Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? / Ist gerechtfertigte, wahre Überzeugung Wissen?. Edmund L. Gettier

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      Edmund L. Gettier

      Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?

      Ist gerechtfertigte, wahre Überzeugung Wissen?

      Englisch / Deutsch

      Herausgegeben und übersetzt von Marc Andree Weber und Nadja-Mira Yolcu

      Reclam

      Hinweis zu dieser E-Book-Ausgabe: Die Originalpaginierung wird in größerem Schriftgrad in eckigen Klammern wiedergegeben, die Paginierung der UB-Ausgabe im kleineren Schriftgrad in eckigen Klammern. Diese ist mit der jeweiligen Übersetzung verlinkt.

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[5]Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Ist gerechtfertigte, wahre Überzeugung Wissen?

      [6]Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?

      Various attempts have been made in recent years to state necessary and sufficient conditions for someone’s knowing a given proposition. The attempts have often been such that they can be stated in a form similar to the following:1

      (a) S knows that P IFF (i) P is true,

      (ii) S believes that P, and

      (iii) S is justified in believing that P.

      For example, Chisholm has held that the following gives the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge:2

      (b) S knows that P IFF (i) S accepts P,

      (ii) S has adequate evidence for P,

      and

      (iii) P is true.

      (c) S knows that P IFF (i) P is true,

      (ii) S is sure that P is true, and

      (iii) S has the right to be sure

      that P is true.

      I shall argue that (a) is false in that the conditions stated therein do not constitute a sufficient condition for the truth of the proposition that S knows that P. The same argument will show that (b) and (c) fail if ‘has adequate evidence for’ or ‘has the right to be sure that’ is substituted for ‘is justified in believing that’ throughout.

       Case I:

      Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition:

      (d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.

      Smith’s evidence for (d) might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would in the end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Jones’s pocket ten minutes ago. Proposition (d) entails:

      (e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.

      Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the grounds of (d), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (e) is true.

       Case II:

      Let us suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following proposition:

      (f) Jones owns a Ford.

      Smith’s evidence might be that Jones has at all times in the past within Smith’s memory owned a car, and always a Ford, and that Jones has just offered Smith a ride while driving a Ford. Let us imagine, now, that Smith has another friend, Brown, of whose whereabouts he is totally ignorant. Smith selects three place-names quite at random, and constructs the following three propositions:

      (g) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston; [123]

      (h) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona;

      Each of these propositions is entailed by (f). Imagine that Smith realizes the entailment of each of these propositions he has constructed by (f), and proceeds to accept (g), (h), and (i) on the basis of (f). Smith has correctly inferred (g), (h), and (i) from a proposition for which he has strong evidence. Smith is therefore completely justified in believing each of these three propositions. Smith, of course, has no idea where Brown is.

      But imagine now that two further conditions hold. First, Jones does not own a Ford, but is at present driving a rented car. And secondly, by the sheerest coincidence, and entirely unknown to Smith, the place mentioned in proposition (h) happens really to be the place where Brown is. If these two conditions hold then Smith does not know that (h) is true, even though (i) (h) is true, (ii) Smith does believe that (h) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (h) is true.

      These two examples show that definition (a) does not state a sufficient condition for someone’s knowing a given proposition. The same cases, with appropriate changes, will suffice to show that neither definition (b) nor definition (c) do so either.

       Wayne State University

      [7]Ist gerechtfertigte, wahre Überzeugung Wissen?

      In den letzten Jahren wurden verschiedene Versuche unternommen, notwendige und hinreichende Bedingungen dafür anzugeben,