SpookyKitty

Ok.... I was just sayin'....

JTB is from Plato, not Gettier. EDIT: Meno: Men. What do you mean by the word "right"? Soc. I will explain. If a man knew the way to Larisa, or anywhere else, and went to the place and led others thither, would he not be a right and good guide? Men. Certainly. Soc. And a person who had a right opinion about the way, but had never been and did not know, might be a good guide also, might he not? Men. Certainly. Soc. And while he has true opinion about that which the other knows, he will be just as good a guide if he thinks the truth, as he who knows the truth? Men. Exactly. Soc. Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct action as knowledge; and that was the point which we omitted in our speculation about the nature of virtue, when we said that knowledge only is the guide of right action; whereas there is also right opinion. Men. True. Soc. Then right opinion is not less useful than knowledge? Men. The difference, Socrates, is only that he who has knowledge will always be right; but he who has right opinion will sometimes be right, and sometimes not. Soc. What do you mean? Can he be wrong who has right opinion, so long as he has right opinion? Men. I admit the cogency of your argument, and therefore, Socrates, I wonder that knowledge should be preferred to right opinion-or why they should ever differ. Soc. And shall I explain this wonder to you? Men. Do tell me. Soc. You would not wonder if you had ever observed the images of Daedalus; but perhaps you have not got them in your country? Men. What have they to do with the question? Soc. Because they require to be fastened in order to keep them, and if they are not fastened they will play truant and run away. Men. Well. what of that? Soc. I mean to say that they are not very valuable possessions if they are at liberty, for they will walk off like runaway slaves; but when fastened, they are of great value, for they are really beautiful works of art. Now this is an illustration of the nature of true opinions: while they abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore they are not of much value until they are fastened by the tie of the cause; and this fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and I have agreed to call it. But when they are bound, in the first place, they have the nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are abiding. And this is why knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true opinion, because fastened by a chain. Men. What you are saying, Socrates, seems to be very like the truth. Soc. I too speak rather in ignorance; I only conjecture. And yet that knowledge differs from true opinion is no matter of conjecture with me. There are not many things which I profess to know, but this is most certainly one of them.

The belief would be justified because the subject has good reasons for believing that the experimenters are telling the truth (suppose). And also because the subject's seeing a dog is evidence for the belief that the screen always shows a dog. I'm not sure how this relates to my argument, but I will answer the questions anyway. First, I am not at all saying that false beliefs can only be the result of either poor justifications or error of reasoning. One can have good justifications for false beliefs (although only if he lacks some piece of evidence that would lead him to adopt the true belief). I do not agree at all that poor justifications lead to necessarily false beliefs. Although, I think you meant to say that bad reasoning necessarily leads to false belief rather than that bad reasoning leads to necessarily false beliefs. Given that, no, bad reasoning can result in true beliefs. Take any yes/no question. You flip a coin to decide the answer and you will be right about 50% of the time.

"Used" sure. It isn't true, though.

It most certainly does not continue to be true. It may continue to be a useful fiction, but it is anything but true. This sort of thing completely downplays the fact that Newtonian physics makes fundamental claims about the universe that are flat-out false, such as the existence of absolute simultaneity or a force of gravity.

Pretty much this. I was going to respond to someone else about the "omniscient perspective" argument. The problem with this argument is that you can apply it to concepts of "truth" and "reality" just as well.

Ok, I will give a positive argument for the truth condition. Imagine that some scientists are running an experiment. The subjects are told that in the test room there is a screen which always displays a certain picture. The subjects are given a list of possible pictures that the screen always shows. They are, one by one, to enter the room, mark which picture that they believe that the screen always shows, and then leave. The next subject then takes his turn, and so on. When Jones enters the room, he sees a picture of a dog. Thus, he has a justified belief that the screen always shows a dog. Presumably then, if knowledge is justified belief, then Jones knows that the screen always shows a dog. However, the experimenters have designed the screen so that it displays a random picture upon a subject's entering the room. A subject can have evidence for the belief that "the screen always shows x". But, there is simply no fact of the matter as to what the screen always shows. If knowledge is supposed to be about facts, then it is impossible for anyone to ever know what it is that the screen always shows even though they can have justified beliefs about what the screen always shows. The only things that people can actually have knowledge about are matters of fact. Every justified belief about matters of fact is therefore also either a justified false belief or a justified true belief. I think that it would be absurd to define knowledge as any sort of justified false belief. Therefore, knowledge must consist only of justified true beliefs.

Not only are justified false beliefs possible, but they are also pervasive. Just look at the case of Newtonian physics. Your argument as whole is incoherent. If there are no justified false beliefs, then every justified belief is true. Hence, if knowledge is justified belief, then knowledge must also be justified true belief.

I think the answer to this question is important. Suppose that knowledge is simply justified belief. Then, all you have to do to gain knowledge is to justify whatever beliefs you happen to hold to the extent that you can, indeed, justify them. Suppose further that later on, you learn that one of your justified beliefs is false. Then, you are no longer justified in believing that belief, so that's one less justified belief in your head. But then it would seem as if you have somehow lost knowledge, when it would seem to make more sense to say that you have gained it. I believe that the JTB answers the above problem as follows. Because knowledge is justified true belief, when one discards a justified false belief, one has increased the degree to which his beliefs correspond (or at least fail to be in conflict) with reality.

But "I used to be in the state of knowing that God is real" is not the same as saying "I used to believe God is real". This is because, one could say the former in cases where one has simply forgotten a true belief.

It's not that it retroactively stops being knowledge, it's that it was never knowledge in the first place. I have an argument against your conception of knowledge. Does anybody ever say that they "used to know" something that they now know is false or do they say that they "used to believe" something that they now know is false? For example, imagine a Christian who eventually became an atheist. Would they ever be justified in saying things like "I used to know what really happens to you when you die. I used to know that there was a God. I used to know that Christ rose from the dead after three days."? Wouldn't they rather say that "I used to believe that there was a God"?

Rand was pretty clear in her definition of knowledge, and I don't think Peikoff talking here about certainty contradicts that in any way.

Is this your own view, or are you claiming that it is the Objectivist view? Because, to me it seems that the Objectivist view is consistent with JTB. Rand says that "knowledge is the mental grasp of a fact of reality." Which means that it must be true.

I would stay away from OPAR if what you want to study is Rand's Objectivism rather than Peikoff's. The best you can get from Rand's Objectivism is ITOE and Galt's speech. My problem with Peikoff is that he's a closeted rationalist (and a really bad one to boot), and I don't make that accusation lightly.

Actually, I explicitly assume that knowledge must be true to qualify as knowledge. I don't understand the rest of your post at all.

Both you and Eiuol have expressed this view now in that other thread. This looks like a good place to discuss it. You have both raised the objection to the JTB that beliefs can only be judged as true from an "omniscient perspective". Since this perspective does not exist (granted), then it is impossible to really know whether any belief is true, and therefore it is impossible to decide wether or not a given justified belief qualifies as knowledge. Hence, JTB cannot be true. But your argument confuses the extension of knowledge with its intension. One cannot infer from "we cannot decide in every case whether p is an isntance of q using conditions C" that "there is a p which is not an instance of q but which meets conditions C". In short, it is possible to know something without knowing that you know it.

Whatever it is, it's certainly not a proof that knowledge is impossible, nor is it intended to be. This is how analytic philosophy is done. One proposes the necessary and sufficient conditions for a certain thing, and then others try to find counterexamples. These counterexamples are then used to discover new conditions (or to jettison wrong ones) and the concept becomes further and further refined. The JTB analysis is especially interesting and it led to the development of the causal theory of knowledge which I think is on the right track. However, some philosopher (I forget who) claimed to have proven that it is always possible to come up with Gettier cases regardless of the conditions for justification. This has led some other philosophers to propose that knowledge is not a "state" of consciousness at all, but something else entirely. EDIT: Here's a video:

This is incorrect. Rand and Peikoff both say multiple times that a concept with no referents is not a concept at all.

By Galt! That is the single most interesting debate about Objectivism that I've ever seen!

At some point your life is just a trail of corpses you once loved. #Dark #Edgy

I'm reading up on the Pre-Socratics and Plato and Aristotle.

I'm not really sure what you're saying, but I'm not talking about "categories" whatever that means. Sure, understanding is a kind of knowledge in an everyday kind of sense. But when we are talking about predicates and concepts it is implied that we are talking about "knowing that...", which is not to be confused with "understanding that...". First of all, I'm not at all sure what it would mean to "combine" two concepts into one. Secondly, even if you could, your position collapses, as then the new combined concept would have a total representation.

No, not really.

I believe that I have provided the example that was required. The mere fact that there may possibly be more than one referent of a given concept (even though there is, in fact, only one) is beside the point. In Objectivism, one cannot form concepts by using merely possible or unknown units.

Fine. But if perception is 'infallible' in that sense, then what's the point? The judgments I derive from unreflective perception are still fallible.