1. Criticisms of JTB model of Knowledge
Main Criticisms
Are those criticisms valid?
How can Gettier be refuted?

2. The Conditions are not individually necessary
These criticisms rely on the idea that J+T+B = Knowledge is false.
There are 3 strands of criticism one that argues T+B= Knowledge, J+B= Knowledge and J+T= Knowledge.
Each condition has no individual necessity.

3. No. 1 Belief Condition
The philosophical consensus and traditional view is that belief is necessary for knowledge as it seems impossible for a person to know a proposition without believing that proposition. For example, it is incoherent to say ‘I know the earth orbits the sun but I don’t believe it does’.
Some philosophers, however, have argued that knowledge and belief are separable and others have even argued that they are mutually incompatible.

4. No. 1 Belief Condition
In Plato’s work The Republic (written later than the Meno) he adopts an incompatibilist view. In this work he argues that knowledge is infallible (beyond reasonable doubt) whereas belief is fallible (can be doubted) and therefore they are fundamentally different things. Knowledge entails a degree of certainty which belief does not. Thus, knowing goes beyond mere belief.
Additionally, people may not believe they know something until they answer a set of questions on it and get them right due to recalling previously-learnt information; thus they don’t believe they know the answer when they actually do.

5. No. 2 Truth Condition
This condition is fairly uncontroversial; it is impossible to know a proposition that is false.
While we may claim to know something that is false, it does not mean that we actually know it (for example people in the past claimed to know that the earth was flat but we would not call this knowledge). Our belief must correspond with the way the world is for us to have knowledge.

6. Is Truth Necessary?
Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions): science proceeds by replacing one ‘paradigm’ by another
We can’t compare the two paradigms so as to say that one is false, the other true
Because changes in paradigms involve new concepts
And there is no ‘theory-neutral’ way of describing the evidence.

7. Doing Away with Truth?
How scientists describe what they observe depends on the concepts they use.
The main concepts of a paradigm acquire their meaning in relation to the paradigm as a whole.
Therefore, a different paradigm, even if it uses the same term, interprets the concept differently, because it plays a new and different role.
Therefore, different paradigms are talking about different things.
There is no neutral way of describing the world.
Therefore, we cannot compare different paradigms’ claims to say that one is more ‘correct’ or ‘true’ than another, as they could both be correct in their own terms.

8. Objections!
We cannot explain science’s success unless we think it is getting closer to objective truth
Reply: science keeps solving puzzles that face it, but isn’t getting ‘closer’ to ‘the truth’.
There have been no paradigm shifts
There is always overlap in methodology and evidence, so we can always compare paradigms.
We can’t talk about Truth – independent of our concepts; but we can talk about truth – claims that are true or false.
Knowledge can still be justified true belief.

9. No. 3 Justification Condition
This condition is required because it is possible to have a true belief that would not, at least intuitively, count as knowledge, e.g. lucky guesses.
For example if a juror believes that a defendant is guilty purely because of the colour of their skin, and the defendant does turn out to be guilty, we would not intuitively say that the juror had knowledge because the juror did not have good justification for her belief (instead her belief was solely based on irrational prejudice).

10. No. 3 Justification Condition
However, the strength of the justification needed has been much debated.
Reliabilists claim that a reliable process that produces the true beliefs is what counts as knowledge. (Discussed later)

11. Gettier
‘Is Justified, True Belief Knowledge?’ – The example of Smith and Jones
Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition:
(d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.
Smith's evidence for (d) might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would in the end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Jones's pocket ten minutes
(e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.

12. Gettier Cont.
Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the grounds of (d), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (e) is true. But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket. Proposition (e) is then true, though proposition (d), from which Smith inferred (e), is false.
In our example, then, all of the following are true: (i) (e) is true, (ii) Smith believes that (e) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (e) is true. But it is equally clear that Smith does not KNOW that (e) is true; for (e) is true in virtue of the number of coins in Smith's pocket, while Smith does not know how many coins are in Smith's pocket, and bases his belief in (e) on a count of the coins in Jones's pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job.
Edmund Gettier – ‘Is Justified, True Belief Knowledge?’

13. As most people would claim that Smith did not have knowledge, Gettier’s example showed that there can be cases of justified, true beliefs which we would not count as knowledge because there is an element of luck involved, and therefore the JTB conditions are not sufficient for knowledge.

14. Carl Ginet
Another famous example of a Gettier-Style problem was given by Carl Ginet:
Henry is driving through the countryside and unbeknown to him he drives through Fake Barn County. This is an area filled with Fake Barn facades. Henry fails to notice all but one of the fake barns and he forms the belief, ‘there is a barn in that field’. However, Henry has chanced to look upon the only real barn in Fake Barn County. Thus, Henry’s belief that there is a barn in the field is true and he is justified in believing it because he sees it. However, the context – of Henry being in Fake Barn County – means that his justified, true belief seems to be luckily true. Therefore, this Gettier-style counter example suggests that the JTB conditions are not sufficient for knowledge.

15. JTB???
Thus we must start to think about modifying the JTB account of knowledge.

16. Responses to Gettier
1# Infallibilism: the justification condition should be strengthened, and there should be a requirement for an impossibility of doubt.
 Infallibilists claim that the justification must be so strong that it is impossible to doubt the truth of the proposition. So, the belief is infallible – it cannot be wrong. Therefore, we should only accept as knowledge those things which we cannot doubt. Examples of which might include:
I believe that 2+2=4.
I believe that I am currently in pain.
I believe that a thinking thing exists.
Descartes adopted an Infallibilist approach in his Meditations.

17. Descartes
Descartes’ approach involved him doubting all of his beliefs until he could find a belief/set of beliefs which could not be rationally doubted. It was Descartes’ hope to find a bedrock of infallible beliefs from which he could build a system of certain beliefs.
‘Some years ago I was struck by how many false things I had believed, and by how doubtful was the structure of beliefs that I has based on them. I realised that if I wanted to establish anything in the sciences that was stable and likely to last, I needed – just once in my life – to demolish everything completely and start again from the foundation.’ Descartes, Meditation 1, p.1
After using his ‘Three Waves of Doubt’ he found that the only infallible belief that remained was Cogito ergo sum, ‘I think therefore I am.’ It was impossible to doubt this belief as in the very act of doubting he would be thinking.

18. Strengths of Infallibilism as a response to Gettier
Evaluating Infallibilism
Strengths of Infallibilism as a response to Gettier
Weaknesses of Infallibilism as a response to Gettier.
Infallibilism is not open to Gettier cases because none of the cases would count as knowledge in the first place as they are open to some doubt.
By restricting knowledge to only those things that cannot be doubted then there is no room for Gettier counter examples to thrive as these all rely on beliefs that are merely plausibly justified - which might be false, but turn out to be luckily true.
It fits with our intuition that knowledge involves a level of certainty.
Infallibilism implies that we have very little knowledge – going against our intuition that we know a lot of things.
Unless Descartes can build his a system of knowledge only using infallible beliefs then Infallibilism leads to scepticism.
While some philosophers might argue that our common definition of knowledge needs such a radical revision, others would argue that to diverge too radically from common usage involves our leaving behind the very concept we set out to analyse.
Infallibilism seems to be prescribing what our concept of knowledge should be, rather than analysing/describing what it is.

19. No False Lemma’s
A lemma is a subsidiary proposition used to justify another proposition.
By adding a no false lemmas condition, knowledge becomes a justified, true belief that has not been formed from any false propositions/beliefs.
So, in the Gettier example of Smith and Jones, Smith’s true belief that the person who gets the job will have ten coins in their pocket was based on the false belief that Jones would get the job. Therefore, as Smith’s belief was based on a false lemma it cannot be knowledge.

20. Strengths of the no false lemmas theory as a response to Gettier
Weaknesses of the no false lemmas theory as a response to Gettier.
It does not cope with other Gettier-style counter examples where there is no obvious false belief involved in the formation of the person’s true belief. For example, the Fake Barn Case of Henry driving through Fake Barn County does not seem to involve any false beliefs.
A further example can be found on p.82 of Hayward, Jones and Cardinal:
You look up at a clock that says it is 12 O’clock and form the belief that it is midday. However, this clock stopped yesterday at this time. But, coincidentally it is 12 O’clock. Therefore your belief that it is midday is true, justified and does not seem to rely on any false lemmas; however, we would not intuitively call it knowledge due to the belief only being luckily true.
The no false lemmas theory copes well with the standard Gettier cases where a true belief is based on a false belief; for example the case of Smith and Jones.

21. The no false lemmas theory improved...
The theory can be added to by not accepting as knowledge any justified, true belief which has been based upon tacit or hidden false assumptions (not just false explicit beliefs/premises as in the Smith and Jones example).
So, in the clock example above, the person who forms the belief that it is midday makes the tacit assumption that the clock is working. As this assumption is false, the person does not have knowledge to begin with and so the Gettier problem no longer exists.
However, this improvement still does not seem to be able to solve Fake Barn Cases. In the case of Henry seeing a real barn in Fake Barn County there do not seem to be any false lemmas or tacit false assumptions in his formation of this belief.
The Philosopher who formulated the theory that knowledge should not involve tacit false assumptions , William Lycan, has responded to this by arguing that there are no false assumptions in Fake Barn Cases but that these do not count as Gettier-style counter examples as the people do actually have knowledge. So Henry does have knowledge that there is a barn in the field, despite the lucky context in which he forms this belief.

22. Reliabilism: the justification condition should be replaced with ‘produced by a reliable process’ (K= R+T+B).
Knowledge is a true belief that is produced by a reliable process.
Reliabilism claims that you know that P iff:
- P is true;
- You believe that p;
- Your belief is caused by a reliable process.
A reliable process is one that produces a high percentage of true beliefs.

23. Reliabilism For example, take these two cases:
- You read on that the Prime Minister is a reptile.
- You read in a broadsheet newspaper that foxes are mostly nocturnal.
You would say that you could probably know that foxes are mostly nocturnal because this information is from a broadsheet newspaper – a reliable type of newspaper which prints a high percentage of truths. However, you would not say that you know the Prime Minister is a reptile because is an unreliable website that does not publish many true beliefs.
Reliabilism is not saying that knowledge is a justified, true belief that has been formed by a reliable process, it is saying that knowledge is a true belief that has been formed by a reliable process; thus replacing the justification condition.

24. Reliabilism
Examples of reliable processes (processes that produce a high percentage of true beliefs) include: seeing things close up; simple arithmetic; using trustworthy sources.
Examples of unreliable processes (processes that do not produce a high percentage of true beliefs) include: wishful thinking; beliefs formed through hallucinations/dreaming; glimpsing things from a distance; complex mental arithmetic; remembering things from a long time ago.

25. Reliabilism allows animals to have knowledge, which they don’t.
Reliable Process
A reliable process is easier to define than good justification. It can be difficult to define what is good justification and the definition can often be circular, e.g. for a belief to be sufficiently justified to count as knowledge it needs to have knowledge-worthy justification. Reliabilism offers a clear account of justification.
The theory allows animals to have knowledge (they have evolved to develop reliable processes of vision, memory, etc) and grants knowledge to any reliable process for example a man who is able to very successfully predict the future but does not know how.
Justification
Justification and ‘formed by a reliable process’ are different things as justifications are internal to the believer, (the believer can explain why they are justified in holding the belief) whereas being involved in a reliable process does not have to involve a conscious thought process.
Reliabilism allows animals to have knowledge, which they don’t.
Justifications involve reasons for beliefs whereas reliable processes involve causes (see example of John on p.89 of Hayward, Jones and Cardinal).

26. How well does Reliabilism respond to Gettier and Fake Barn Cases?
Strengths of Reliabilism as a response to Gettier
Weaknesses of Reliabilism as a response to Gettier.
Reliabilism deals fairly well with standard Gettier cases – any belief that is true due to luck is probably not going to have been formed through a reliable process.
Reliabilism can respond to the claim that reliable processes seem to be in place in Fake Barn Cases by saying that the individuals do indeed have knowledge. So, despite the lucky context in which Henry forms the belief that there is a barn in the field, he does have knowledge because his perceptual process was reliable.
Reliabilists can also respond by saying that the reliability of a process changes according to the context. For example, the context of being in Fake Barn County means that simply looking at what looks like a barns is not a reliable process to form the belief ‘there is a barn in that field’.
There is flexibility in how we describe processes. For instance, in the clock example we could define the process as either a person looking at a clock or a person looking at a broken clock – the former would be a reliable process whereas the latter would not be. We might also add that a newer clock is more reliable than an older one. Therefore, it is not clear how, and in what detail, a process should be described and thus it becomes more difficult to define what counts as a reliable process.
In Fake Barn Cases it is not always obvious that the process is unreliable. For example, in Henry forming the belief that there is a barn in the field, he uses the process of seeing at a close distance; a process we would usually class as reliable.
However, this raises the issue of how specific/general we define the context.

27. Virtue Epistemology
Virtue Epistemology : the justification condition should be replaced with ‘acquired as a result of a person exercising their intellectual virtues’ (K=V+T+B).

28. Virtue Epistemology
Virtue epistemology moves away from focussing on the process to focussing on the agent (the person).
Virtue epistemology claims that you know that P if:
- P is true
- You believe that P
- Your true belief is a result of you exercising your intellectual virtues.
An intellectual virtue is a tendency or disposition to use the reliable process and so more frequently gain true beliefs. For example, to trust truths in reliable broadsheet newspapers over

29. Virtue Epistemology
An intellectual vice is the tendency to use unreliable processes. For example, to trust over reliable, broadsheet newspapers.
We tend to trust what people say if we know they use reliable processes to acquire their beliefs and tend to distrust what people say if we know they often use unreliable processes to acquire their beliefs.
While Reliabilsm would claim that a person has knowledge because their true belief is formed through a reliable process, virtue epistemology would claim that a person has knowledge because their true belief was formed as the result of their intellectual virtues operating in a suitable way.

30. Intellectual virtue: an intellectual skill or ability or trait that contributes to getting to the truth.
You know that p if
p is true;
You believe that p; and
Your true belief is a result of you exercising your intellectual virtues.
The fact that you have a true belief is a ‘cognitive achievement’ for which you deserve ‘credit’.

31. Problem! A problem with virtue epistemology:
The theory is prone to standard Gettier counter examples.
For example, in the clock example, the person believes that the time is midday (which it is) and their belief is formed through looking at a clock (a reliable process). Therefore, they have a true belief which has been acquired through the application of an intellectual virtue. However, the clock had stopped yesterday at midday, so the person’s belief is only accidentally true so we would not count it as knowledge.

32. The Archer Sosa: suppose an archer shoots an arrow at a target
Accuracy: did the arrow hit the target?
Adroitness: was the arrow shot well? Was the shot competent?
Aptness: did the arrow hit the target because it was shot well?
A shot can be adroit without being accurate; it can even be accurate and adroit without being apt, e.g. luck (the wind blows the arrow off target and then on again).

33. Sosa Sosa applies this analogy to knowledge, claiming that:
- A belief is accurate if it is true.
- A belief is adroit if it is formed by an intellectual virtue.
- A belief is apt if it is true because of the intellectual virtue.
So, knowledge is apt belief.

34. Apt Belief Knowledge is apt belief:
Accuracy: is the belief true?
Adroitness: is the way that the person formed the belief an exercise of their intellectual virtues?
Aptness: is the belief true because the person used their intellectual virtues in forming it?
Henry: normally, Henry knows ‘there’s a barn’ because he sees and recognises it. In Barn County, his belief isn’t apt
Either because Henry can’t recognise barns – he doesn’t have the right intellectual virtues (abilities)
Or when his belief is right, it isn’t because he has exercised his virtues, but because of luck.

35. Evaluating Virtue Epistemology
In general, Virtue Epistemology, copes well with Gettier cases. Any belief that is luckily true is not going to be an apt belief – lucky beliefs are not true because of an intellectual virtue. For example, Smith’s true belief that the man who would get the job would have ten coins in his pocket was not true because of an intellectual virtue, therefore it cannot be counted as knowledge. Therefore, as Smith does not have knowledge this example is not a problem in the first place.
One response to the problems posed by Fake Barn Cases is to say that these are cases of knowledge, so Henry does know that there is a barn in the field despite the element of luck.
Another response is to say that the context in the Fake Barn Cases means that the exercising of an intellectual virtue is not adroit – the context changes the level of skill needed to have an apt belief.
Sosa argues that in Fake Barn Cases, the believer lacks an understanding of their context and so they are not able to judge how apt, or not, their belief is. Because of this, he claims that in these cases the believer has animal knowledge but not reflective knowledge.

36. However…
Virtue Epistemology deals less well with Fake Barn Cases. For example, Henry does seem to have an apt belief:
- his belief is true (accurate) – there is a barn in the field;
- his belief is adroit as it was formed by an intellectual virtue (trusting one’s senses under normal conditions), and
- his belief is apt because it is true due to him using his intellectual virtues.
However, many would not count this as knowledge.