Edmund Gettier's Essay: Is Justified True Knowledge?

“Siri, define knowledge”, you might ask your intelligent assistant, to get a simple definition for the word knowledge. Sure anybody can easily grab their smartphone and get a basic understanding of the word, but what does the word in a philosophical sense actually mean? A very long time ago Philosophers already had a definition of their own. They originally held that knowledge was a belief that was both true and justified. You probably have heard this statement if you have been enrolled in a philosophy course. A belief is pretty much an attitude taken when we look at an object we see as true. Suppose that you were a dog rather than a human. And that of course you believe that you are a dog. You walk on four legs, wag your tail, lick your

He totally disagreed with the relationship between justified true belief and knowledge. In his famous three-paged “Is Justified True belief Knowledge? He argued that it was possible to hold a justified true belief without having any sort of knowledge. In the twentieth century knowledge was basically defined as a conjunction of the following: S knows P if, P is true, if S believes P, and if S is justified in believing that P. It is like saying I know it is raining outside. It is in fact raining outside. The streets are wet, there are puddles on the sidewalks, water is pouring down from the sky, and everybody is wearing their raincoats, so I am justified in believing that it is raining outside. Edmund Gettier argues that the three conditions listed above are not sufficient to constitute knowledge. Many people are on his side. They argue that you do not need any kind of mental state in order for it to be knowledge. Others defend their doubt of the justified true belief theory by stating how certain animals know how to do things even if they do not believe anything. You can know how to act in some sort of way and that is sufficient. According to Gettier having justified true belief is not satisfactory for knowledge. An individual needs much more than just a justified true belief to having knowledge about something. He says that the JTB theory may initially be plausible, but it turns out to be false. In order to demonstrate his point of view and better support his argument he provides two examples known as Case 1 and Case