(March 28, 2021 at 3:01 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:(March 27, 2021 at 11:35 am)Angrboda Wrote: The justified true belief bit I believe started with Plato, and it's long been known to be inadequate, but it get's the lion's share of what needs to be in a definition of knowledge right. For a bit about the inadequacy, look into the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem]Gettier problem.
This was fascinating.
Since the source material was so short, I went ahead and waded through it. A bit hard to follow at times, but I think I got the gist. It's still kind of sinking in, so I haven't spent much time considering the possible solutions (the "premises must be true" one is tempting at first glance). But it does appear that justified true belief is an insufficient definition of knowledge.
Have you done any thinking about it? I'm curious what your take is.
I agree with Angrboda about the standard definition covering the "lion's share" of cases. I've never seen a better definition of knowledge than "justified true belief."
The Gettier cases are more like very careful proofs that in some special circumstances we have to allow for something different.
I don't think we can expect absolute definitions in philosophy, as are possible in other fields. I mean, water is always H2O, and that can't be different. But we can't hope for that degree of absoluteness in human thought.
For me the usefulness of "justified true belief" comes when people want to claim a difference between belief and knowledge that isn't warranted. They will say that belief is when other people hold something to be true based on standards that I don't accept, but knowledge is what I hold to be true based on standards that I like. It ignores the fact that anything we hold to be true is based on standards, and may be wrong.
If knowledge is a subset of belief, then everybody has to be responsible for the justification of what he holds to be true.
