How might we combat the Gettier Problem? In giving your answer set forth two of your own Gettier - Style counter examples

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How might we combat the Gettier Problem? In giving your answer set forth two of your own Gettier - Style counter examples.

Philosophers in the West at least since Socrates and Plato in the 4th century BCE have investigated the nature of knowledge. Since then, all of the great philosophers of the Western tradition have had a great deal to say about knowledge. However it was only until the nineteenth century that a separate sub-discipline called "theory of knowledge" or "epistemology" emerged.

One such definition of knowledge was offered by Plato in his book Theaetetus. This is known as the tripartite definition. Edmund Gettier (1963) sets out to challenge this tripartite definition of knowledge which defines the logical argument of having knowledge as the following:

 'S knows that p' as:

1. p is true.
           2. 
S believes that p.
           3. 
S's belief that p is justified.

In accordance with the definition all the conditions must be met and to have knowledge one must have a true and justified belief of something. Chisholm has held that the above definition, and further states that they are necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge. However Gettier using his own examples (henceforth known as counter – examples) shows that all the above three conditions can be satisfied and yet ‘S’ does not know ‘P’ and thus does not have knowledge.

        According to the tripartite definition to have knowledge; we have to a justified true belief. This can be broken down and looked at in three parts. Part one; Beliefs can be described as something that we accept as true, these beliefs can come from many different sources such as other people, our senses or from reasoning. Part two of the tripartite definition is Truth. This is obviously something that we want from our beliefs. However the idea of truth itself is a controversial one. Philosophers such as Descartes would have us think that we have in fact no truths whatsoever and that we are full of falsehood. Yet for now we will assume that truth is good in its own right and that we can attain the concept of truth. The third and final part of the definition is that we need Justification. When we have good evidence and we have good reasoning of that evidence we can say that we are justified in our beliefs.

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        So in accordance with all the above, to have knowledge then it must be. A true and justified belief and these are necessary conditions, however are they sufficient? Gettier argues they are not. One such example of a Gettier – style counter example would be as follows,

   John locks the door to his home and goes to work. John is now at work and looks at his key. He believes that it will open the door to his home, he is justified in believing this because of past evidence … he has used this key many a time ...

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