The Escapability of Gettier Problems

Please join us in Auerbach 320 or online this Wednesday, Oct. 26, from 1 p.m. – 2 p.m., for our next meeting of the University of Hartford Philosophy Club as Club member Clark Sexton presents his paper: “The Escapability of Gettier Problems”.
Note: This presentation was originally slated for Sept. 28.

To join the meeting online click on this link:

 https://hartford.webex.com/hartford/j.php?MTID=me84ea764b03ad4bd0357bb507647393a

 

If you have trouble joining, call Brian Skelly at 413-273-2273.

In Clark’s own words:

This paper presents an analysis of the essential elements of Gettier cases and offers a solution based on that analysis, including a discussion of how the solution avoids the problems posed by a number of Gettier cases (and why we have reason to believe it will be immune to any such counterexamples) and a consideration of the general principle underlying the proposed solution and its justification. It is argued that all Gettier cases, when properly analyzed, involve the absence of a sufficiently relevant connection between the reasons for believing a claim and the conditions that make the claim true, the additional requirement for knowledge of a relevant connection will preserve the JTB (or, perhaps now better seen as JTRB – “justified, true, relevantly connected belief”) account of knowledge. Finally, to further warrant our acceptance of this Principle of Connectedness, we note its close connection to a principle of reasoning we already accept, as it is behind our intuitions regarding legitimate inductive inferences in our requirement that there be a relevant connection between the properties the known cases and the case under consideration share and the postulated property.

 

In his article "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", Edmund Gettier challenges the traditional conception of knowledge as justified true belief (otherwise known as “the standard analysis”).  This conception of knowledge plays a key role in many other aspects of epistemology, and, in spite of Gettier’s challenge, it still has a significant intuitive appeal, matching what we would wish to say in a great range of cases. Moreover, there is no accepted solution to the problem raised by the kind of counterexamples to the standard analysis that Gettier raises.  Thus, it is worthwhile to continue to pursue a solution to the “Gettier Problem”. This paper presents an analysis of what are considered the essential elements of Gettier cases and offers a solution based on that analysis, including both a discussion of how the solution avoids the problems posed by a number of Gettier cases (and why we have reason to believe it will be immune to any such counterexamples) and a consideration of the general principle underlying the proposed solution and its justification. 

In this section, I will present and briefly discuss some of the more commonly cited counterexamples to the standard analysis that has been offered.  These have all come to be known as “Gettier Cases” even though Gettier himself only presented a couple of cases, and some even pre-date these cases. (Complete paper attached.)

 

Clark Sexton has a doctorate in Computer Science from Kansas State University and a doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Kansas. His research in Computer Science was in Artificial Intelligence, and, more specifically, Natural Language Processing. For this research, he implemented an NLP system that could parse a wide range of syntactic structures in English, and perform type-checking to determine whether
a sentence was meaningful and disambiguate certain ambiguous expressions.

Sexton continued his exploration of the relations of meanings in his dissertation in Philosophy, in which he presented a brief history of the analytic/synthetic distinction, replied to Quine's objections, and provided, and presented arguments for, his own account of the distinction.

 

An ongoing weekly tradition at the University since 2001, the University of Hartford Philosophy Club is a place where students, professors, and people from the community at large meet as peers. Sometimes presentations are given, followed by discussion. Other times, topics are hashed out by the whole group.  

 

Presenters may be students, professors, or people from the community. Anyone can offer to present a topic. The mode of presentation may be as formal or informal as the presenter chooses. 

 

Please be a part of us as we continue this great tradition online!

For more information, please contact Brian Skelly at bskelly@hartford.edu