The Standard Account of Knowledge: Gettier and Nozick What exactly is knowledge? From the earliest of times, philosophers have come to define, obtain, and understand knowledge through the use of logically developed models. Consequently, flaws in these models will limit ones’ ability to know true reality. The Gettier problem, named after the American philosopher Edmund Gettier, is a philosophical dilemma on what constitutes knowledge. Gettier shared his insights about the problem in a short paper published in 1963, called "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” (Bernecker 8). Here, Gettier highlighted an overlooked flaw in the widely accepted concept of knowledge which defines knowledge as a justified true belief (JTB); the idea that if one believes something, and has sufficient justification for believing it, and the belief is indeed true, then one knows that thing. This was the predominant definition of knowledge prior to the Gettier problem. Gettier questioned this justified true belief definition of knowledge by addressing scenarios and …show more content…
Given Nozick’s truth-tracking account, it appears that Jim knows that he is looking at a steady dial configuration. However, given the reasoning that because one knows “p entails q, and S believes q because he deduces q from p, then S is justified in believing q,” it would be further Biasia 5 possible to assume that Jim knows he is looking at a reliable compass (12). Consequently, this disproves the prior application of the truth-tracking account, which ruled that Jim does not know whether or not he is looking at a reliable compass. This contradiction happens because the Gettier problem lives off of two principles:
(1) It’s possible to have a justified belief that turns out to be false
(2) It’s possible to make valid assumptions from one justified belief to another