Example research essay topic: Is Justified True Belief Knowledge Part 1 - 1,509 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? What is knowledge? Can we as a whole actually be certain of our knowledge? If so, how?

Are we not all based upon illusions and misconceptions, which in actuality create our society today? Knowledge is supported and evidenced by faith or by the 'arrogance of religion'. Faith is supported by psychological beliefs that have little or no proven evidence. By simply believing and having this faith, a person creates a rationale for accepting ideas and happenings. Truth is seen from this faith. On the contrary, knowledge is also acquiesced by scientific or empirical based theories.

By ignoring religious beliefs in miracles, revelations and other unexplained occurrences, the search for knowledge is primarily founded upon facts and tests of the natural sciences. A primary facet of faith coincides with the acceptance of religious standpoints. Thus, with the approval of science-based evidence, there is an arrogance or disapproval of religion as the source knowledge. Therefore, there are two different perspectives that proclaim to maintain the certainty of knowledge: justification by faith alone and the neglect of religion or evidence from specific observations. These two arguments serve as the basis of the search for the certainty of knowledge. Though many of these theories represent justified claims, an absolute truth of knowledge has still not been resolved.

Therefore in reality the uncertainty of knowledge is in fact unknown and will continue to remain unknown as long as the question of faith still lingers. Not a single person is born with truth, but is rather authoritatively ordained with his knowledge whether it be through scientific or religious means. All is based upon a single thread of evidence or the recklessness of opinions or assumptions. Many philosophers have often construed the problems of justification as though they were problems regarding the knowledge possessed by a social group; and it does of course make absolutely good sense to ask what statements we are justified in believing, and why we are justified in believing them. But such a question cannot be answered without first answering a more fundamental, egocentric question: Why am I, at the present moment justified in believing some statements and not justified in believing other statements? For the most part people believe in statements as a response to societal pressures and for personal content.

Society needs to be comforted by having strong beliefs, which can reduce the stresses of uncertainty. Hence in order to actually believe and justify knowledge, one must have some form of this faith. Edmund L. Gettier, American philosopher, is famous for his theory regarding the knowledge as justified true belief. A very illustrious view about knowledge is that it involves belief and truth; that is, a person, S, knows that p only if it is true that p and S believes that p. Nevertheless, believing truly that p is not generally satisfactory for knowing that p: knowledge evidently requires something more.

A natural thought is that the omitted ingredient is justification. Suppose, for instance, that someone, S, is of the opinion, i. e. is sure, that Robert Maxwell is not dead, and assume, for the sake of argument, that it is in fact true that he is not dead that he is alive and living well in Brazil, say. Would we be obligated to maintain that S knows that Robert Maxwell is not dead? The answer is surely not.

The intuition is that S does not know this fact except she has proof which justifies or guarantees her belief. So knowledge would seem to involve justification as well as truth and belief. On what has become to be known as the conventional view of knowledge, supposedly originating in Plato's Thaeatetus, truth, belief and justification are not only required for knowledge, they are also mutually sufficient. According to the Justified True Belief theory (JTB), S knows that p if and only if, the following conditions are maintained: it is true that p S believes that p S is justified in believing that p Edmund Gettier does not argue that the conditions mentioned above are necessary to maintain knowledge. His view regarding this theory is that the conditions are not mutually sufficient, meaning that S and p can be met even though S does not know p. Gettier makes two important assumptions about the related notion of justification (and, in the light of it, they seem completely logical).

The first is that it is allowed for a person to be justified in believing something that appears to be false. [Note: If this were impossible, condition (1) in the Justified True Belief theory would be excessive: the truth of (3) would warrant the truth of (1). ]] The second supposition is the rightness of the following principle: If (a) S is justified in believing a suggestion r, and (b) r requires a proposition, p, and (c) S believes that p in virtue of having deduced it from r, then S is justified in believing that p. This can be referred to as the transmission principle, because it transmits the justifiability of a proposal against its (deduced) logical consequences. Gettier presents several examples which allegedly challenge this account of knowledge and justification. These counterexamples have the same organization: they both have S believing a true proposition, p, in virtue of having deduced p from another of her beliefs, r, which she is justified in believing, but which appears to be false. It is easy to test that the two suppositions Gettier makes tolerate such a possibility. Under the transmission principle, S would be justified in believing that p.

But then we would have a setting in which: p is true, S believes that p, and S is justified in believing that p. By the JTB view of knowledge, S would thus know that p. Nonetheless, in such situation it is clear that S does not know that p, since she has, so to speak, faltered across that belief (the belief that p) accidentally. Therefore, justified true belief does not need to be knowledge. However, The examples presented by Gettier are somewhat dull, this is why the Gettier-type example by Keith Lehrer is presented: A colleague in Ss office, Mr. Perkins, has given S proof which justifies her in believing that Mr.

Perkins, who is now in this office, owns a Mustang ( = r), from which S (properly) deduces that somebody in this office owns a Mustang ( = p). But, unsuspected by S, Mr. Perkins has been pretending and p is only true because another person in the office, Mr. Sherman, owns a Mustang. Gettier's assumptions regarding justification may be surely reconsidered.

Could S in the example presented above really be justified believing that Perkins owns a Mustang if Perkins in fact does not? Well, suppose that S has seen Perkins driving to work in a Mustang on a number of occurrences; has seen it parked outside Perkins house whenever she has gone there for lunch; has heard Perkins swank about owning a Mustang; has seen a bill of sale for it made out to Perkins, etc. Surely, in these conditions S would be justified in believing that Perkins owns a Mustang what more could be necessary? So, even if the facts are that Perkins has just hired the Mustang on the days S has seen it, may be to astound her, and has faked the bill of sale, etc. , the instinct is that Ss belief that Perkins owns a Mustang is still justified (guaranteed) in the light of what she has seen and heard. Gettier's first assumption must be taken for granted. As for the transmission principle, the problem about it is that most of the knowledge about the world appears to be inferential; and the more complex beliefs people have (e.

g. scientific laws) seem most certainly to be based on presumption from more basic beliefs (perceptual beliefs, for instance). It is difficult to see how it is possible to defend these inferences if the transmissibility of justification can be rejected. Provided that the transmission principle is accepted, Gettiertype counterexamples can stand. Being one of the primary sources of reason and doubt, religion plays a widely dominant role in our society today.

But how do we, ourselves, know the certainty of religion, that which validates one of our understandings of knowledge? This is simply performed through faith. There is no evidence that a religion is real. One might say, yes, there is evidence that being holy books or artifacts. Once again where did those relics arrive from, or maybe someone merely conjured them up. Indeed, some scientists have therefore renamed faith of religion into the arrogance of religion.

This being the fact that someone who actually feels that his or her religion does proclaim absolute truth is in reality being arrogant not to recognize the other billion faiths. But one might ask another, if there was no arrogance of religion where would one be today? Our society would not be able to evolve and function without these 'absolute faiths' (an oxymoron in itself due to...

Research essay sample on Is Justified True Belief Knowledge Part 1