Edmund L. Gettier III (born 1927 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who owes his substantial reputation to a single three-page paper published in 1963 called "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" 1927 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... This article is about the city in the US state of Maryland. ... State nickname: Old Line State; Free State Other U.S. States Capital Annapolis Largest city Baltimore Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Official languages English Area 32,160 km² (42nd)  - Land 25,338 km²  - Water 6,968 km² (21%) Population (2000)  - Population 5,296,486 (19th)  - Density 165 /km² (5th) Admission into... A philosopher is a person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. ... A professor is a senior teacher and researcher, usually in a college or university. ... The center of the UMass Amherst campus. ... The Gettier problem is a fundamental problem in contemporary epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge), issuing from counterexamples to the definition of knowledge as justified true belief. ...

Gettier was educated at Cornell University, where his mentors included the ordinary language philosopher Max Black and the controversial Wittgensteinian Norman Malcolm. Gettier, himself, was originally attracted to the views of the later Wittgenstein. His first teaching job was at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where his colleagues included Keith Lehrer, R. C. Sleigh, and Alvin Plantinga. Because he was short on publications, his colleagues urged him to write up any ideas he had just to satisfy the administration. The result was a three-page paper that remains one of the most famous articles in the history of modern philosophy. Gettier has since published nothing, but he has invented and taught to his graduate students new methods for finding and illustrating countermodels in modal logic, as well as simplified semantics for various modal logics. For other uses of the name Cornell, see Cornell (disambiguation). ... Max Black (1909 - 1988) was a distinguished Anglo-American philosopher, who has been a leading influence in analytic philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. ... Norman Malcolm (1911 – 1990) is an American philosopher. ... Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), pictured here in 1930, made influential contributions to Logic and the philosophy of language, critically examining the task of conventional philosophy and its relation to the nature of language. ... Wayne State University, located in Detroit, Michigan, is adjacent to the citys Cultural Center. ... Alvin Plantinga (born 15 November 1932 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, of Frisian ancestry) is a contemporary American philosopher known for his work in metaphysics and in the philosophy of religion. ...

In his main article, Gettier challenges the "justified true belief" definition of knowledge that dates back to Plato's Theaetetus. This account was accepted by most philosophers at the time, most prominently the epistemologist Clarence Irving Lewis and his student, Roderick Chisholm. Gettier's article definitively refuted this account, though some would say that the validity of this definition had already been put into question in a general way by the work of Wittgenstein. (And later, interestingly, a similar argument was found in the papers of Bertrand Russell). Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge. ... Knowledge is the awareness and understanding of facts, truths or information gained in the form of experience or learning (a posteriori), or through introspection (a priori). ... Statue of a philosopher, presumedly Plato, in Delphi. ... Theaetetus ( 417 B.C. – 369 B.C.) was a Greek mathematician of Geometry. ... Clarence Irving Lewis ( April 12, 1883 - February 3, 1964) was a pragmatist philosopher. ... Categories: Stub ... Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM (18 May 1872–2 February 1970) was an influential British mathematician, philosopher, and logician, working mostly in the 20th century. ...

Gettier problem

Main article: Gettier problem

Gettier provides several examples of beliefs that are both true and justified, but that we should not intuitively call knowledge. Cases of this sort are now called "Gettier (counter-)examples." Because Gettier's criticism of the Justified True Belief model is systemic, it has produced a great deal of derivative counter-examples that follow the same pattern. For example, Jones enters a room and sees what appears to be Smith sitting in a chair. However, it was not Smith in the chair but a lifelike replica, and the real Smith was hiding behind a curtain. Jones declares "Smith is in this room," a statement which he believes, is justified, and is true. However, most people would agree that Jones' statement is not knowledge. The Gettier problem is a fundamental problem in contemporary epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge), issuing from counterexamples to the definition of knowledge as justified true belief. ... Belief is assent to a proposition. ...

Gettier inspired a great deal of work by philosophers attempting to recover a working definition of knowledge. Major responses include:

• Gettier's use of "justification" is too broad, and only some kinds of justification count;
• Gettier's examples do not count as justification at all, and only some kinds of evidence are justificatory;
• Knowledge must have a fourth condition, such as "no false premises" or "indefeasibility";
• Robert Nozick suggests knowledge must consist of justified true belief that is "truth-tracking"—belief held in such a way that if it turned out to be false it would not have been held, and vice versa;
• Colin McGinn suggests knowledge is atomic (it is indivisible into smaller components). We have knowledge when we have knowledge, and an accurate definition of knowledge may even contain the word "knowledge."

Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher and Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University. ... Colin McGinn (born 1950) is a British philosopher at Rutgers University. ...

External Links

• Gettier page at UMass Amherst