Edmund Gettier's Is Justified True Knowledge

Edmund Gettier challenged the classical analysis of knowledge as justified true belief, demonstrating two cases where a true and justified belief is held, but not necessarily knowledge - Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? (1963). Showing that justification is insufficient for demarcating mere true beliefs from knowledge as belief and truth can correlate by luck. In what follows, section-one will outline the classical analysis of knowledge and Gettier’s challenge to it, focusing on Gettier’s first case of Smith and Jones. Then I will explore two respective proposals in response to this challenge: section-two, Lehrer and Paxson’s No-Defeaters approach (ND); section-three, Goldman’s Appropriate Causality Proposal (ACP). Concluding both limit
The classic response was that for a belief to be considered knowledge it needs three characteristics:
i. It is true. ii. The holder of the belief holds it with conviction. iii. The believer has justification for holding the belief.
(2001)
This is the Justified True Belief analysis, JTB. The justificatory condition was considered to be the demarcation between mere true belief and knowledge, until Edmund Gettier published his paper, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?, challenging this analysis. Gettier exposed a weakness by illustrating cases where justified true belief is held, but knowledge isn’t; showing that luck can pervert justification. Therefore, allowing a belief to be true, but not in the way the subject S justified it. This quality is displayed in Gettier’s ‘Smith and Jones’ case (s&j):
• Smith and Jones apply for the same job.
• While they are waiting, Smith observes Jones count ten coins from his pocket.
• After Smith’s interview he is told by the company president that Jones will get the position.
i. Smith, combining the interviewer’s testimony along with his observation infers that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his
However, it doesn’t appear that Henry actually knows as it is simply luck that this belief is true. Had Henry looked at any other time, he would have seen a fake barn and his belief would have been false; his belief is true via “epistemic serendipity” (Sudduth 2016). In essence, Henry’s senses are unreliable for discerning real barns from fake; worse, he isn’t aware of this limitation. This is problematic. If knowledge is held through an appropriate causal-connection, then a consistent and reliable method for connecting to them is needed. Without this knowledge seems odd, seemingly hit-or-miss, if ever