Gettier counter-examples are often touted in early epistemology courses within philosophy. Yet they are completely false, fake and stupid. By employing deliberately vague terminology they rely on a clever misuse of language that glosses over and hides the fact that the supposed meaning of a key referent is not actually the true meaning of it.
“Smith overhears someone say Jones will get the job and sees Jones counting 10 coins in his pocket, so he believes “the person who gets the job has 10 coins”. However, it turns out Smith gets the job and also has 10 coins in his pocket, making his belief true and justified, but not considered genuine knowledge.”
This classic example is a perfect one to show how easy it is to refute Gettier counter-examples to JTB. Not that I am advocating JTB here, merely pointing out that the Gettier counter-example does not actually satisfy the conditions of JTB and thus is a non-issue from the start.
What does Smith believe? He believes a few things.
“Jones will get the job,” ← first belief
“Jones has 10 coins in his pocket” ← inter-positional belief (assumption, really, unless Smith physically looked into Jones’ pockets and made sure there weren’t other coins in there… but we will leave that aside for the purposes of the example)
“The person who gets the job has 10 coins in his pocket.” ← secondary and derivative belief.
The last belief is derivative because it combines two other beliefs via an additional logical step. The core belief is not merely “the person with 10 coins will get the job” because that is secondary and derivative of prior beliefs. The core belief is, as he overheard someone else say, “Jones will get the job”. Based on this core belief, he attaches on other derivative, secondary beliefs like “the person who gets the job has 10 coins in his picket” or “the person who gets the job has brown hair” (assuming Jones has brown hair), etc. etc. etc. There is really no end to the number of attached, derivative secondary beliefs you can attach to the core belief.
But the Gettier counter-example ignores this, and pretend like the secondary derivative belief is the actual core belief in question as applies to satisfying the conditions of JTB. Rather than confusing three separate beliefs together as Gettier wants us to do, let’s look at JTB from the perspective of each of the three distinct beliefs to see what is really going on:
Knowledge claim with regard to belief 1: Jones will get the job.
Justification: (Yes) Smith himself overheard this spoken from (what we must assume is) a reliable source.
Truth: (No) Smith actually gets the job, not Jones, thus this fails to satisfy the Truth condition.
Belief: (Yes) “Jones will get the job.” Even though this didn’t occur, it was Smith’s genuine belief and so the condition is satisfied here.
Overall, JTB fails the first claim via a failed Truth condition.
Knowledge claim with regard to belief 2: Jones has 10 coins in his pocket.
Justification: (Yes) Smith saw this himself (ignoring the whole issue of his assumptions)
Truth: (Yes) For the purposes of the example, Jones really does have 10 coins in his pocket, so this is also satisfied.
Belief: (Yes) Smith genuinely believes that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket, so this condition is also satisfied.
We see here that the inter-positional belief satisfies JTB. Yet this belief is glossed over and ignored by Gettier. He fails to identify the real source of the satisfied JTB, preferring to confuse and confound this with the other belief claims.
Moving on to the third knowledge claim with regard to belief 3: The person who gets the job has 10 coins in his pocket.
Justification: (No) This is where the argument fails. “The person” is already a reference to Jones specifically. That is the entire rationale for the claim itself, otherwise the claim would make no sense. The claim does not mean “Any person who happens to have 10 coins in his pocket, could get the job or will get the job”. It means specifically that JONES, who also happens to have 10 coins in his pocket (and also happens to have brown hair, etc etc), will get the job and THEREFORE the person who got the job happened to have 10 coins in his pocket. Yet, by deliberately refusing to expound on the precise meaning of the terms involved, and pretending like “the person who” could legitimately, meaningfully apply to ANYONE other than Jones as if the claim itself were entirely vague and without actual reference to the reason for its own supposed justification (because Jones, not anyone else, was seen with 10 coins in his pocket and “the person who…” is a direct reference to Jones especially in terms of justification), the false and deliberately vague, misuse of language confuses the justification of one claim referent (Jones) for another supposed claim referent that is never really made (anyone who happens to have 10 coins in his pocket).
Truth: (Yes) It is true that the person who got the job (Smith actually) did have 10 coins in their pocket. This claim can be true iff “the person” is stripped of its actual meaning under justification, which is fine as a purely truth condition but is not fine in terms of the justification condition (see above).
Belief: (No) This fails too, because what Smith REALLY believes is that Jones will get the job, and THEREFORE ALSO, secondarily and as a derivative belief, because Jones has 10 coins in his pocket, the person who gets the job has 10 coins in his pocket. The belief is not merely a depersonalized claim with no reference to any meaning of its own terms. Stripping the meaning out of the depersonalized claim in terms of the truth condition is one thing, because truth as objectivity can be setup like that, but belief is inherently psychological and personalized and cannot be divorced of its actual meanings and causalities without violating the authenticity of the belief itself.
No matter how much Gettier deliberately muddies the water with his vague and inaccurate use of “the person who”, the actual meanings of the terms in question and the connections between those meanings and the J, T and B never go away. Just because you don’t talk about those actual meaningful connections does not mean they magically vanish.
Out of the three separate beliefs that together comprise the entire “counter-example” here, only one satisfied JTB and it just so happens that is the one that Gettier pretends does not exist. Why do you think that is? Because either he is not being honest, he is just stupid, or he is deliberately misusing language to play a trick on people.
Sadly, much of academic philosophy turns out to be petty language games and associated trick-playing. Think of the entire free will vs determinism issue as a clear example of that. Yet in this case, Gettier was actually rewarded by academic philosophy and achieved not only respect in the field but also secured tenure for himself. One wonders not only if this was his goal to begin with, but more so that those above him in the field were actually incapable of seeing the dishonest slight of hand trick he performed against them.
