Epistemology Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Gettier problem and alternative definitions === [[File:Justified_True_Belief_model_of_knowledge.svg|thumb|300px|An [[Euler diagram]] representing a version of the traditional definition of knowledge that is adapted to the Gettier problem. This problem gives us reason to think that not all justified true beliefs constitute knowledge.]] The justified-true-belief account of knowledge came under severe criticism in the second half of the 20th century, when [[Edmund Gettier]] proposed various counterexamples.<ref name="IEP Gettier"/> In a famous example of what came to be known as a Gettier case, a person is driving on a country road lined with multiple [[Potemkin village|barn façades]], only one of which is real barn, but it is not possible to tell the difference between them from the road. The person then stops by a fortuitous coincidence in front of the only real barn and forms the belief that it is a barn. The idea behind this thought experiment is that this is not knowledge even though the belief is both justified and true. The reason is that it is just a lucky accident since the person cannot tell the difference: They would have formed exactly the same justified belief if they had stopped at another site, in which case the belief would have been false.<ref name="Rodriguez2018"/><ref name="Goldman1976"/><ref name="IEP defeaters-in-epistemology #sh2b"/> Various additional examples were proposed along similar lines. Most of them involve a justified true belief that apparently fails to amount to knowledge because the belief's justification is in some sense not relevant to its truth.<ref name="Klein1998"/><ref name="IEP Knowledge"/><ref name="Zagzebski1999"/> These counterexamples have provoked very diverse responses. Some theorists think that one only needs to modify one's conception of justification to avoid them. But the more common approach is to search for an additional criterion.<ref name="IchikawaSteup2018"/><ref name="DuránFormanek2018"/> On this view, all cases of knowledge involve a justified true belief but some justified true beliefs do not amount to knowledge since they lack this additional feature. There are diverse suggestions for this fourth criterion. Some epistemologists require that no false belief is involved in the justification or that no [[defeater]] of the belief is present.<ref name="IEP defeaters-in-epistemology #sh2b"/><ref name="Lehrer2015"/> A different approach is to require that the belief tracks truth, that is, that the person would not have the belief if it was false.<ref name="IEP Knowledge"/><ref name="Zagzebski1999"/> Some even require that the justification has to be infallible, that is, that it necessitates the belief's truth.<ref name="IEP Knowledge"/><ref name="Kraft2012"/> A quite different approach is to affirm that the justified-true-belief account of knowledge is deeply flawed and to seek a complete reconceptualization of knowledge. These reconceptualizations often do not require justification at all.<ref name="IchikawaSteup2018"/> One such approach is to require that the true belief was produced by a reliable process. Naturalized epistemologists often hold that the believed fact has to cause the belief.<ref name="Swain1998"/><ref name="IEP int-ext"/><ref name="Klein1998"/> [[Virtue epistemology|Virtue theorists]] are also interested in how the belief is produced. For them, the belief must be a manifestation of a cognitive virtue.<ref name="IEP Virtue Epistemology" /><ref name="TurriAlfanoGreco2021"/><ref name="SEP Epistemology"/> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page