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A Gettier problem is any example that demonstrates that an individual can satisfy the classical analysis of knowledge - justified true belief - without possessing knowledge.Think Further Questions1. Should we search for a definition of knowledge? Why or why not?2. Why should we not define knowledge as certainty? 3. Do Gettier problems threaten everyday knowledge claims? How so?**Contents00:00 - The Problem00:26 - Explanation00:41 - Gettier Problem00:50 - How It Works03:54 - So What?
The ProblemSuppose you look outside the window one day and see a figure shoveling snow. You recognize the coat and silhouette and think, ?Oh, my dad?s shoveling snow.? However, that person isn?t actually your father, but your next-door neighbor. He owns the same winter jacket as your father and is a similar height. Yet, coincidentally, on the other side of the house, your father is in fact shoveling snow. Can you say that you knew your dad was shoveling snow?ExplanationIn this situation, your belief that your dad was shoveling was justified - your neighbor looks very similar to your dad - and it was true - your dad was, in fact, shoveling snow on the other side of the house - but you cannot say you knew that your dad was shoveling snow. This example is what is known as a Gettier problem.Gettier ProblemA Gettier problem is any example that demonstrates that an individual can satisfy the classical analysis of knowledge - justified true belief - without possessing knowledge.How It WorksPhilosophers have long attempted to give an analysis of knowledge by outlining the necessary and sufficient conditions that one must satisfy to be able to know a fact. Necessary conditions are requirements that a concept must have to be called that thing it is. For example, being divisible by two is a necessary condition of being an even number. On the other hand, sufficient conditions are qualities whose presence automatically qualifies a thing to be called the object in question. Being a beagle is a sufficient condition of being a dog, and so is being a pug, or golden retriever, or dalmatian. Ancient Greek Philosopher Plato was the first to propose the classical analysis of knowledge, which defines knowledge as a justified true belief. This is known as the JTB theory of knowledge. A belief is any claim that you accept. A true belief is any claim you accept that corresponds to how things are in the world, and a justified true belief is a true belief that has proper evidence. In terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, all of these parts are necessary for knowledge, but none of them alone is sufficient to count as knowledge. For example, you may believe that aliens are real, but until your belief is justified and true, it is not knowledge.The Gettier problem is named after American philosopher Edmund Gettier, who in 1963 presented two famous counterexamples to the JTB account of knowledge. The most well-known case is about two men who are applying for a job: Jones and Smith. Smith has been assured that Jones will get the job by the company president, and he has counted that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket. He concludes that ?The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.? However, Smith himself unknowingly has 10 coins in his pocket and gets the job. In this case, Smith?s belief that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket is true, and he is justified in believing it; yet few would say that Smith knows this fact.Gettier problems arise when there exists a relapse in the relationship between justification and truth. You are justified in believing your dad is shoveling snow because you see someone who strongly resembles him outside. However, the truth of your belief is not connected to what you see. It is only coincidentally true.Philosophers have tried endlessly to adapt and revise the classical theory of knowledge to avoid the Gettier problem, often by attempting to find the ?fourth condition? of knowledge to add to the JTB theory. One of the simplest solutions is the no false beliefs condition. This account adds an addendum that knowledge cannot rest on any false beliefs. Therefore, your true justified belief that your dad is shoveling snow does not count as knowledge because it rests on the false belief that your neighbor is your dad. The issue with this solution is that there are cases of knowledge that do rest on false beliefs yet are knowledge all the same. For example, consider a detective who interrogates ten people who say they are witnesses to a crime. However, one of these ten people is lying. Therefore, when the detective concludes who committed the crime based on testimonial evidence, she will include a false belief that the one lying witness saw the crime. Yet, this single false belief does not invalidate the detective?s knowledge because of the large body of truthful witnesses who also saw the crime. An account of knowledge should not become overly demanding, discrediting everyday intuitions in order to surmount the Gettier problem. The no false belief condition seems to go too far.So What?The Gettier problem reminds us that a definition of knowledge cannot and should not require complete certainty. Although any account of knowledge that does not bind truth and justification together may encounter Gettier-style counterexamples, this may be an inescapable problem. We shouldn?t turn to radical skepticism and claim that we know nothing. Instead, consider the ways we use knowledge in our daily lives. Knowledge serves an important evolutionary function, whether it?s the location of a beehive on a mountain trail or that there?s a measles outbreak in Philadelphia. Therefore, we need a reliable process for deciding when to trust our senses and others? testimony, even if this process does not result in a foolproof analysis every time.
Can you say that you knew your dad was shoveling snow?
Thus showing that philosophy is simply amateur linguistics and a waste of life.
?All genuine problems are at least theoretically capable of being solved,? said the positivist philosopher A J Ayer in 1936. But most philosophical problems, he thought, were pseudo-problems, to be dissolved by close examination of the language in which they were couched. ?Such a metaphysical pseudo-proposition as ?the Absolute enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution and progress?,? he thought, had ?no literal significance?, even for the person who uttered it, because it could not possibly be verified by observation or experiment.Ayer said he plucked that sentence about the Absolute randomly from the writings of one of the most typical and dominant late 19th-century British philosophers, F H Bradley. He was asserting that almost all previous philosophy was literally nonsense, like ?All mimsy were the borogoves? but less amusing. And Ayer was saying that, if philosophy was to have any respectable, useful or well-defined subject matter, it would be found in the nature and function of language, not the nature and function of reality.https://aeon.co/essays/how-philosophys-obsession-with-language-unravelled
I'm preparing next video about cogito ergo sum as the first knowledge. Stay tuned.
The ProblemSuppose you look outside the window one day and see a figure shoveling snow. You recognize the coat and silhouette and think, ?Oh, my dad?s shoveling snow.? However, that person isn?t actually your father, but your next-door neighbor. He owns the same winter jacket as your father and is a similar height. Yet, coincidentally, on the other side of the house, your father is in fact shoveling snow. Can you say that you knew your dad was shoveling snow?ExplanationIn this situation, your belief that your dad was shoveling was justified - your neighbor looks very similar to your dad - and it was true - your dad was, in fact, shoveling snow on the other side of the house - but you cannot say you knew that your dad was shoveling snow. This example is what is known as a Gettier problem.Gettier ProblemA Gettier problem is any example that demonstrates that an individual can satisfy the classical analysis of knowledge - justified true belief - without possessing knowledge.
Quote from: alancalverd on 16/05/2023 20:21:56Thus showing that philosophy is simply amateur linguistics and a waste of life.You share your thought with AJ Ayer, who's a philosopher himself.Quote?All genuine problems are at least theoretically capable of being solved,? said the positivist philosopher A J Ayer in 1936. But most philosophical problems, he thought, were pseudo-problems, to be dissolved by close examination of the language in which they were couched. ?Such a metaphysical pseudo-proposition as ?the Absolute enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution and progress?,? he thought, had ?no literal significance?, even for the person who uttered it, because it could not possibly be verified by observation or experiment.Ayer said he plucked that sentence about the Absolute randomly from the writings of one of the most typical and dominant late 19th-century British philosophers, F H Bradley. He was asserting that almost all previous philosophy was literally nonsense, like ?All mimsy were the borogoves? but less amusing. And Ayer was saying that, if philosophy was to have any respectable, useful or well-defined subject matter, it would be found in the nature and function of language, not the nature and function of reality.https://aeon.co/essays/how-philosophys-obsession-with-language-unravelledYou can accept it as it is, or try to revolutionize it with new disrupting ideas.
Bayesian reasoning can be applied here.
In his explanation of Bayes' theorem, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker highlights how this type of reasoning can help us determine the degree of belief we assign to a claim based on available evidence.Bayes' theorem takes into account the prior probability of a claim, the likelihood of the evidence given the claim is true, and the commonness of the evidence regardless of the claim's truth.While Bayes' theorem can be useful for making statistical predictions, Pinker cautions that it may not always be appropriate in situations where fairness and other moral considerations are important. Therefore, it's crucial to consider when Bayes' theorem is applicable and when it's not.0:00 What is Bayesian thinking?1:01 The formula2:41 When Bayes? theorem obscures the solution4:25 Bayes? theorem in a nutshell
I didn't say it explicitly in the video, but in my view the Bayesian trap is interpreting events that happen repeatedly as events that happen inevitably. They may be inevitable OR they may simply be the outcome of a series of steps, which likely depend on our behaviour. Yet our expectation of a certain outcome often leads us to behave just as we always have which only ensures that outcome. To escape the Bayesian trap, we must be willing to experiment.Special thanks to Patreon supporters:Tony Fadell, Jeff Straathof, Donal Botkin, Zach Mueller, Ron Neal, Nathan Hansen, Saeed AlghamdiUseful references:The Signal and the Noise, Nate SilverThe Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes? Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, by Sharon Bertsch McGrayneBayes' theorem or rule (there are many different versions of the same concept) has fascinated me for a long time due to its uses both in mathematics and statistics, and to solve real world problems. Bayesian inference has been used to crack the Enigma Code and to filter spam email. Bayes has also been used to locate the wreckage from plane crashes deep beneath the sea.
You can read more about Kahneman and Tversky's work in Thinking Fast and Slow, or in one of my favorite books, The Undoing Project.Contents:0:00 - Intro example4:09 - Generalizing as a formula10:13 - Making probability intuitive13:35 - Issues with the Steve example
There's a common criticism that people who claim to practice "Bayesian thinking" aren't actually doing anything special -- they're just using a fancy term to make their opinions seem more objective than they really are. In this video I explain why that criticism is misguided.
Universal Utopia 4 : Cogito ergo sum as the first knowledge
There are three important notes to keep in mind here. First, he claims only the certainty of his own existence from the first-person point of view ? he has not proved the existence of other minds at this point. This is something that has to be thought through by each of us for ourselves, as we follow the course of the meditations. Second, he does not say that his existence is necessary; he says that if he thinks, then necessarily he exists (see the instantiation principle). Third, this proposition "I am, I exist" is held true not based on a deduction (as mentioned above) or on empirical induction but on the clarity and self-evidence of the proposition. Descartes does not use this first certainty, the cogito, as a foundation upon which to build further knowledge; rather, it is the firm ground upon which he can stand as he works to discover further truths.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum
Extraordinary information requires extraordinary justification.
The Analysis of KnowledgeFirst published Tue Feb 6, 2001; substantive revision Tue Mar 7, 2017For any person, there are some things they know, and some things they don?t. What exactly is the difference? What does it take to know something? It?s not enough just to believe it?we don?t know the things we?re wrong about. Knowledge seems to be more like a way of getting at the truth. The analysis of knowledge concerns the attempt to articulate in what exactly this kind of ?getting at the truth? consists.The attempt to analyze knowledge has received a considerable amount of attention from epistemologists, particularly in the late 20th Century, but no analysis has been widely accepted. Some contemporary epistemologists reject the assumption that knowledge is susceptible to analysis.1. Knowledge as Justified True Belief1.1 The Truth Condition1.2 The Belief Condition1.3 The Justification Condition2. Lightweight Knowledge3. The Gettier Problem4. No False Lemmas5. Modal Conditions5.1 Sensitivity5.2 Safety5.3 Relevant Alternatives6. Doing Without Justification?6.1 Reliabilist Theories of Knowledge6.2 Causal Theories of Knowledge7. Is Knowledge Analyzable?8. Epistemic Luck9. Methodological Options10. Virtue-Theoretic Approaches10.1 The ?AAA? Evaluations10.2 Fake Barn Cases11. Knowledge First12. Pragmatic Encroachment13. ContextualismBibliographyAcademic ToolsOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries
I'm planning for the next video to discuss deeper about knowledge itself.
Traditional definition for knowledge is known to cause problems, such as Gettier problems. This video identifies those problems and offers the a solution by redefining knowledge.
For the example with a rare disease, justification for accepting the claim of getting an extremely rare disease requires extremely accurate and precise tests.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 24/05/2023 05:56:01For the example with a rare disease, justification for accepting the claim of getting an extremely rare disease requires extremely accurate and precise tests.Not at all! Evolution tends to eliminate diseases with exceptional symptoms so they become both rare and obvious. Having one brown leg on an otherwise white body is very unusual but ridiculously easy to diagnose ("in my professional judgement, Mr Jones, your legs are different colors, but you might want a second opinion") but deciding exactly which species of common cold virus you have requires a very sophisticated analytical technique.
Philosophers have tried endlessly to adapt and revise the classical theory of knowledge to avoid the Gettier problem, often by attempting to find the ?fourth condition? of knowledge to add to the JTB theory.
How To Update Your Beliefs Systematically - Bayes' Theorem
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4RLfVxTGH4QuoteWhy you think you're right -- even if you're wrong | Julia GalefPerspective is everything, especially when it comes to examining your beliefs. Are you a soldier, prone to defending your viewpoint at all costs — or a scout, spurred by curiosity? Julia Galef examines the motivations behind these two mindsets and how they shape the way we interpret information, interweaved with a compelling history lesson from 19th-century France. When your steadfast opinions are tested, Galef asks: "What do you most yearn for? Do you yearn to defend your own beliefs or do you yearn to see the world as clearly as you possibly can?"The soldier and scout metaphor is closely related to deductive and inductive reasoning, respectively. To survive, we need to set them in balance. Being too close minded will prevent us from responding quickly enough in environmental changes, and lose in the competition. Being too open minded will make us vulnerable from scams.
Why you think you're right -- even if you're wrong | Julia GalefPerspective is everything, especially when it comes to examining your beliefs. Are you a soldier, prone to defending your viewpoint at all costs — or a scout, spurred by curiosity? Julia Galef examines the motivations behind these two mindsets and how they shape the way we interpret information, interweaved with a compelling history lesson from 19th-century France. When your steadfast opinions are tested, Galef asks: "What do you most yearn for? Do you yearn to defend your own beliefs or do you yearn to see the world as clearly as you possibly can?"
While Bayes' theorem can be useful for making statistical predictions, Pinker cautions that it may not always be appropriate in situations where fairness and other moral considerations are important. Therefore, it's crucial to consider when Bayes' theorem is applicable and when it's not.