/lit/ - Literature

>>19824869
disregard this anon it's analytic philosophy

>>19825176
I can’t disregard it they’re making me learn it for an epistemology module. But it’s literal retard shit.

>>19824869
I envy these people so much

>>19824869
I had never heard about this, that's fucking stupid

>>19824869
you must be 18 to post here, A-LevelsFag
I was in your shoes once

>>19826033
I learned it in A-Levels but they're still teaching this shit in uni. I'm actually unimpressed with the "university experience". Everyone has nice southern accents and speaks with eloquence and pride but their ideas are all garbage.

>>19824869
What’s so stupid about Gettier problems, exactly? You haven’t even said what the conclusion of his argument is, let alone presented it in a coherent way. When I taught philosophy, you were the worst kind of student: smug and arrogant, but actually dumber than a lot of your classmates. Hit the books, kid.

>>19826153
>What’s so stupid about Gettier problems, exactly?
Nobody above a certain IQ level has ever thought that someone was justified in believing something if he inferred it from false premises. The Gettier problems all rely on this confusion. I will explain what I mean just because you insulted me.

Take the clock example (IK this isn't original to Gettier but it's the same thing). A man looks at a broken clock and forms the belief, "It's 9:30". It just so happens to be that it WAS 9:30 at the exact time the man looked at the broken clock, so he apparently has a justified true belief that wasn't knowledge.

The problem is the man was not really justified in believing "It's 9:30" because he inferred this belief from a false premise, ie. "this clock is accurate." Justification is the ability to provide a sound argument for your beliefs. If the man were asked to do so, he would say:

1) The clock said 9:30
2) The clock is accurate
3) Therefore, it's 9:30.

This is not a sound argument because the second premise is false.

YOU ARE NOT JUSTIFIED IN BELIEVING SOMETHING IF YOU INFERRED IT FROM A FALSE PREMISE. It's that simple.

>>19824869
I'd love to see someone unload on the shoreline with a minigun while they're doing their aggressive little war-dance.

>>19826486
Why are white people like this? Just leave them alone they're trying to protect their land from invaders and colonisers like you. Not everyone wants iphones and burger king.

>>19826254
I think you're coming at the problem from an overly restrictive direction. It's valid to focus on the truth value of the justification knowing that it is based on a false premise (the main criticisms of Gettier come from this direction) but it's overly simplistic to say "I know the clock is broken, therefore the belief wasn't justified." If you broaden the concept beyond something overly specific (like the clock example which is just meant to be illustrative) you see that something like underdetermination can fall out of it.

For example, take something like whether the earth moves or the sky moves. An observer believes that the earth is stationary and the sky itself is moving but still uses this belief (which is justified given their access to data) and develops a means of navigating using the positions of the stars in the sky. You might say that the navigation itself isn't based upon which is moving and which is stationary but the point is that the idea of either is embedded in the observer and this lead to a means of navigation.

Or take the retard that I'm about to respond to below. They have a mental picture of colonialism that makes them relate a joke about awing a primitive tribe to a caricature of white people (the first place their mind went toward). If I am white is their belief justified or did they just take a simple worldview relating to a current ideological trend and extrapolate a conclusion that happens to be true?

>>19826538
>you can't make a joke about using technology to awe a primitive tribe! these people's intentions are pure and innocent...you're white! Why?
Because it would be funny. (If it makes you feel better picture us reacting aggressively to aliens and them turning our weapons into pig shit). Cope.

>>19824869
Knowledge theory and several other things stemming from burgerlander “philosophy” is just angloid retards struggling to use their rootless language

>>19826736
>which is justified given their access to data
Their belief is perhaps MORALLY justified, since nobody can blame them or expect them to know better. But their belief is not epistemically justified. Epistemic justification = having a sound chain of reasoning which leads to your belief. It is impossible for anyone to be epistemically justified in believing something false. If they believe something false, their reasoning has gone wrong or they have relied on false information. Would you seriously say that faulty reasoning or false information can justify a belief? I don't think so.

>>19824869
It's almost like there's something you don't understand. Everyone thinks they have solved the Gettier problem (not plural) at some point, but not everyone goes on to actually understand the issue.

To put it most simply, it's about how epistemic luck fucks with the concept of justification. Give me an account of fallible justification and I will give you a justified true belief that isn't knowledge -- that's what the Gettier problem is, essentially. You can dismiss specific formulations all day long, but if it is possible for a given justification procedure to fail (return a false belief), then it is necessarily also possible for it to return a belief that's only true by a lucky accident. And that ain't knowledge. If your account of justification is infallible then of course you got other problems.

>>19826788
Faulty reasoning and false information are two different things but both reasoning and information have limitations on them that can be related to one another.

I mentioned underdetermination above. If there's a limitation on available data it can mean that two opposing rationalizations are equal in terms of their overall justification. It could be the case that no further information becomes available to validate one system of belief over the other even though they both deal with the same material. You can build up a practical use for one system while ignoring the other and argue that the practical considerations add weight to that system. However, this isn't based on the belief itself being justified but the practical outcome of one system over the other. That's where the problem is--not the fact you know one belief is true because you have access to an external consideration that's laid out in whatever analogy is being used.

>>19824869
These >>19826870 >>19826919. It's illustrative of a restriction and not something that has a simple refutation. You're confused by the fact you have information to which the people in the examples aren't aware. It's a simple concept but it's prone to cause more and more confusion the longer someone thinks about it. If you think it's easily solved/refuted you haven't thought about it hard enough.

>>19826870
Of course epistemic justification is infallible. If you are asked to justify your belief, you are being asked to present a SOUND ARGUMENT that proves that belief. If you have a sound argument, the belief is necessarily true; if you do not, you have not justified your belief. In the latter case you are dealing in theory or speculation rather than knowledge. I can’t believe there are people who disagree with this.
>>19826919
I don’t get what this post proves other than the fact that we don’t know everything, which is obvious.

>>19827518
I must be very high IQ then because I solved this shit immediately upon seeing it in high school.

>>19824869
Midwit here. I was always under the impression that the Gettier problems weren't brainteasers or riddles or whatever, but rather counterexamples that undermined the definition of knowledge as Justified True Belief. So it's just a way to show that JTB is insufficient to define knowledge. What does it mean to solve the Gettier problems?

Welcome to analytic philosophy. If you encounter Gettier problems and instinctively think that it's a weird, impoverished way of thinking about truth and reference, that sloppily presupposes a lot of things about minds and thinking and what "truth" is in the first place, you probably want to go down the hall and knock on the doors of phenomenology and hermeneutics instead of on the door of Truth Tables'R'Us.

>>19826538
The reason why people make these comments is that these aboriginals do not know that they would have no chance if not for the convoluted laws and ethics of Westerners. They're not even a factor, a single person could probably wipe them all out in a day, but it could be bad publicity, etc.
It's not that he wants to power trip over abbos, he's just considering the irony of being in the same spot as the universe as we know it is to us. That we're all very insignificant, and a nice little meteor could wipe us out, or why not, aliens could land one day and disintegrate us. We are allowed to fantasize that we send a team on the meteor to nuke it or kick the aliens' asses, until we face reality.

>>19827567
Yeah this seems about right?

Also the gettier pans out in experimental psychology, which is the more interesting bit of the story.

>>19826254
the problem is that we want to say that the man who looks at a working clock at the same time and sees that it's 9:30 is justified in that belief, even though the justificatory process on which that belief is based is identical to the man in your example. the only difference is that the first man got epistemically unlucky and and second man got epistemically lucky

>>19827586
Wrong the justifications are not identical. The man who looks at the working clock and believes it is 9:30 comes to his belief based on no false premises. The man with the broken clock infers his belief from a false premise, ie “this clock is working”. This is the same for all the Gettier “problems”. They’re only problems for morons who think that we should be able to justify our beliefs using false reasoning or false assumptions.

I think knowledge is easier defined as possession of an idea.
Truth is different, it is the actuality of phenomena or Reality.
Reason(sufficient grounds for belief) is used to ascertain Truth.
Reason though, does not necessarily deal with absolutes, but rather logical possibilities and probabilities.

>>19827596
but the point is that neither man did anything to verify the inferred premise (that the clock was working properly), so on an agent-relative concept of justification, both were equally justified. on your concept of justification, no one could be justified in believing something that wasn't true. that's fine, but philosophers have found Gettier problems compelling because they're operating under a looser concept of justification

>>19827641
Those philosophers are morons because they share my intuitions on the infallibility of justification (otherwise they would accept the Gettier cases as knowledge) while also, for some reason, maintaining their belief that we are able justify our beliefs based on false assumptions and false reasoning. Utter morons. It makes me angry that I have to learn this in university. I wish I could go back to Ancient Greece when brains were larger.

>>19827535
>Of course epistemic justification is infallible.
What a nonstarter, you really expose yourself for being clueless here. You deny the premise while thinking that you have shown the argument to be invalid. It's really as simple as that, you missed the entire point. Less writing, more thinking anon. Your ego is an obstacle in your philosophical education, this happens to everyone too, you're not special in case you were wondering. And of course nearly nobody maintains foundationalism like you do, because it's ridiculously naive and/or restrictive. Look it up and see if you like the implications of your view.

>>19827680
Shut the fuck up. You do not have any arguments, just insults and grandstanding. I am giving you arguments for my position and you only respond with arrogance. Get the fuck out of my thread nigger.

>>19827711
>You deny the premise while thinking that you have shown the argument to be invalid.
Wipe the foam off your mouth and reflect on my point, because you keep missing it. A fallible account of justification is a premise of the Gettier problem. You deny the premise and you think the argument itself is invalid, because you are thoroughly confused.

>>19827668
you're just employing a different concept of justification than they are. neither concept is "correct" so it's not a matter of you or them being right or wrong. many people, when they use the term "justification", are using it in the looser sense on which someone can be justified in believing something that's false. Gettier problems are just contributing to the semantic analysis of knowledge in the context of language users operating under that sense of the term

>>19827740
The whole point of my thread is that the “problems” are only problems for morons who believe it’s alright to reason based on false assumptions. I am calling this a moronic position. I prove that this is a moronic position in this post (>>19827668) among many. Respond to my argument or don’t talk to me because I have no fucking interest in the ego battle you’re trying to goad me into.

>>19827763
>Those philosophers are morons because they share my intuitions on the infallibility of justification
Blatantly false. More reading and thinking, less writing.

>>19827783
Otherwise they would accept the Gettier cases as knowledge, which they don’t :)

>>19826774
>rootless language

Please explain. I have an opinion about English lacking clear meaning due to so many foreign words and the inability to therfore break them down into English/Germanic root sounds that directly relate to experience.

>>19827802
>I shall begin by noting two points. First, in that sense of "justified" in which S's being justified in believing P is a necessary condition of S's knowing that P, it is possible for a person to be justified in believing a proposition that is in fact false.
This guy obviously doesn't share your intuition. I wonder where this quote is from.

>>19827823
Could you tell me why you think it’s justifiable to form beliefs based on falsehoods and/or faulty reasoning?

>>19824869

>>19827839
That's a completely different question, but I already answered it too. Look up your position (it's called foundationalism) and read up on it. It's not nearly as defensible as you think. You'll be back to some fallible account of justification (and the Gettier problem) in no time. Happy thinking. :^)

>>19827888
Nope. It's exactly the issue at hand. You either think we should only justify our beliefs with good reasoning and without false assumptions, in which case justification is infallible. Or you believe that it's possible to justify our beliefs with bad reasoning and false assumptions, in which case it's not. These are the only two options. I will take your passive aggressive retreat as a surrender though. Thanks.

>>19827906
You really are dense. How about an active aggressive retreat? The quote >>19827823
was from Gettier's original 3 page article of course. I can't even hammer the very first premise into your dumb head despite trying multiple times. You are literally too fucking stupid to be helped. I give up.

>>19827535
>I don’t get what this post proves other than the fact that we don’t know everything, which is obvious.
That's a ridiculously shallow read of the actual point. How are you not getting this?
>>19827740

This is exactly what he's doing and I tried to point it out to him.

>>19827763
This >>19827668 shows that you don't understand the problem. You're standing outside of the example and saying "well I know the clock is broken so I can say that the belief wasn't justified--it's simple, end of story."

If you work through the example properly, you're the person who has the true belief and it's justified according to the information you have available It falls under the domain of being justified (and this services the larger idea that it's actually muddy to define justification). From there, you can take examples of a given worldview that stood for centuries or over a thousand years (or one that even continues to stand) and raise questions about justification relating to it.

>>19827839
That's a retarded way to phrase the problem but sure, why not. Build a time machine and try to explain germ theory to a "doctor" using leeches to clean a wound. You may as well be speaking an entirely different language to them because the justifications they have for doing what they are doing have nothing to do with what you can explain to them.

"Germ theory and cleaning a wound is a more valid reason for what they're doing because I have knowledge that it is." If someone from 2522 comes back and tells you disease is caused by the whaganam force and using leeches takes advantage of a disbalance on antiquosum anti-energy; does that mean that you never had a justified true belief in the use of leeches?

You can simplify it and say, "well, the belief is that the patient is more likely to survive and using the leeches was justified." But that's ignoring what the actual problem is--how can you justify that leeches work? What if it had nothing to do with leeches but some aspect of them like the guy from 2522 pointed out?

>>19827941
Thanks for giving arguments unlike the other guy.

>it's justified according to the information you have available
What I am trying to say is that justification is not dependent upon your perception or opinion. It is an objective state of affairs. A belief is justified if and only if it is inferred through a sound chain of reasoning, whether explicit or implicit. That means, you came to the belief based on pristine logic and 0 false assumptions played a part in you forming the belief. Under this view it is impossible for a belief to be justified and false.

>But that's ignoring what the actual problem is--how can you justify that leeches work?
1) I have observed leeches working before. I have done studies and found positive effects.
2) I assume that the future will resemble the past. If leeches worked before they should work again.
3) Therefore, leeches work.
>What if it had nothing to do with leeches but some aspect of them like the guy from 2522 pointed out?
It would still have something to do with leeches --- namely that "aspect of them".

>>19828056
>Redefine justification (when the actual point is how the concept of justification becomes muddy) as an absolute state of affairs (of all things)
>state that such a state is unknowable (when that's a point that doesn't necessarily conflict with Gettier but simply changes what he's actually addressing)
>it's ok because pragmatism determines a course of action (something outside the actual problem that sidesteps the "intuitively justified but actually false" point).
You're literally avoiding the actual problem. "If Gettier is correct then change the idea of justification to something unknowable and fall back on practical considerations." That doesn't address phenomena (e.g. underdetermination) in a meaningful way. It doesn't actually clarify the idea of "justification" but merely sidesteps it. It cannot explain with sufficient meaning how one state of motivations differs from another state of motivations when a given endpoint is the same for both. Solving that is solving Gettier problems and what you're doing is saying it isn't a problem because I choose to ignore "justification" in any context wider than what I am currently doing.

>>19828209
I have not "redefined" justification. I've defined it in a completely intuitive way. Before I thought about any of this, if you had asked me, "Is someone justified in believing something if they came to the belief based on false assumptions or faulty reasoning?" I would say categorically no. That you say yes is incredible to me, so I think we just have to agree to disagree.

>>19828274
Not that Anon but false assumptions and faulty reasoning are not the same thing. In the clock example the subject is perfectly justified in believing the time to be whatever is on the clock, as this method is most of the time the correct one. His reasoning and assumptions are sound. The point of Gettier problem, like most philosophical problems, is to make us think about the language we use and what that tells us about how we think.
One possible answer is to say that knowledge is indeed not just “having the right information”, it’s also “having a reliable mean of inquiry”.

>>19828335
>Not that Anon but false assumptions and faulty reasoning are not the same thing.
I don't think they are otherwise I wouldn't have differentiated them.
>His reasoning and assumptions are sound.
He is reasoning based on the false assumption that the clock is working. That is the hidden assumption of his inference. That is the false assumption. I don't know how many times I have to say this. Fuck this thread.

>>19828274
>justification is not dependent upon your perception or opinion. It is an objective state of affairs. A belief is justified if and only if...
>I have not "redefined" justification
You honestly don't see how that is ignoring the actual problem being presented by Gettier? You don't see how the pragmatic approach fails to account for underdetermination whereas Gettier can? Do you really think stating a tautological definition of "justification" says as much as actually addressing what is being pointed out and argued? You don't see how
>"Is someone justified in believing something if they came to the belief based on false assumptions or faulty reasoning?" I would say categorically no.
begs the question in this instance (because you're not actually addressing the content of justification but looking at it with a predefined standard from the start)?

>That you say yes is incredible to me
I don't say yes to that example. It also has nothing to do with what a Gettier problem is actually addressing.

>>19828274
>I have not "redefined" justification. I've defined it in a completely intuitive way.
... and your intuitive way of defining it is wrong, hence the redefining. Your whole problem seems to be that you are using unusual definitions to words and assuming that when you see those words in a gettier problem they mean what you think they mean. Instead of trying to intuite what a word means you need to understand what it actually means so you can avoid this
>That you say yes is incredible to me

>>19828360
No I don't see any of that. Either because you refuse to explain it to me or I'm too dumb. But it feels like you're gaslighting me at this point. You just said "I don't say yes to that example" when that is the whole crux of our disagreement. If you say no to that example then you agree with me that justification implies truth.

>>19828357
>He is reasoning based on the false assumption that the clock is working.
Yes, and? A rational inquiry is always based on a limited amount of information. In his case it’s perfectly logical to believe he has the right time with the information he had (Clock are used to display the current time + more often than not they work).

>>19828465
>and?
And nobody is justified in believing anything that they've inferred from a false assumption. You clearly don't have a consistent view on this because you just said "his reasoning and assumptions were sound" and now you're admitting they weren't.

>>19828413
>You just said "I don't say yes to that example" when that is the whole crux of our disagreement.
That isn't the crux of our disagreement. I'm disagreeing with you in regard to your characterization of "justification" as it relates to Gettier.
>you refuse to explain it to me
I've tried and others have tried. I'll restate it again in a different way. As far as the analogies/problems go you're jumping between frames of reference. You say you know the belief wasn't justified from the position of someone who just read it when the problem is the person who doesn't have access to that information. In other examples that illustrate that person's position, you fall back on pragmatism without actually addressing the idea of "justification" in the way that Gettier addresses it. To understand the problem you have to position yourself within the problem and pretend that you don't have access to whatever fact makes the belief false. You then have to explain the behaviour according to whatever justifications are available in that analogy. The point is that you cannot do this because you either have to know the truth value of the assertion being made (which is what you're doing but isn't possible) or build a separate reason that explains why the belief is justified (which ignores justification and reduces it to something else).
>I don't say yes to that example
because I have information telling me that the belief isn't justified. The point of the actual problem is that I don't have that information so it isn't illustrating the same thing. In answering that actual problem you can fall back on something like pragmatism but it doesn't solve what "justification" actually is or how evidence comes to be defined. The example of differing scientific worldviews that pragmatically work towards the same end using different rationalities shows that pragmatism, which has to be specific according to each view, is separate from justification. Justification would be saying which method is correct but if they all have the same outcome you cannot do this by falling back on pragmatism. This is why it's a sidestep of the actual problem that can serve as a separate means of rationalizing actions but doesn't actually address what justification in fact is...

>>19828484
FYI: You're arguing with multiple anons.

>>19828566
I define justification as an objective state of affairs, so no I do not have to put myself in their position.

I think a belief is justified if and only if it was arrived at through sound reasoning. That means it does not rely upon any false assumptions or invalid logical leaps. If a belief is justified, it cannot be false, since justification = sound reasoning to reach a belief, and sound reasoning never produces false beliefs.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with "pragmatism" or whatever you're talking about. Again I feel like you're gaslighting me with all this and refusing to address my points. I've tried to be clear in explaining what I believe, but since this has failed I don't see a point in continuing anymore.

>>19828710
>I do not have to put myself in their position.
You do because that's the entire point of the problem. You aren't solving Gettier, just ignoring it (i.e. you use a tautological definition of justification that doesn't relate to actual examples but stands over them--this is the definition of begging the question).
>sound reasoning
(Coming from the guy that's begging the question). I've named situations above where the reasoning is perfectly sound and there are no invalid logical leaps. You cannot answer what makes the rationalizations justified according to your own terms (there is only a potential for ad-hoc reasoning based on information that actually doesn't exist).
>I'm not sure what any of this has to do with "pragmatism"
You were more than happy to use pragmatism to justify beliefs even though the example was about how it falls short of justification. Pragmatism (which is one of the main means of constructing arguments that account for Garttier and with methodologies similar to truth-tracking) you can't differentiate between sets of beliefs with any specificity because the point is that they are underdetermined. These situations exist and call into question the nature of belief as it relates to truth and systems of justification.
>refusing to address my points
I'm not. You're being stubborn and refusing to see where you're going wrong.
>but since this has failed I don't see a point in continuing anymore
You've failed. Don't put this on the discussion.

>>19828465
>hurrr! I know the justification is false because I just read it! I don't have to think about other minds
You always hear jokes about how analytical philosophy is autistic. OP's inability to imagine other minds, filtering him from actually understanding the problem, refutes them.

holy fuck this thread is full of midwits, everybody here would get btfo if they presented their retarded thoughts as an academic talk or something

>>19828922
Do better faggot.

>>19828710
>I define justification as an objective state of affairs
And this is wrong. You can't decide to define a word a particular way and then get confused when the word is used in a way that doesn't adhere to your own idiosyncratic definition. If you are trying to answer if a belief is justified in a gettier problem you HAVE to use the definition that the text is using. It's like saying 2 + 2 = 5 because you use the word 5 to signify 4 and then complaining about how these equations aren't correct. They are correct, you are just using the wrong terms or the term wrongly.

I don't know if this "solves" the "problem", but reading Plato when I was a teenager, I basically came to the conclusion alongside him that there is no knowledge of "things" (phenomenal relations), and that there is only justified true belief of them, ie probable truth. It's not exactly revolutionary as far as philosophy is concerned, although I suppose Aristotle would disagree.

>>19829046
>can you help me out, I need to use your bathroom?
>This cabin doesn't have a one, you have to go to the outhouse and...
>[pulls down pants and starts shitting]
>What the fuck?!
>the cabin has a bathroom!
>Why would you think you can do that?!
>I shit in bathrooms! this is a bathroom!
>Stop shitting on the fucking floor!
>why can't you refute me?!
>Jesus Christ you're retarded!
>i can see you're unwilling to engage my point. goodbye!
I have a true belief that OP is filtered. Shitposting is justified.

I know that you are all actually this retarded but I can't believe that you are actually this retarded.

>>19829430
I have a justified belief that you're an insecure faggot. Prove it isn't true.

@19829539
1) Anon believes that I am an insecure faggot
2) Anon's justification is that I called people retarded with no elaboration. Anon did not realize that I was just trying to introduce Moore's Paradox to the thread in an appropriate way (appropriate to 4chinz)
3) I just happen to be an insecure faggot.,
Anon has the justified true belief that I am an insecure faggot, yet Anon does not know that I am an insecure faggot.

>>19829747

>OP STILL doesn't get it.
wew laddie

>>19829747
You didn't formulate the paradox correctly.

What is gonna happen when they invent boats?

We should send a drone and see how they live. We could learn a lot. They probably die young too. And painfully.

>>19827823
Being justified in believing a false proposition is different than being justified in using false premisses as justification for any proposition, true or false.

>>19831122
Yes, in the discussed example a guy
1) was justified in believing a false statement
2) He inferred another, true statement from that false statement using nothing but logic (the most surefire justification there is)
Gettier only needed the assumption of the possibility of fallible justification for 1, not 2. False premises aren't used for justification here. 2 was justified by whatever justified 1 + logical reasoning. Do you want to claim that when you use logical reasoning, you necessarily inherit truth, but not justification?

Of course you can go for the no false lemmas reply, but it doesn't work and it has been pointed out. You can always find a way to introduce epistemic luck as long as justification is allowed to be fallible.

>>19827596
What you propose is not accurate to how beliefs are formed and is also vague and intellectually useless.

What is justification defined as? If I'm looking for my black cat at night, and see an unmoving black lump on the road, am I justified in believing my cat is dead, even if I don't investigate any further?