display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 5430 | A true belief is not knowledge if it is reached by bad reasoning [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced by a fallacious process of reasoning. If I know all Greeks are men, and Socrates was a man, I cannot know that Socrates was a Greek, even if I falsely infer it. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: Another very nice 'Gettier' example, fifty years before Gettier. There is a danger of circularity here, between knowledge, fallacy and truth. Giving them three independent definitions does not look promising. |
| 5429 | True belief is not knowledge when it is deduced from false belief [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A true belief is not knowledge when it is deduced from a false belief (as when deducing that the late Prime Minister's name began with B, believing it was Balfour, when actually it was Bannerman). | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't this the 'Gettier Problem'? It raises the central question of modern epistemology, which is what will be counted as adequate justification to make a true belief qualify as knowledge. How high do we set the bar? |