Gettier Problem Research Articles

Safety, Evidence, and Epistemic Luck

This paper critically explores Timothy Williamson’s view of evidence, and it does so in light of the problem of epistemic luck. Williamson’s view of evidence is, of course, a crucially important aspect of his novel and influential “knowledge-first” epistemological project. Notoriously, one crucial thesis of this project is that one’s evidence is equivalent to what one knows. This has come to be known as the E = K thesis. This paper specifically addresses Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology and the E = K thesis in the context of anti-luck epistemology (i.e., the view that knowledge is not compatible with certain forms of epistemic luck) and the idea that knowledge is factive (i.e., the view that knowledge implies truth). Williamson’s views on these matters are worth investigating in some detail because he subscribes to a well-worked out anti-luck view of knowledge that incorporates what is perhaps the most common anti-luck condition (i.e., the safety condition). But this paper is also of more general importance because the critique of Williamson’s views on these matters reveals some important things about the nature of evidence and evidence is one of the most fundamental concepts in epistemology.

The Explanationist and the Modalist

AbstractRecent epistemology has witnessed a substantial opposition between two competing approaches to capturing the notion of non-accidentality in the analysis of knowledge: the explanationist and the modalist. According to the latest advocates of the former (e.g., Bogardus and Perrin 2020), S knows that p if and only if S believes that p because p is true. According to champions of the latter (e.g., safety and sensitivity theorists), S knows that p if and only if S's belief that p is true in a relevant set of possible worlds. Because Bogardus and Perrin's explanationism promises to deliver a plausible analysis of knowledge without any need for modal notions, it is an elegant proposal with prima facie appeal. However, such version of explanationism ultimately does not live up to its promises: in this paper, I raise some objections to their explanationist analysis of knowledge while showing that modalism is in much better shape than they think. In particular, I argue that their explanationist condition generates the wrong results in Gettier cases and fake-barn cases. I also offer and defend a novel version of modalism: I introduce a refined safety condition which is shown to successfully handle the same Gettier cases that beset Bogardus and Perrin's version of explanationism. The paper concludes with a reassessment of the explanationist's initial ambition to provide an analysis of knowledge without modal notions. The upshot will be that even if the prospects for such analysis remain dim, our money should be on the modalist, not the explanationist.

Epistemic Luck and Knowledge

Epistemic Luck and Knowledge

LANGUAGE REPRESENTATION OF VALUES IN LITERARY TEXT AS A REFLECTION OF THE WRITER’S WORLD PICTURE

The article describes the originality of the writer’s picture of the world and the peculiarities of the representation of the value system in а literary text.
 The purpose of the study is to reconstruct the system of value orientations presented in a work of art.
 The subject of the study is the system of values and axiological guidelines of the writer, indirectly or directly represented in the text.
 The object of the study is the axiological system of Nina Gorlanova, presented in the collection of stories Svetlaya proza.
 Research material – stories from Svetlaya proza by Nina Gorlanova.
 Research methods are determined by the research objectives and include general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, a combination of linguistic (descriptive, statistical, semantic methods) and literary (problem-thematic method) methods; an axiological approach is used to analyze a literary text.
 The novelty of the study is due to its interdisciplinary nature. In this work, an attempt is made to integrate the knowledge of linguistics, literary criticism and axiology.
 Research results. This paper makes an attempt to demonstrate the axiological guidelines of the writer and their hierarchical structure, which made it possible to include value dominants in the interpretation of the writer’s artistic world. Practical implications.
 The results of this work can be used in the study of disciplines such as text stylistics, poetics of a work of art, as well as in the analysis of fiction speech.

Can Arbitrary Beliefs be Rational?

AbstractWhen a belief has been influenced, in part or whole, by factors that, by the believer's own lights, do not bear on the truth of the believed proposition, we can say that the belief has been, in a sense, arbitrarily formed. Can such beliefs ever be rational? It might seem obvious that they can't. After all, belief, supposedly, “aims at the truth.” But many epistemologists have come to think that certain kinds of arbitrary beliefs can, indeed, be rational. In this paper, I want to do two things. First, I want to show that the claim that arbitrary beliefs can be rational is inconsistent with the conjunction of two other attractive claims: one saying that rationality requires a certain kind of epistemic immodesty, and one saying that rationality forbids certain kinds of self-ascriptions of epistemic luck. Second, I want to evaluate different ways one might respond to this inconsistent triad. I won't defend any response in particular, but I'll draw out some notable costs and benefits of each response, which may help shed light on the question of whether arbitrary beliefs can be rational.

Realism and Knowledge First. Interview with Timothy Williamson

The renowned British philosopher Timothy Williamson talks about his philosophical views and main lines of research. Williamson is a metaphysical realist in a broad sense. Fir him there are true or false answers to questions about all aspects of reality. Classical logic is a universal true theory. Knowledge-first epistemology is an alternative to the traditional belief-first epistemology. The former takes the concept of knowledge as a basic concept, explaining other epistemic concepts, including belief, in its terms, whereas the latter does the opposite. Knowledge, not truth, is the fundamental epistemic good. The Gettier problem and the skeptical problem that arise within traditional epistemology are ill posed and therefore cannot be solved. Hybrid epistemological theories do not satisfy the principles of simplicity and beauty and are refuted by counter-examples. Epistemic contextualism is problematic, and relativism violates the semantics of the phenomena being explained. Knowledge does not entail knowledge about knowledge. Knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. The distinction between a priori and a posteriori is superficial, and there are no analytical truths. The concept of qualia is unhelpful for solving the problems related to consciousness. The so-called “hard problem” of consciousness points to an area of conceptual confusions in which we do not know how to reason properly. Speculative metaphysics is quite a respectable enterprise. But progress in metaphysics is not automatic; it requires the right methodology.

Authentic and Apparent Evidence Gettier Cases Across American and Indian Nationalities

Authentic and Apparent Evidence Gettier Cases Across American and Indian Nationalities

Gettier Cases, Mimicking, and Virtue Reliabilism

It has been argued that virtue reliabilism faces difficulties in explaining why the “because-of” relation between true belief and the relevant competence is absent in Gettier cases. However, prominent proponents of this view such as Sosa and Turri suggest that these difficulties can be overcome by invoking the manifestation relation. In his Judgment and Agency, Sosa supports this claim based on an analogy between Gettier cases and what in the literature on dispositions is called mimic cases. While there are initial motivations for the alleged analogy, I claim there are at least two arguments against it: 1. there is an asymmetry in the nature of context-sensitivity between the problem of mimicking and the Gettier problem; 2. while causal deviance and double luck can be found in both the mimic case and the Gettier case, their causal processes are different in important respects, making it challenging to see them as both falling under the same category. If these arguments are on the right track, the upshot is that virtue reliablists such as Sosa and Turri who describe the “because-of” relation in terms of the manifestation relation still owe us an account of why the manifestation relation is absent in Gettier cases.

Epistemic Luck in Stoicism

The Stoics held that knowledge depends on the special kind of true appearances they called ‘apprehensive.’ Sextus Empiricus reports that they also thought that some true appearances are not apprehensive—and hence unable to lead to knowledge—because they are true merely ‘externally and by chance’, which suggests that the Stoics were aware of the problem of epistemic luck. Unfortunately, Sextus does not tell us what kind of appearances the Stoics thought are true by chance, and why. I argue that the appearances in question here are imaginations, and propose an explanation why the Stoics, who defined chance in terms of hidden causes, would have thought that imaginations can only be true by chance. The explanation stems from their view that the essential characteristic of imagination is that it leaves the actual cause of its representational content hidden from the subject.

Epistemic Relativism and the Gettier Problem

The aim of this article is to present a variant of epistemic relativism that is compatible with a language practice especially popular among scientists. We argue that in science, but also in philosophy, propositions are naturally ‘relativized’ to sets of hypotheses or theories, and that a similar language practice allows one to interpret canonical problems of epistemology. We apply the model to Gettier’s problem, and derive a condition under which counterexamples à la Gettier to Plato’s account of knowledge do not arise. We argue that these findings give further content to a well-known result by Zagzebski (1994). Our interpretation points to a type of epistemic relativism having links with contextualism in epistemology, and perspectivism in philosophy of science.

Virtue Epistemology: Normativity, Conceptual Polarization and Some New Insights

The influence of Willard Quine’s radical naturalistic approach, ambiguity in estimation of methodological naturalism and its role for philosophy, along with the challenging Gettier problem, all led to a fundamental revision of normativity in analytic epistemology. Intellectual virtues used as the basis of epistemic process broaden the horizon of epistemological research, while allowing the incorporation of norms and values into its subject field. Still, the scope of intellectual virtues underlying the concept of normativity is seen quite differently by the researchers of this interdisciplinary area. The main disagreement between virtue reliabilists and virtue responsiblists leads to conceptualization of the two systems, where are the sources of the virtues, instruments and the epistemic process itself are presented alternatively from different perspectives. Reliabilists relate the source of the epistemic virtue to adequately functioning perceptive apparatus and memory. They prioritize the results over the epistemic process itself leaving the issue of the subject’s responsibility out. At the same time responsibilists rest the responsibility for the results, as well as for the epistemic process, on the subject. The pathway, which leads the latter to knowledge, is required to be clear and honest — starting from the subject’s motivation and the instruments he or she uses, finishing with the final results. This antithesis requires the development of viable alternatives. Here one can find two of them: sentimentalist virtue epistemology of M. Slote, personalism of H. Battaly. Put into a broader context, the issue of intellectual virtues applied for epistemic process could provide a number of insights related to general social and research practices (responsibility for intellectual work, testimony, motivation, etc.), their ethical and epistemic ground.

Memory, Knowledge, and Epistemic Luck

AbstractDoes ‘remembering that p’ entail ‘knowing that p’? The widely-accepted epistemic theory of memory (hereafter, ETM) answers affirmatively. This paper purports to reveal the tension between ETM and the prevailing anti-luck epistemology. Central to my argument is the fact that we often ‘vaguely remember’ a fact, of which one plausible interpretation is that our true memory-based beliefs formed in this way could easily have been false. Drawing on prominent theories of misremembering in philosophy of psychology (e.g. fuzzy-trace theory and simulationism), I will construct cases where the subject vaguely remembers that p while fails to meet the safety condition, which imply either that ETM is false or that safety is unnecessary for knowledge. The conclusion reached in this paper will be a conditional: if veritic epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge, then ‘remembering that p’ does not entail ‘knowing that p’.

The Method of Cases: A Case Study

The aim of this paper is to propose an alternative interpretation of the method of cases, analyze two of its particular implementations in the theory of knowledge, and argue that the method of cases, according to this interpretation, is not prone to challenges posed by its recent critics, such as Edouard Machery (2017). The core of the proposed interpretation is that the method of cases consists of two steps (the case description and the target argument) and that the case description does not elicit judgments about the applicability of the concepts in question. In fact, case descriptions do not elicit anything at all; rather, they show some facts, usually some factual distinctions among relevant situations. Specifically, the Gettier cases and the Fake Barn cases show a certain differentiation in the ways of holding beliefs. How to adjust the concept of knowledge to such differentiation — if at all — belongs to the argumentative step.

Savoirs, cultures et construction de l’universel chez Paulin Hountondji et Bado Ndoye

The critique of knowledge and cultures in PJ Hountondji and B Ndoye is all the more a cerbic as the secondarity of the subject in relation to the surrounding world, has its cultural substructure, constitutes a reality. The fact remains that such a criticism is motivated above all by the demand for reinstitution of the universal. In other words, these two philosophers call for the secularization and dynamism of endogenous knowledge as well as the development of african cultures to make them contribute considerably to the constitution of a true universal.

Western Skeptic vs Indian Realist. Cross-Cultural Differences in Zebra Case Intuitions

The cross-cultural differences in epistemic intuitions reported by Weinberg, Nichols and Stich (2001; hereafter: WNS) laid the ground for the negative program of experimental philosophy. However, most of WNS’s findings were not corroborated in further studies. The exception here is the study concerning purported differences between Westerners and Indians in knowledge ascriptions concerning the Zebra Case, which was never properly replicated. Our study replicates the above-mentioned experiment on a considerably larger sample of Westerners (n = 211) and Indians (n = 204). The analysis found a significant difference between the ethnic groups in question in the predicted direction: Indians were more likely to attribute knowledge in the Zebra Case than Westerners. In this paper, we offer an explanation of our result that takes into account the fact that replications of WNS’s other experiments did not find any cross-cultural differences. We argue that the Zebra Case is unique among the vignettes tested by WNS since it should not be regarded as a Gettier case but rather as a scenario exhibiting skeptical pressure concerning the reliability of sense-perception. We argue that skepticism towards perception as a means of gaining knowledge is a trope that is deeply rooted in Western epistemology but is very much absent from Classical Indian philosophical inquiry. This line of reasoning is based on a thorough examination of the skeptical scenarios discussed by philosophers of the Indian Nyaya tradition and their adversaries.

Introduction: Plant Performance

Plants perform their own interests and purposes. Plants perform in ways that afford and invite specific human experiences. Plants also perform complex biopolitical roles. With these multivalent understandings of plant performance in mind, this introduction to the “Plant Performance” issue of Performance Philosophy outlines the editors’ broadly feminist approach to the challenges facing scholars and artists in the field of Critical Plant Studies. We present these challenges, including colonisation and decolonisation, botanical aesthetics and its vegetal limits, instrumentality and vegetal respect, and phytopolitics and plant liveliness, as provocations for scholars and artists grappling with ecological, political and creative human relations with the vegetal world. The introduction, alongside the eight essays included in the issue, considers how thinking with plant performance might create conditions for a more contextual, critical, reflexive, nuanced, and/or urgent understanding of plant-human relationships, both historically and in the current moment. In addition to considering questions of plant performative agency, the issue foregrounds the politico-aesthetic conditions in which plant performances cannot help but occur. It details how specific works of performance art intervene in these conditions, and it contributes to the development of a more global and multiply-situated network of performative, critical plant knowledges, relations, and practices.

Collective Epistemic Luck

A platitude in epistemology is that an individual’s belief does not qualify as knowledge if it is true by luck. Individuals, however, are not the only bearers of knowledge. Many epistemologists agree that groups can also possess knowledge in a way that is genuinely collective. If groups can know, it is natural to think that, just as true individual beliefs fall short of knowledge due to individual epistemic luck, true collective beliefs may fall short of knowledge because of collective epistemic luck. This paper argues, first, that the dominant view of epistemic luck in the literature, the modal view, does not yield a satisfactory account of lucky collective beliefs. Second, it argues that collective epistemic luck is better explained in terms of groups lacking (suitably defined) forms of control over collective belief formation that are specific to the different procedures for forming collective beliefs. One of the main implications of this, we will argue, is that groups whose beliefs are formed via internal deliberation are more vulnerable to knowledge-undermining collective luck than groups that form their beliefs via non-deliberative methods, such as non-deliberative anonymous voting. The bottom line is that the greater exposure to knowledge-undermining luck that deliberation gives rise to provides a reason (not a conclusive one) for thinking that non-deliberative methods of group belief formation have greater epistemic value.

Lecturing within the panoptic scheme of prevent in an English University

ABSTRACT The Counter Terrorism and Security Act (CTSA) in 2015 placed responsibilities for national security on Higher Education (HE) in England with implications for lecturers’ roles and responsibilities as they engage with students. The principal aim of this inquiry was to develop an understanding of lecturers’ pedagogy in the context of students’ academic study of Prevent in the fields of primary education and early childhood education (ECE). Panopticism was adopted as a theoretical lens to reveal the means by which the policy and structures of counter-terrorism reach into the university classroom. Subsequently, practitioner inquiry was applied as a method to examine the assumptions that underlie pedagogical decisions made by lecturers in this context. Findings from this small-scale inquiry indicate that lecturers held complex assumptions relating to both the aims of the CTSA and students’ agency as learners. Such assumptions informed the way lecturers modified pedagogy in their attempts to create spaces for students to construct critical knowledges of the implications of counter-terrorism policy. Within the literature on the implications of CTSA for pedagogy in HE, this article highlights the value of practitioner inquiry as a critical tool for research into teaching and learning in this context.

Virtue epistemology and the Gettier dilemma

AbstractThe Gettier dilemma facing reductive analyses of knowledge has not been properly appreciated by virtue epistemologists or even virtue epistemology’s most vocal critics. This paper starts by considering how recent critics of virtue epistemology understand the Gettier problem facing virtue‐theoretic accounts of knowledge. The paper highlights how the dilemma facing virtue‐theoretic analyses of knowledge is more general than these critics seem to suggest. It then elucidates the worry that the threat facing virtue epistemology is really a dilemma between Gettier counterexamples and radical skepticism. Finally, the paper considers how some recent virtue epistemologists have tried to viably defuse the Gettier problem. It shows (i) just how the critiques it elucidates have (mis)shaped the dialectic between virtue epistemology and what is required in solving Gettier counterexamples and (ii) how this has led to virtue epistemologists underestimating the widespread insidiousness of Gettier counterexamples.

Cognitive Development by Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Aim/Thesis: The aim of this research is to promote the use of the three concepts-- the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), the Gettier Problem, and Corpus Linguistics (Contextual Learning)--to increase the academic performance of early undergraduate engineering students.
 Concept/Methods: 30 Engineering students completed one untimed Mensa IQ Test of 10 questions and one Simon-Binet IQ Test of 50 random IQ questions with a 12 minute time limit. These 30 students were chosen from two different college sections: 15 students from each section. Before the second Simon-Binet Test, one group, G(a), was given ZPD scaffolding in three major topics — Working Memory, Fluid Reasoning and Spatial Reasoning —as they had answered questions based on these concepts incorrectly in their first Mensa IQ test. The second group, G(b), was not given the ZPD scaffolding. A statistical t-test that was later performed indicated that G(a), with scaffolding, outperformed G(b), without the scaffolding, in the second IQ test. 
 Results and conclusion: Using the t-test, it is seen that the hypothesis of this research that ZPD, Gettier Problem and Corpus Linguistics can enhance the performance of the students in a short time period is correct. After the first Mensa IQ test, the level of both the groups G(a) and G(b) of engineering students was almost the same, indicated by a very similar mean results. However, after supporting G(a) utilizing ZPD, Gettier Problem and Corpus Linguistics for their three problem areas - Working Memory, Fluid Reasoning and Spatial Reasoning - identified after their first IQ test where the students needed scaffolding, the performance of this group improved more in comparison to G(b), as indicated by the results of the second online Simon-Binet Test. 
 Research restrictions: It was not possible to provide all the random questions of the online Simon-Binet test given to all 30 students because the total number of questions would be 30*50=1500. Only the first ten questions of the Mensa IQ test are included in this research paper. Further, the third and fourth year engineering students are not included in this research as it is assumed that they have had already developed expertise and the effect of the investigated tools would not be clearly visible. 
 Practical application: ZPD scaffolding was applied to the students when the students’ major problem areas were identified as requiring contextual learning and support. The Gettier Problem-- an epistemological concept-- was also used to keep their mind open at all the times during the learning process and Linguistics Corpus gave the contextual support as ZPD proposes the social-contextual mode of learning.
 Originality/Cognitive value: The paper presents empirical research on engineering students demonstrating the practical utility of ZPD, Gettier Problem and Corpus Linguistics in the process of learning, potentially irrespective of any discipline.