There is no getting round Gettier

Abstract

The author deals with two recent Polish contributions to the study of Gettier's destructive argument against the traditional analysis of ‘know that’ in terms of, first, the knower's belief concerning the relevant subject-matter (proposition), second, the belief, by the knower's lights, being justified, third, the subject-matter believed being an objective fact (being true). The contributors argue that Gettier's examples do not demonstrate that this analysis is wrong. In their view, Gettier, on the one hand, incorrectly claims that the epistemic subject in his examples does not know what he is supposed to know, in accordance with the traditional definition of knowledge; on the other hand, one of the contributors maintains that Gettier's epistemic subject, under a certain reading of know that, indeed does not know what in Gettier's opinion the definition would require that s/he knows, but in point of fact the definition provides for the opposite of it, i.e. it makes us expect that s/he really does not possess the respective knowledge. The author shows that the arguments examined in the article and aimed at a refutation of Gettier's claim of inadequacy of the traditional definition of knowledge are ill conceived and miss the mark; among other things, at one point, an ambiguity of know that has wrongly been assumed. The author resumes his contention (stated in his other works) that Gettier's valid critique paves the way towards a correct understanding of ‘know that’, viz. towards its understanding as the most fundamental semantic prime (which is susceptible to no definition).