Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Edmund L. Gettier, Hans Reichenbach and Juan Comesaa

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4 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / b. Gettier problem
8886 Being a true justified belief is not a sufficient condition for knowledge [Gettier]
     Full Idea: The claim that someone knows a proposition if it is true, it is believed, and the person is justified in their belief is false, in that the conditions do not state a sufficient condition for the claim.
     From: Edmund L. Gettier (Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? [1963], p.145)
     A reaction: This is the beginning of the famous Gettier Problem, which has motivated most epistemology for the last forty years. Gettier implies that justification is necessary, even if it is not sufficient. He gives two counterexamples.
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / a. Reliable knowledge
19727 Reliabilist knowledge is evidence based belief, with high conditional probability [Comesaņa]
     Full Idea: The best definition of reliabilism seems to be: the agent has evidence, and bases the belief on the evidence, and the actual conditional reliability of the belief on the evidence is high enough.
     From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.4)
     A reaction: This is Comesaņa's own theory, derived from Alston 1998, and based on conditional probabilities.
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / b. Anti-reliabilism
19725 In a sceptical scenario belief formation is unreliable, so no beliefs at all are justified? [Comesaņa]
     Full Idea: If the processes of belief-formation are unreliable (perhaps in a sceptical scenario), then reliabilism has the consequence that those victims can never have justified beliefs (which Sosa calls the 'new evil demon problem').
     From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.1)
     A reaction: That may be the right outcome. Could you have mathematical knowledge in a sceptical scenario? But that would be different processes. If I might be a brain in a vat, then it's true that I have no perceptual knowledge.
19726 How do we decide which exact process is the one that needs to be reliable? [Comesaņa]
     Full Idea: The reliabilist has the problem of finding a principled way of selecting, for each token-process of belief formation, the type whose reliability ratio must be high enough for the belief to be justified.
     From: Juan Comesaņa (Reliabilism [2011], 4.3)
     A reaction: The question is which exact process I am employing for some visual knowledge (and how the process should be described). Seeing, staring, squinting, glancing.... This seems to be called the 'generality problem'.