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 questioned 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. Gettier's position is arbitrary. Who believes anything that he does not justify as knowledge? Gettier's division between justifiable belief and knowledge is an adherence to the old idea that if you do not know everything you know nothing. It's more practical, in my opinion, to hold that although we don't grasp the totality of anything (Plato's essence) what we grasp in part is indeed knowledge -- an approximation. It is either knowledge as approximation or false and therefore not justifiable.

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