James's Essay: If He Will Win The Lottery

In James’s dialogue with Daphne, he claims that he will win the lottery because he truly believes in his prediction and it turned out he did win the lottery. In other words, James believes that his true belief of winning the lottery implies that he has knowledge of it.

First let us reconstruct James’s argument:

-If one has belief and the belief itself is true, then he has knowledge.
-James believe that he will win the lottery
-James did win the lottery, which implies that his belief is true
-Thus James have knowledge about whether he will win the lottery.

Contemporary philosophers usually define knowledge as justified true belief. In order to claim that someone has knowledge of something, all three conditions have to be met. First is that the statement must be true. I can't claim to know that Elvis Presley
Knowledge goes beyond my personal feelings on the matter and involves the truth of things as they actually are. Truth is an indispensable component of knowledge. In this case James did get the right guess so his argument does satisfy the truth condition. Second, one must believe the statement in order to know it. For example, it's true that Elvis Presley is dead, and there is enormous evidence to back this up. But if one still believes that he is alive, he couldn't sincerely say that he knows that Elvis is dead. Part of the concept of knowledge involves our personal belief convictions about some fact, irrespective of what the truth of the matter is. In our case James does truly believe in his statement, so the belief condition is also met. Last is the justified requirement, one must be justified in believing the statement insofar as there must be good evidence in