand reality. Analogy is in many cases far more "knowledgable".

[@pathfinding4687]

Well put. I would say that this is because an analogy would reference a metaphor. And a metaphor is something you might have 'experienced'. The reason the metaphor works is because the thing being used as the metaphor and the thing it is being connected to exist based on the same baseline principles. So the knowledge of the one can be transferred to, on some level, understand the other. @@alena-qu9vj

[@rimrock1000]

The fundamental problem of philosophy is whether doing it has any point, since if it does not have any point, there is no reason to do it. Therefore there has been 6;36 minutes of nothing.

[@moesizlac2596]

I like the interviewer's 1st definition: "...to be able to accurately predict what happens in the world". This has a heavy practical component. If your belief system is sufficiently robust, then your predictions about the world will be accurate on an consistent basis, and will be repeatable. This definition is itself more robust that "Justified True Belief", for the simple reason that it includes a time-based reality check as part of it's definition. You only know something if you can repeatedly predict something and and that anyone using that same set of assumptions/beliefs can also make reliable predictions about the world. "JTB" is too static. Being accidentally correct in one-off cases shows how "JTB" is too far boiled down to be of any value. It essentially introduces its own problem by ignoring the testability over time part. So of course being accidentally correct on single a single situation seems like a really "deep" problem. The simple answer is, there was insufficient data/belief depth for you to be genuinely able to claim that your JTB was actually "Justified". Most people simply don't put enough weight toward examining the durability of their justifications, and are shocked when presented with these sorts of philosophical puzzles. JTB simply isn't even close to being as robust as the interviewer's very simple 1st definition. Repeatable reliable results from one's predictions, which are built on one's beliefs, means you must know a thing or two. Not quite as catchy, but really ends the philosophical "problem of knowledge".

[@shadver]

But can't you have knowledge of things in the past? If our definition of knowledge relies on the power of prediction, then we lose the power to know more abstract ideas and concepts I think. For example, I know what my name is. I don't see how I can use prediction to know what my name is. I could predict what other people think my name is, or use the knowledge of what my name is to predict what is written on my birth certificate. Those are both separate concepts from the idea of knowing my own name. I think that's why the settled on idea of JTB is a bit meager, because there's just so many different things you can know and not all of them are testable or predictable.

[@moesizlac2596]

@@shadver I actually do believe that you can hold accurate beliefs about the past, but in order to go the extra step and say you have knowledge of the past it must be is some way justified. And that justification should include some way to test the reliability of that belief. And aren't all beliefs/assumption/etc always about something from the past? To use your example of your own name, you could easily test the validity of you belief by asking people you claim to be your friends or relatives "what is my name?". At some point, if they all came back with something other than the name you thought you had, you might want to re-assess your belief that you actually know your own name. You may also start to come up with other theories, such as you are being pranked, or you have suffered brain damage or you are dreaming etc. And you would then need to find a way to examine and test these ideas too. I didn't say that "JTB" is wrong, I simply suggested that it wasn't quite robust enough (too static) to be a very useful way of looking at how we make knowledge claims. Perhaps it is a too fine a point. The bigger take home is actually in your post: that we feel far too over-confident about what we believe we know, and we like to stick cute little acronyms like "JTB" on things to avoid doing the hard work of actually justifying our beliefs. Socrates was quoted "all I know for sure is that I know nothing". Belief is all we have. The big question for any claim about knowledge is, can you justify you beliefs with something that can be tested, or are you just left with a bald assertion?

[@NerdOracle]

How does one justify a belief to the point of inarguable truth? As I see it, such a feat isn’t possible. That is to say any belief no matter what it’s based on, how relevant or consistent or dated or obscure, is potentially subject to exceptions or coincidences. We can only justify a thing so far as we cease to doubt, but to doubt everything leaves one reeling from the existential terror of feeling that nothing beyond one’s internal perception can be proven to truly exist, for an individual in question. The value of knowledge is in its ability to accurately recite the past, predict the future, and make sense of the present. What people do with that power is another matter entirely. And that value is only proven through active observation and effect; the more something proves itself to appear true, the more reason we have to treat it as truth. But we never really “know”if we “know” everything there is to “know” about a given scenario, object, environment, or phenomenon. We only have the data we have accumulated and the accuracy of informational value over time to work with. We can trust biology, chemistry, local physics, we can cite and recite our collective understandings of the present made history, we can make many predictions of the future through our models and test their accuracy into the future. That is all. Even if one claims to know something, they can only really ever go as far as claiming to know, believing as such, perhaps caveating their source of information, or the time since they’ve last heard of or discussed it.

[@DemainIronfalcon]

I think it may be possible in a fictional story where all contextual knowledge is truthfully acknowledge between writer and reader, but is that count as reality?

[@NerdOracle]

@@DemainIronfalcon but even then, the fiction and author produces is subject to retcon and deception. You know only what you read. Only what the author wants or expects you to know. A reader first takes faith in trusting the writer/narrator. Think like “Life of Pi”, I suppose

[@DemainIronfalcon]

@@NerdOracle no your right I agree, it's not possible to conceive this way that's why examples are so unfulfilling.

[@n-da-bunka2650]

Had SO MANY of instances of deja vu

[@TheChessPatzer]

I would have gone for the private language argument, but each to his own.

[@scrimes]

What is missing from this conversation is all the examples involve things in our world that are dependent on "knowledge." How do we know what a horse is? A coin? A Job interview? The only knowledge we have is the innate consciousness we were born with. Think of it as a kind of moldable clay of sensory experience. When we are born, we only have disorganized color, sound, touch, etc. As we grow and interact with the world, our brain shapes this "clay" to form our reality. The shapes which form, like the items in the examples, can never be more than the original "consciousness clay" each of us is bequeathed with at birth. The shapes may grow and become more and more complex over time, but the clay never changes. The clay is the only thing we can ever know and is our only truth.

[@Hermeneuticar]

There`s always something revolutionary happening in philosophy , and yet this world we all live in is not changing for better. It is on the decline.

[@jamescullen6774]

Can someone explain from a philosophical standpoint the difference between “a Gettier case” and a coincidence? The coin example he gives seems merely an example of random change, not “knowledge” as justified by objective evidence. Same with his “horse in a field” example.

[@dmitrireavis1729]

Would it be better to say that knowledge is an evidentially validated/substantiated belief? The examples seemed to rely on reasonable assumptions that were invalidated by evidence. In your example, you were correct to assume that the clock was being wound based on available evidence, but when you attempted to validate the assumption, it was shown to be incorrect. If the tour guide had said that the clock was being wound, then your assumption based on available evidence would have been validate and, voila, knowledge.

[@nelly5954]

Perhaps, to trust the time on your watch without considering the possibility of it having stopped cannot be called true justification?

[@Mentat1231]

As with many topics, I recommend Peter Hacker's work on this. Knowledge is not belief at all (with or without justification or truth).

[@InsanitysApex]

Coincidentally Correct vs Comprehensively Understood.

[@cheshire1]

Is there now a consensus on how to patch up the definition? My idea would be to demand that every belief along the chain of justification up from raw sensory input be true.

[@johnz8843]

What's the follow up though to what is knowledge? We can't know? It's generally JTB but be careful for anomalous cases? It's whoever with enough power or status says it's knowledge?

[@dillonfriz]

This just seems like an elaborate description of a coincidence.

[@JDyo001]

they are coincidences, its just that these coincidences ruin the definition of knowledge as justified true belief, a term which was coined by platon

[@robertszontagh1297]

Philosophers frequently go down deep and come up dry. Alex didn't disappoint. Someone once said a philosopher is a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat, that isn't there!