Introduction: Lessons from Gettier

Abstract

Let’s begin with the standard narrative of the history of epistemology. In the Theaetetus and the Meno, Plato discusses the nature of knowledge, and an account seems to emerge and be tentatively endorsed (at least in the latter dialogue). According to that account, knowledge isn’t just true belief, since one might make a lucky guess, but all that we need to add is a justification condition to rule such cases out; to know that P is to have a justified true belief that P. This is commonly known as the justified true belief (JTB) account or the tripartite account of knowledge. Philosophers rested content with the JTB account for almost the next 2500 years, until two-and-a-half pages published in Analysis in 1963 changed everything. There, Edmund Gettier presented two counterexamples to the JTB account which demonstrated that its three conditions are too weak; while they may be individually necessary for knowing, they are not jointly sufficient. This triggered 50 years of ingenious, sophisticated, and often ridiculously complicated attempts to identify the mystery factor X that would result in knowledge when added to justified true belief (or alternatively, when replacing justification). However, these attempts proved to be plagued by further counterexamples, with some eventually arguing that epistemologists were buying into assumptions that made such counterexamples unavoidable (Zagzebski 1994).