Diotima: The Marist Undergraduate Philosophy Journal
Here is where the Gettier problem emerges. Despite securing justified true belief, it's intuitively clear that Smith lacks genuine knowledge that “the man who has the job has ten coins in his pocket.” This reveals a vivid dichotomy between justified true belief and our natural conception of knowledge. While justified true belief accepts knowledge formation amid extraordinary occurrences of luck and accident, we intuitively expect the subject to demonstrate a degree of agency in reaching his conclusion. Smith demonstrated no agency in reaching his conclusion, stumbling upon it by strokes of luck. He coincidentally secured the job instead of Jones and accidentally had ten coins in his pocket - not in the way which one should achieve knowledge. Therefore, Gettier concludes that justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge. Conceiving cases with a similar framework, the possibilities for Gettier cases are endless. The integral component of all Gettier cases is the principle of double luck , that is, one element of bad luck that leads the agent astray - Smith getting the job instead of Jones - and another element of good luck that brings the agent back to the truth - Smith having ten coins in his pocket. The first strike of luck represents a deviation from what the subject reasonably believes about the world; while his justification is acceptable, there lies some deceptive appearance or misleading evidence that causes him to err. Subsequently, the second occurrence of luck manifests a coincidental alignment of the factors creating truth, seeming to establish justified true belief, but intuitively, no knowledge. Employing this principle, Jennifer Nagel creates a paradigmatic Gettier case of her own in Knowledge: A Short Introduction. One afternoon, a man, Smith, walks through an empty train station. Realizing he has lost track of time, he glances at the
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