A Reliance on Necessary False Belief: The Salvation of The Classical Analysis of Knowledge
To further demonstrate the intuitive appeal of this assertion, consider this analogy in the realm of ethics. Consider a man who commits an apparent good deed, like helping an old lady cross the street. Suppose he only helped her to fool the police chasing him, as he had robbed a nearby convenience store. As he helped the lady cross the street, the police sprinted right on by, tricked by the thief into a fruitless pursuit. While the action of helping the lady cross the street was certainly good, his intentions were not. In the same way that the goodness of a deed is detracted by nefarious intentions, believing something true based on a necessary false belief detracts from the integrity of knowledge. Just because you incidentally landed on the truth or happened to help an old lady cross the street, doesn’t remove the significance of how you reached these states. Just as the man helping the old lady isn’t considered very good anymore, the agent relying on the false belief isn’t said to really know anymore, either. Therefore, the reliance on a necessary false belief irreversibly tarnishes the pursuit of knowledge, cementing my solution to preclude this reliance as jointly sufficient and individually necessary for knowing. So, how does this solve the Gettier problem? There is a universal common denominator in every conceivable Gettier case. In each scenario, the agent is misled to the allusion of knowledge through relying on a necessary false belief. This reliance then sets the stage for the principle of double luck. By some occurrence of luck, the ineliminable false belief leads the agent astray, keeping justification intact, while another occurrence of luck reels the agent back towards the truth. Consequently, prohibiting knowledge if the subject relies on a necessary false belief rectifies the Gettier problem, aligning our calculations with intuition and confirming a lack of knowledge in each case.
Volume VIII (2025) 56
Made with FlippingBook Annual report maker