PHILOSOPHY - Epistemology: Analyzing Knowledge #1 (The Gettier Problem) [HD]

Is knowledge the same as justified true belief? In this Wireless Philosophy video, Jennifer Nagel (University of Toronto) discusses a Gettier case, a scenario in which someone has justified true belief but not knowledge. We’ll look at a Gettier case from Edmund Gettier’s famous 1963 paper on this topic, and a structurally similar case from 8th century Classical Indian philosophy.
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[@MrClews7]

I missed you Wireless Philosophy

[@JM-us3fr]

My issue with gettier scenarios isn’t about the level justification, but the extent to which we specify our belief. In a lot of these scenarios, if the person was just a little more specific, then JTB would rule it out as not being knowledge. This is more a problem of language.

[@smaakjeks]

I agree. Smith's ACTUAL belief is that Jones will get the job because of the company president giving that impression, and independently of that, he believes Jones has 10 coins in his pocket. Smith doesn't believe that ANY man with 10 coins in their pocket is a candidate for getting the job. The "man" in Smith's belief that "the man who has 10 coins in his pocket will get the job" is simply Jones. Within context, Smith believes a thing that isn't true: That Jones who has 10 coins will get the job.

[@rcampbell5998]

Gettier wasn't in a hurry to publish this paper, his colleagues in the philosophy department at Wayne State University cajoled and convinced him to publish so he finally did - in a small, Spanish language publication where he expected to never hear about it again. Funny how that turned out.

[@vhawk1951kl]

Or so you are 'told'.

[@keokawasaki7833]

@@vhawk1951kl objection heresay

[@vhawk1951kl]

@@keokawasaki7833 What do you suggest is 'hearsay?

[@keokawasaki7833]

@@vhawk1951kl it's a joke lol. "Being told" is heresay X3

[@vhawk1951kl]

It was an ostensibly attractive idea that never really took of for obvious reasons- too many holes in it.

[@natewolshuck9363]

So glad to see a new video from this channel! Keep up the good work

[@DaveMuller]

I am SO GLAD this channel is back to life, and with a Jennifer Nagel video too.

[@edvardkvist3656]

Thank you for these videos, they're a great video compliment for your very short introduction book!

[@akrititiwari6249]

Thanks for considering the mention of Indian Philosophy and giving it apt credit.

[@smaakjeks]

The job example: Smith's ACTUAL belief is that Jones will get the job because of the company president giving that impression, and independently of that, he believes Jones has 10 coins in his pocket. Smith doesn't believe that ANY man with 10 coins in their pocket is a candidate for getting the job. The "man" in Smith's belief that "the man who has 10 coins in his pocket will get the job" is simply Jones. Within context, Smith believes a thing that isn't true: That Jones who has 10 coins will get the job. The clock example: Smith's ACTUAL belief is that the particular clock on the wall is a functioning clock that is keeping accurate enough time. Smith does not point out that he believes that every clock works, or that clocks are never showing correct time by chance. Smith's belief about that particular clock is not true, and therefore not justified true belief. It's somewhat justified wrong belief. The problem is resolved just with describing the full belief and not just a part of it. The fire example: The person's ACTUAL belief is that the swarm is smoke, and that the "smoke" comes from a fire. This is not true, and is therefore not justified true belief. It's somewhat justified wrong belief. I don't see the big problem this causes to epistemology... It's word games. But what do I know, I'm not a philosopher.

[@evanshraga2794]

The king is back! This is my favorite channel and I missed you!

[@tsdbhg]

This is why i have removed know and knowledge from my vocabulary. I question every claim of knowledge. My epistemic reasoning begins and terminates at my investigative capability. I accept mundane claims that i have already investigated, but new and unfamiliar claims are ignored or rejected until such time I am warranted to accept them.

[@mousabrehmani1538]

i feel the same way. Would this view of our reality be considered somewhat similar to a solipsistic view of the world? A radical skeptic mind would doubt anything that claims itself to be certain. Would not it mean there is nothing that we know that is certain? Perhaps anything that classifies as knowledge is not certain and only a mere reflection of the truth?

[@tsdbhg]

@@mousabrehmani1538 solipsism is the position that your mind is all that exists and all of your experiences are just an extension of your mind.

[@omieyadav638]

Someone's back!

[@sjoerd1239]

It is not a difficult philosophical problem. The difficulty is knowing the quality of the knowledge, being how reliable it is. Thus, the scientific approach.

[@odahimaable]

Welcome back

[@surendrathapa1861]

The thought experiment is absurd, no one takes a belief of the form "the man with 10 coins will get the job" which is general, we rather think in ways like "the guy jones who i met that had 10 coins" an impression of several events and sensations that cannot be summarized by a simple statement.

[@MmmGallicus]

Also, there seems to be an unstated underlying assumption that knowledge is immuable and black or white; but our understanding of reality is constantly evolving and our theories have degrees of confidence attached to them, which might include a degree of uncertaincy. For example, in history, we have to evaluate the quality of our sources, and it is rarely 0% ou 100%. In physics, a theory may depend on the quality of the experiment (people, tools, etc.).

[@vhawk1951kl]

" we" or the members of "our" being you and who else? However I agree that knowledge must inevitably be relative but relative to what measure or comparator? - for example I know as I 'know' what?

[@maddie9602]

Wireless Philosophy? Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...

[@HumansOfVR]

it's been too lone wireless!

[@Bojonni]

Thank you Professor Negal you helped me pass my Gettier essay

[@Bugy64]

I think if you have true justification then the proposition is true. This is distinct from knowing, because you may not believe the proposition.

[@Bugy64]

The problem seems to be of semantic concern

[@Bugy64]

If there was a possibility you were wrong, you did not "know"

[@jeffcd3559]

Is he saying the it is justified because there is a causal relationship between the coins in the pocket and getting the job? If not, then how is he justified? What relationship between having the coins and getting the job exists that is something other than coincidental that would rate it as a justification?

[@donngreg2541]

Very good.

[@donngreg2541]

Yes , this is semantics not epistemology.

[@WayneJohn-fq6cn]

Because he saw the guy putting the coins in his pocket and also get hired, so he's justified in believing that the guy who got hired has 10 coins in his pocket, if someone comes and asks him "hey did the guy who got hired have 10 coins in his pocket?" He can say yes, and he'd be right

[@jeffcd3559]

I don't see how he is justified in drawing that conclusion other than by succumbing to at least the logical fallacy: it came before and therefore caused it. can you explain how he is justified otherwise?

[@christinefarquharson8358]

great, now what do i do with this info....let me see....

[@danieldumas7361]

Why, of all words, was "justified" used in this JTB analyses of knowledge? Killing is wrong.......Killing in self defense is "justified", ergo Not wrong.....Where does "suspended belief" come in???

[@futureDK1]

Yay!!! I missed your videos, watched every single one of them. Keep making them please!!!

[@anitkythera4125]

Nice! Plans for the follow up videos?

[@quocthinhluu4098]

But how did the company know the candidates got coins in their pocket ?

[@npdlangkau]

You’re back!!!

[@MmmGallicus]

Great video. However, I see a little problem in it. If you define knowledge by being JTB, then there is no Gettier inconsistency. The latter arises when you compare the JTB kind of knowledge to an intuitive understanding we have on what is 'knowledge'. But this intuitive concept is not defined. And neither are 'true' nor 'justified'. Which may lead us to the relationship between science and knowledge.

[@vhawk1951kl]

Prresumably and demonstrably there are shades or degrees of knowledge, with certainty at one end of the scal and belief at the exact opposite end If I experience pain, that is as either knowledge or it is not; I do not b-e-l-i-eve that I am experiencing pain, and by that measure Gettier got himself in such a muddle as to be proposing nonsense- sounds good but means nothing. Either knowledge is direct immediate personal experience or it is nothing. Try this test: I know as I know whatever -possibly pain, or I " know" *as* I know that the thing on the end of my left leg is my left foot, or as Iknow when I am in pain, both of which are direct immediate personal experience, for if it is not direct immediate personal experience it cannot be knowledge from which it follows that belief of any kind is something *short* of knowledge, but I suppose that Gettier's assertion was his best and wholly inadequate stabat defining knowledge for he did not propose and sensible measure or comparator. ansent wich his proposition is no more than a vague stab in the dark. t

[@nickk9281]

YOUR BACK!!

[@mackenzieshabatoski3118]

Comin at you from Trent. Thank you for the help!

[@gabesawczuk8202]

Great to have you guys back

[@JDG-hq8gy]

I was rewatching your videos to brush up my knowledge on philosophy and then I see this. Great that this channel is back, I thought it was abandoned.

[@lowlize]

There can be no Gettier Problem if you cannot properly define "justified". I argue than in none of the examples the true belief was actually "justified".

[@kint5ugee]

subtract "justified" from JTB. Problem solved. If I have money, why does it matter how I got it? The facts is that I have money.

[@musham6295]

Very glad to see u again..!!!

[@lwazivanstaden8571]

That's not how the Gettier Cases were presented in his paper at all

[@iranjackheelson]

Would you like to then give a summary instead?

[@paulfessinger515]

True, this video is a false representation.

[@mibal7757]

What is the program you used for the animation if I may ask?

[@TheVaryox]

It's alive!

[@DocEonChannel]

All Gettier problems are just obfuscations of what's justified. What they show is that justification is really difficult to define, not that the model is broken. Of course, if you could show that justification is in practice impossible to define, then that would indeed be a problem for the model.

[@sofia.eris.bauhaus]

why do you think that? it seems pretty inescapable that if a justified belief can be false, it also can be accidentally true. see also the video in knowledge first epistemology. i look at it from an pragmatic angle: what i want is true beliefs, and i want to use whatever methods can give me those. i can't deliberately have justified false beliefs. justification is just a byproduct all good methods of producing knowledge. i don't need to seek it independently of truth.

[@DocEonChannel]

@@sofia.eris.bauhaus "it seems pretty inescapable that if a justified belief can be false, it also can be accidentally true." Well, duh. That's beside the point. What Gettier is trying to prove is that the whole "true justified belief" formula doesn't work. My argument is that chipping away at a single portion of it doesn't prove his case.

[@DocEonChannel]

@@sofia.eris.bauhaus "justification is just a byproduct all good methods of producing knowledge. i don't need to seek it independently of truth." No. Justification IS the method. For example, both deduction and induction have been suggested as possible means of justification.

[@sofia.eris.bauhaus]

@@DocEonChannel so you believe that an justified, accidentally true belief is knowledge? or at least that it can be? i find Gettier's argument pretty convincing, and it doesn't really matter how you think justification works, as long you think a justified belief can still be mistaken.

[@DocEonChannel]

@@sofia.eris.bauhaus"so you believe that an justified, accidentally true belief is knowledge?" Of course it isn't. You're missing the whole point. "as long you think a justified belief can still be mistaken." Of course it can be. But that by itself doesn't prove Gettier's argument.

[@al-kimiya6962]

R.I.P Gettier.

[@theskankingpigeon965]

Are we sure that 'knowledge' is an actual thing in the world that can be possessed, rather than just a word that people use to express the strength of their beliefs?

[@DavidDW]

If Belief exists on the same spectrum between Ignorance and Knowledge, then to Disbelieve anything would only serve to bring one closer to Ignorance. Stay humble...

[@emma72676]

Good question. It's possible that knowledge doesn't exist, people just have a need to find explanations for things they don't understand, but I'm not sure if it's even possible to get to the truth of things.

[@burstofsanity]

​@@DavidDW Interesting to put a word describing one's confidence in knowledge on a scale representing knowledge itself... Also, what on earth are you even talking about? I guarantee you that anyone (outside of contrived examples which never appear in the real world) that never disbelieves anything has far less knowledge than one who does disbelieve some things. There are infinite incorrect beliefs about the world and only finite correct ones. I "disbelieve" homeopathy and I am more knowledgeable for it.

[@Shuizid]

There are two problems. 1: If we are unsure - wouldn't that mean we are sure to be unsure and hence somehow have actual knowledge about the lack of actual knowledge, contradicting said statement? 2: It's about having some reasonable explanation for the meaning of words we use. Gravtiy might be a theory, but I want to tell it apart from people commiting mass-suicide because their deranged leader said so after having someone murdered. This might be the pragmatic in me speaking, but I don't see any reason of having a definition of a word literally saying the word cannot be used.

[@karlfriedmann5320]

Rip Edmund Gettier

[@Christopher_Gibbons]

What, no. None of those were examples of JTB without knowledge. You cannot justify a belief with an unjustified belief. The man looking at the clock did not justify his belief that the clock was functional and correct. At best he had a reasonable good faith belief that it was 3'oclock. The man who thought he saw smoke did not have a JTB, because his assumption that what he saw was smoke was not justified. Further he unjustly assumes that if something is on fire it is his farm. At best he can say he believes that the odds of his farm being on fire now are higher than usual.

[@HT-xt4cn]

Yes many have pursued this line of reasoning to show that Gettier cases don't truly defeat the JTB analysis, the most famous of them being Nozick. They are called externalists since they believe that the nature of justification has to do with how well your beliefs track the truths of the external world. Some radical externalists go so far as to say that you can never be justified in believing a false proposition. However, they all fell short of their goal. All of them. Everytime one of them presented his analysis, a new Gettier case was presented that showed that they were wrong. Today the consensus among philosophers, be they externalists or not, is that Gettier cases prove that knowledge does not equal JTB and that the enterprise of finding necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge is not the right way to think about the nature of knowledge.

[@Christopher_Gibbons]

@@HT-xt4cn I must be operating under an incorrect definition of justified. It was my understanding that an Idea is justified if it is deduced by a logically valid argument based on known premises. If that is capable of producing a false conclusion then that invalidates proof by contradiction, which is the basis of all science and a hefty chunk of mathematics.

[@HT-xt4cn]

@@Christopher_Gibbons Yes that's not the usual definition of justification. What you described is called "soundness" in logic and indeed a soundly deduced proposition is irrefutable. As a side note, some philosophers of math deny the law of excluded middle and therefore do not accept proof by contradiction as a valid proof technique, but it's not a popular view. 'Justification' is a more elusive term which is why people debate over its nature. For instance, were those humans in the pre-scientific age who believed that the Earth was flat because that's how it appeared to them everywhere they went justified in having that belief? If you're an internalist, you might answer yes. If you're an externalist, you might answer no. The debate between internalism vs externalism on justification still rages on. Either way, both have shown to be dead-ends when it comes to linking justification with knowledge.

[@G12GilbertProduction]

Can you explain in analysis The Overton Window problem?

[@annp1944]

This channel needs to focus more on getting the philosophical content correct and focus less on making cartoons.

[@AJay-kk5mm]

I am a Visual learner, and I NEED the 'cartoons'

[@iranjackheelson]

Which part of the philosophical content was incorrect?

[@alittax]

Hello, what were the mistakes in this video? Thanks.

[@paulfessinger515]

True, this video is a false representation.

[@GodlessPhilosopher]

lol this is utterly uncontroversial analytic philosophy

[@sosunfreak]

Not me having a full blown sad storm when I found out Gettier died this year (through this video)...

[@vhawk1951kl]

That is no loss to the world; one fewer poor guesser.

[@sosunfreak]

@@vhawk1951kl Gettier haters squad, I guess

[@chuckgaydos5387]

The job applicant probably isn't even evaluating the specific proposition that someone with 10 coins will get the job, so is it correct to say that he believes it?

[@jeffcd3559]

Using the Gettier system, couldn't one then say, any time in one of those situations in which someone has a feeling of certainty about some future event, and it occurs, that they had justified true belief? Given the loose relationships between the objects in the examples given, why prohibits the reality of the internal state of the observer being justification enough to say that have and have had knowledge with no further justification or data?

[@vhawk1951kl]

It is not a 'system, it is rather poor and vague stab at defining knowledge which amounts to defining X by reference to its exact opposite, which is fatal to a satisfactory definition- for obvious reasons.

[@oneluv66]

is it just smith knows that the man that was offered the job at the time, had 10 coins? It seems knowing is being applied to predication of the future knowing the future, as opposed to the past of present. Same with the clock example, the man knows that the clock shows 3 O clock, but doesn't know that the clock isnt working or reflecting the accurate time. He belief that its actuall 3 o clock is not justified because it isnt actually 3 o clock

[@rjsample1]

Nicely done!

[@tldrinfographics5769]

Apply this to the simulation theory: Let’s say there is an apple in front of us, it ticks JTB of our perceptible reality. But if our reality was a simulation and everything was just a digital illusion the apple doesn’t really exist right?

[@vhawk1951kl]

"how does one not believe truly? Either one believes or one does not. As Gladstone Williams put it, all belief is honest belief or it is not belief. "true" adds nothing to belief, for if it is not true, by definition it is not belief.

[@jmalko9152]

Informative, thank you!

[@restlesssheep7156]

2 years later. 2 WHOLE YEARS LATER

[@ahtepacholiztli]

YESSSS!!!!!!!!

[@Nox.INkRecords]

Good stuff!

[@javedhkhan4227]

Back again..

[@Ma-xq6ll]

I have no idea what this video is talking about!

[@mr.zoldyck4065]

Welcome Baaaaaaack

[@ShivamMishra-wt9hl]

Pls don't stop making videos

[@gabbiewolf1121]

This playlist is out of order, the 5th episode is at the end of it.

[@shayanbabar5070]

Can we call it " luck " ?

[@pontusloviken94]

The concept of knowledge is the problem, it is just a term to indicate how well someone can make predictions in a given area. Someone with "knowledge" is almost always right on the subject. Someone in a room with no windows will not have knowledge by this metric, neither someone trusting a broken clock. Problem solved, you are welcome.

[@TheJoyOfGaming]

yes!

[@Homophonic]

Damn, 2 yrs later

[@MmmGallicus]

All this refers to the platonician view of the world of ideas, which can and must be questioned.

[@mikelarrivee5115]

The first counter example confuses me. Why doesn't Smith simply believe Jones got the job, why are the 10 coins important?

[@dandansen4261]

Here is a different case with the same kind of example: A farmer wakes up and looks outside. He sees a cow and thinks "my cow is outside". What he doesn't know is that it's a statue of a cow which he mistakes for his cow. In reality his cow is behind the barn, still outside. Now the problem is this: The farmer believes his cow to be outside, which is true. His justification is what is lacking. His justification is him seeing a statue. So while his belief is true, it is true by coincidence. It's not justified quite in the way we would want true beliefs to be justified. I hope this helps =3.

[@mikelarrivee5115]

@@dandansen4261 can we say though that there is some way of distinguishing cases where beliefs are coincidentally true and beliefs are justified? If we couldn't then it seems to me that we would have to say that it is potentially coincidental that our belief about the nature of our beliefs is what it is and that it isn't justified, which would be very undermining. It seems to me that perhaps the solution could be related to the idea of prolepticism.

[@dandansen4261]

@@mikelarrivee5115 We can, by looking at the justification. Gettier cases are less about the knowledge being true and more about the flaws in justification iirc. I'm just a simple philosophy student though, far from an expert on logic, so I can't really comment on the last part of your comment.

[@mikelarrivee5115]

@@dandansen4261 ok good then 👌

[@ericmadeoftin8206]

R. I. P. Gettier

[@stevenator0281]

The "Smith and Jones" example was WAY too complicated to explain this. There are plenty of much more easily grasped examples you could have used.

[@vhawk1951kl]

such as?

[@sosunfreak]

Gettier is my absolute hero.

[@Phoenix-pb4sm]

I'm a layman, but I've always thought the solution to the Getter Problem should be distinguishing between two different types of "knowledge". I think there is real-world knowledge - Things you have such a strong reason to believe that you are almost 100% certain about, even if there is always an infinitesimal chance you are wrong. And the second type of knowledge being true knowledge - Knowledge you know for absolute certain, and it's impossible to even conceive another explanation. This knowledge isn't actually possible to obtain, but still necessary to distinguish.

[@sofia.eris.bauhaus]

it seems you just want to define knowledge as justified belief, that isn't necessarily true. but if you had a justified belief, that you found out is false, would you really say you _knew_ that? your second definition seems just to mean truth, and isn't defined by anyone actually knowing it.

[@Shuizid]

I mean... you definition of the "true" knowledge already make it something that cannot exist. For a start, 100% certainty is physically impossible because there is no unchangeable physical state -> hence the brain cannot have 100% certainty. Then there is the basic logical issue that it's impossible to find reasoning for every last assumption. Hence the use of assumptions which we just assume as true without further reasoning. Finally, how is any of this a "solution"? Using your approach, I would end up saying "nobody has true knowledge so nobody can know anything" - a statement that stands in a self contradiction, as it proclaims to be true, while saying nothing (including itself) can truly be known. And ofcourse we got the practical issue that we are using the word "knowledge" and have certain associations with it and part of philosophy is figuring out those unspoken associations in hopes of getting a general and clear term.

[@vhawk1951kl]

Whose "real world"? There are a number of words that men were better off avoiding using and prominent amongst them the is " real" which a " Blurb"- undefinable word/image/idea.

[@vhawk1951kl]

Poor Gettier, no wonder his paper /idea never caught on and got filed under circular(or just poor) Gettier is not pronounced as that creature pronounces it; she would probably pronounce 'trait' - another shibboleth to identify the uncultured , to rhyme with gate rather than tray.

[@LanaRioss]

Get a grip

[@tonycheng2590]

I wanted to check the original wrong picture, but then...

[@SaeedNeamati]

that's too much complications

[@andynaidu5925]

If Smith thinks the man who has 10 coins will get a job, then he should not be employed in any job…

[@jeremyball116]

Tamler Sommers disliked this video lol

[@Fibulator]

Nahhh

[@Regnier0189]

But how do you know?

[@Fibulator]

@@Regnier0189 it came to me in a dream

[@Regnier0189]

@@Fibulator based sauce

[@mouwersor]

Lmao, imagine thinking you can prescribe to people when their knowledge is 'rightfully called knowledge'. Does your mental model of the world work in its desired way? If yes: Congrats, continue what you're doing, if not: you might want to change it FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. The key here is that you have your own reasons for wanting what we can call knowledge. If my knowledge doesn't line up with the JTB idea why should I care?

[@bd3531]

Nice way of explaining all self proclaimed "victims" of discrimination. They don't know but it fits their model so confirmation bias all the way to delusion.

[@vhawk1951kl]

Hard to see how anyone could be a " victim" of an essential capability, but discrimination has acquired an unfortunate gloss, and gone from being a virtue to being a vice precisely because of a lack of discrimination

[@bd3531]

@@vhawk1951kl ok bot

[@vhawk1951kl]

@@bd3531 try English titch, you mice(nothings and nobodies) use a language unknown to us cats, but you certainly illustrate why the lower classes are so called

[@Sambadk55]

You make a very unbelievable story with coins and jobs….get please another example.