Knowledge and Edmund L. Gettier

Edmund L. Gettier III, born in 1927, is philosopher born in 1927, educated at Cornell University and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Gettier added to his reputation with a three-page paper published in 1963 called "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" He is reputed to have questions a theory of knowledge that had been dominant among philosophers for thousands of years.

Gettier argues that there are situations in which one's belief may be justifiable while not qualifying as knowledge. In other words, someone believes something by grasping part of an event. That someone might be justified in his belief. But Gettier's chooses to describe what the viewer grasps as not knowledge. To those who see knowledge as approximation, Gettier's position is an arbitrary definition of knowledge and an adherence to the old idea that if you do not know everything you know nothing.

Search online for Gettier's paper, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" It is presently at http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html

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