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Is Knowledge Justified True Belief?



The Ancient Greek philosopher, Plato claimed that knowledge was justified true belief. This definition of knowledge was widely accepted by most philosophers for the past 2000 years until the 20th century. This was until Edmund Ge

ttier suggested a counter argument to this definition. He believed that while the conditions of justification, truth and belief were necessary for knowledge, they were not sufficient. This is because it is possible to have a false justification for your belief while your belief remaining true. An example of this would be if Jones stabs his best friend, Theo, in a murderous rage. Jones then flees the scene in an attempt to avoid getting caught. Jones believes that he has killed Theo however this isn’t the case. Theo manages to survive and moves to Michigan in hopes of hiding from his homicidal best friend. One day, Theo is enjoying his new peaceful life on Lake Michigan when all of a sudden a starving bald eagle strikes him and pecks him to death. Now, Theo is dead so Jones’ belief is true and he has a justification for this but it isn’t in line with the actual reason for Theo's death. Here we can see that this is clearly not knowledge; however, according to Plato it fulfils all the prerequisites for knowledge. A slightly modified version to Plato’s theory of knowledge might be the No False Lemmas theory which holds up in the face of the Gettier problem.


The idea of the No False Lemmas Account was introduced by Gilbert Harman. This account adds an extra step to Plato’s definition by saying that one can only know something if it is: a) true b) it is believed by the person thinking it c) it must be justified d) the belief is not inferred or based on a false belief.

If we examine the scenario with Jones and Theo using the No False Lemmas, the fact that one of Jones’ justifications for Theo being dead (that he killed him) is false and therefore is made irrelevant to the truth of Jones’ conclusion. His premises have been disconnected from what makes his conclusion true which means that he can’t have knowledge. The No False Lemmas Theory clearly addresses this problem proposed by Gettier without much issue. Defenders of Gettier have suggested another type of thought experiment which is meant to render the NFL theory useless; however when you examine the counter-argument, you can see that the theory holds up in the face of scrutiny.


One case that is often brought up is the “Sheep in a meadow” thought experiment. In this scenario, a man is looking out across a meadow and sees a rock from far away. From where the man is standing, the rock looks identical to a sheep. The man sees this and concludes “There is a sheep in the meadow.” In fact there is a sheep in the meadow but it is slightly behind a small hill and out of the man’s line of sight. In this case, defenders of Gettier will say that this scenario adheres to the no false lemmas theory yet we can’t really classify this as knowledge. They claim that the man is immediately justified through his perception and that since there are no inferential steps to perception that there are no false lemmas. However, the view that the perception of the rock in the meadow is an immediate belief is not necessarily the case. If the belief was immediately formed the man would’ve said something along the lines of “That is a sheep”, referring to a particular entity. However, he instead chooses to say a general statement that “There is a sheep in the meadow”. In order to go from an immediate belief to a general claim there needs an inferential step and that is where the false lemma lies. The initial thought of looking at the rock and thinking that that specifically is a sheep is the false lemma and that is the basis of the man’s belief.


Another way in which people try to disprove the no false lemmas theory is through thought experiments such as the Fake Barn County. In this experiment, Henry is unknowingly driving through what is referred to as “Fake Barn County” in which there are many barns on the side of the road that are fake but are indistuingishable from real ones to the human eye. At one point, Henry looks at a barn and says to himself “That is a barn”. It just so happens that he is right and the barn he pointed out is the only real barn in the whole of Fake Barn County. He clearly does not actually have knowledge that it’s a barn but stumbled across the right answer by luck. Since, in this case, Henry has made an immediate perception and that is his belief, it would seem that there are no lemmas present. And this would be the case if we exclusively looked at the explicit inferential reasoning in order to come to a conclusion. Although a less strict view of justification would show how the no false lemmas account still holds up. In this scenario, it is safe to assume that Henry would say the same thing about any other barn around him. This is an incorrect assumption on Henry’s part that may not necessarily be a conscious thought however it is implicit. This implicit belief is what Henry bases his immediate perception of the barn off of thus being an inference. This inference that all the barns are real is not correct and could thus be classified as a false lemma.


In conclusion, Justified True Belief is necessary but not sufficient for knowledge and the No False Lemmas theory solves this deficiency. While many critiques of it use adapted gettier problems to disprove it, when we consider immediate vs. mediate belief and perception and implicit vs explicit inferences we can see that the theory still stands.


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