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In order to answer this question, must assess whether each of the above are necessary to having knowledge, and then consider whether any other requirements must be added. Traditionally, knowledge is believed to constitute three requirements. They are that the thing which is known must be true, the person who knows it must believe the fact to be true, and he must have justification for his belief. This idea can be shown in the following way. s only knows q if 1. q (meaning that q is true) 2.
s believes in q 3. a's belief in q is justified. This is known as the tripartite definition, due to there being three parts to the definition. Let us consider each aspect and decide on its value in this definition.
The first principle claims that one can only know q if it is true. This seems reasonable. I could not be said to know anything that was false. I cannot know that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1061 if the idea itself is false. Truth is a crucial criterion for knowledge. The second principle claims that one can only know q if one is in a state of belief concerning it.
This also is reasonable. If I do not believe something to be the case, I cannot possibly be in a state of knowledge. If I do not believe that The Battle of Hastings took place in 1066, then I cannot be said to be in a state of knowledge concerning such a fact. If one fails to agree with something, he cannot have knowledge concerning its truth.
The third principle is equally important. If criteria one and two were satisfied, I might still not be said to have knowledge. For example, I might believe that a football match took place yesterday between Ipswich football club and some other team. If this turned out to be true, I would have belief in a truth. However, it was just a fortunate guess, there was no justification for such a belief, and hence it cannot be considered knowledge, because there was no foundation to my belief. Therefore, the aforementioned principles of belief seem to be essential criteria for having knowledge.
However, they are not enough on their own. E. L. Gettier in 1963 composed examples where the above are satisfied and still do not lead to knowledge. For example, I am watching on the television a football match between Ipswich and Middleton, where Ipswich has just scored the winning goal. From this I infer quite reasonably that that Ipswich has won the match.
Unknown to myself, the cameras on the field had stopped functioning, and the broadcasting company had played a previous football match between the same teams at the same grounds, where it happens that the same team is in the process of scoring the winning goal. It also happens that at the same time in the current match, the winning goal has been scored by Ipswich. Therefore I exercised belief, that the team had won the match, my belief happened to be true, and I was justified in my belief. Yet it cannot be that I have knowledge when my justified belief was based on coincidence. Perhaps another clause to the argument is required in order to have knowledge. This is the position offered by Gettier.
Yet I believe that his argument does not deal effectively with the third clause, that of justification. When I watched the replay that I thought was the current match, I did not have knowledge of the winner of the current match, my belief was based only on the previous year's match, so I would argue that the belief in the outcome of the current match was not justified. The definition of 'justified' cannot in this philosophical problem simply be taken to imply something that is reasonable. Justification must be much stronger in this case. If my belief turns out to be true and I have only believed it because of a misconception (in the example the misconception was that I was watching the current match and not the replay) then my belief cannot be 'justified'. I had some reason for my state of belief, but it was still based on a situation different from the one that I was making my judgment upon.
I shall illustrate my point thus. Let us imagine that the fact "Ipswich won the current match" is equal to b. The fact that "Ipswich won the previous match (ie the one on the replay) " is equal to a. The justification for believing b, (having witnessed the current football match) is equal to b. The justification for believing a, (having witnessed the replay of the previous match) is equal to a.
Belief in a is shown by ^a. Belief in b is shown by ^b. Firstly, I will show justified belief as proposed above. a gt; a gt; ^a gt; knowledge of a. or b gt; b gt; ^b gt; knowledge of b. These show simply that justified belief that Ipswich won the current match would require that it be true, that one must have witnessed that match to justify it, and therefore would have belief in that fact.
The Gettier example follows a different patch, which is clearly one which leads to unjustified belief. b gt; a gt; ^b gt; supposed knowledge b. It is obvious that I have based my belief for b on principles not conducive to justified belief. Hence, the original proposal of tripartite knowledge is not diminished.
Another example which claims to prove the tripartite definition incorrect is the following. I am walking in the countryside, to my right I see a large hill. I look to the top of the hill, and see a bush and a large furry creature whom I perceive to be a sheep. I believe that there is a sheep on the hill. In fact it is a particularly shaggy dog, but it happens that there is a sheep behind the bush next to the dog. So it seems that I have belief in a fact which is true and had some 'justification' in believing there to be a sheep on the hill.
There are still problems with this definition. The belief that "There is a sheep on the hill" is actually made up of other beliefs, firstly that there is a hill, that there is an object on the hill, that object is a sheep, hence that there is a sheep on the hill. Therefore the process that led him to such beliefs failed to produce justified belief, because his sense-awareness led him to an inaccurate judgment that the object which he perceived was a sheep. His judgment that there was a sheep on the hill was not related to the fact that there was a sheep behind the bush, but on the idea that the object that he saw was the sheep in question. I would claim that idea of needing 'justification' is not the same as ordinary justification that we see around us, but a philosophical justification, which, like philosophical doubt, is much more rigorous than the ordinary version of itself presented in daily discourse. A.
I. Goldman proposes that a fourth term might be added to the tripartite definition. He argues that for knowledge that p, the fact that p should cause A's belief. This means simply that the fact should cause the belief in the fact. For example, my belief in the fact that Ipswich won the current match should be caused by the fact.
This would certainly satisfy every example set forth so far, because it erases the problem of coincidence. However I have been arguing this point already, I simply made it a condition of the term 'justification'. I believe that this is one criteria of justification, and that it is unnecessary to add more terms to the tripartite definition of knowledge when we can simply make the terms more rigorous. We cannot change the truth of something, and we can exercise belief in something, but it is the justification that is the crucial point.
By making Goldman's theory part of the justification clause, we can retain the three clauses without adding more terms. There is a problem with Goldman's principle. This lies in the problem of universal knowledge. For instance, I, by Goldman's principle, can only infer that all men die. The fact that all men die must cause my belief, but this is but an inference. Knowledge of the future seems to be impossible because causes cannot possibly follow effects, and it creates a problem for Goldman's idea.
However this is a small digression, because a close to knowledge as we can get, the Goldman principle of causality has only been brought in to demonstrate the need for a more rigorous justification, and any further amendments to the theory of tripartite knowledge can be simply made part of 'justification'. Therefore to the question 'Is knowledge justified, true belief?' I would answer that it is, and even if we have not full understanding of what should constitute 'justification', any further clauses we add will become an inevitable part of the justification, and hence, the tripartite definition.
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