Gettier problem Gettier provides several examples of
beliefs that are both true and justified, but that we should not intuitively term knowledge. Cases of this sort are termed "Gettier (counter-)examples". Because Gettier's criticism of the justified true belief model is systemic, some of his examples, that demonstrate the philosophical issues, lack practical plausibility; for example, one scenario hypothesizes that one job-seeking candidate is somehow aware of exactly how many coins are in the other candidate's pocket. Accordingly, other authors have imagined more realistic and plausible counterexamples. For example: I am watching the men's Wimbledon Final, and John McEnroe is playing Jimmy Connors, it is match point, and McEnroe wins. I say to myself: "John McEnroe is this year's men's champion at Wimbledon". Unbeknownst to me, however, the BBC were experiencing a broadcasting fault and so had broadcast a tape of last year's final, when McEnroe beat Connors. I had been watching last year's Wimbledon final, so I believed that McEnroe had bested Connors. But at that same time, in real life, McEnroe was repeating last year's victory and besting Connors. So my belief that McEnroe bested Connors to become this year's Wimbledon champion is true, and I had good reason to believe so (my belief was justified) — and yet, there is a sense in which I could not really have claimed to "know" that McEnroe had bested Connors because I was only accidentally right that McEnroe beat Connors — my belief was not based on the right kind of justification. 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 general, 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" — a belief such that if it was revealed to be false, it would not have been believed, and conversely. •
Colin McGinn suggests that knowledge is atomic (it is not divisible into smaller components). We have knowledge when we have knowledge, and an accurate definition of knowledge may even contain the word "knowledge". A 2001 study by Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich suggests that the effect of the Gettier problem
varies by culture. In particular, people from
Western countries seem more likely to agree with the judgments described in the story than do those from
East Asia. Subsequent studies were unable to replicate these results. According to philosopher
Duncan Pritchard, Gettier wrote his paper in a bid to get tenure and had little interest in
epistemology as he never published anything else in the field, and declined to attend a 2013 conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of his article's publication at the University of Edinburgh. ==Complete works==