Well put.

A lot of people are very unhappy with/in Trump's 'kingdom'.

The road to Trump has been paved over long periods of time. American political corruption has been laid bare by Trump. We've had the best government money can buy for a very long time. Citizens United legalized bribery. Trump came after. Trump bragged about buying every republican candidate on the stage during an early Republican primary debate leading up to the 2016 Republican national convention. An uncontested/unopposed open public admission of bribery. Mind you, there was one candidate, of at least 8, who jokingly spoke up to the contrary...

...stating that, although he had not yet...

...he would be more than happy to accept some of his money, if Trump wanted to give him some.

Under the rug it went...




Some have been hoping for better than a half century for America's socioeconomic influence to wane. Some have that aim/goal. The motivations are varied. They are plentiful and often incommensurate due to the wide variance of both, the individual and the subjective particular circumstance(s) grounding their desires. Be all that as it may, certain facts are clear enough to be able to form some general true assessments.

Trump has personally befriended those who actively work against American best interest. He has publicly dismissed American intelligence services' opinion(s) in favor of foreign actors' concerning charges directly involving that actor. <-----Read that very carefully. Trump is turning/has turned toward adversaries and away from American intelligence and longtime allies.

Others are perfectly content with the kingdom of Trump.

For Trump to begin his 'liberation' speech by blaming foreigners for the loss of good paying manufacturing and skilled trades jobs shows either his complete ignorance of past administrations' legislation or he's lying through his teeth. If only it were so simple. Unfortunately, there are a very large portion of Americans who are simpleminded enough to believe that rubbish.

Trump is the first president (as far as I can tell) to take such a bold move on the national debt, — NOS4A2

Bold to increase it by giving huge tax cuts for those who already have the most. Bold to try to pay for that loss by cutting social services and making other countries/trading partners pay for that tax cut.

Bold indeed.

Her belief, though still justified based on past data, is no longer true. — DasGegenmittel

Right. That's it. Her belief is no longer true. Hence, it no longer counts as knowledge even though it once did and was.

What's the problem?

:worry:

Not a problem. Real life pressing matters are more important than our discussions on this forum

If it is not necessary and sufficient to be the assertion it defines... — DasGegenmittel

I have no clue what that's supposed to mean.

Cheers. Sleep. Until next time. Be well.

Time in the Car Case:
T1: At the moment Smith forms his belief, he is justified in thinking that “Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona” is true because he believes that Jones owns a Ford. His evidence and reasoning at this time are entirely centered on the assumption regarding Jones, which forms the basis of his justification.

T2: However, when we consider the truth of the proposition at a later point, it turns out that the disjunction is actually true solely because Brown is in Barcelona—a fact completely independent of Smith’s initial evidence. Thus, while at T1 Smith’s belief was justified by his reasoning about Jones, at T2 the truth of the statement is secured by an unrelated, coincidental circumstance. — DasGegenmittel

What was Smith's belief at the moment he formed it?

He believed "Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona" was true because Jones owned a Ford.

What if the individual under our consideration while pointing towards the broken clock said something like, "Hey guys! Yesterday, at exactly 2 o'clock, do you know that I believed that that broken clock was working. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? I just looked at it like I normally do and then went on about my business as usual. :lol: I even made it home on time!"
I don't see the nonsense in this, or my account of it. If it's there, could you set it out and show it to me?
— creativesoul
He didn’t know it, but if we assume that, then he would be surprised—and according to the currently prevailing view of JTB, would have had knowledge by accident. And that’s exactly what you're describing. — DasGegenmittel

No, it's not. I don't think you understand. I'll elaborate a bit more.

That story shows how/that we can indeed believe a broken clock is working despite not being able to believe "a broken clock is working".

In addition, it forces those who show preference to the self-reporting of S at the time of belief to choose between contrary accounts both offered by S, one at a time when S did not know what they believed, and another at a time when they did.

On my view, predictions of future events (belief about what will happen later) are capable of neither being true or false at the time they're made.
— creativesoul
Exactly. And what does that mean? — DasGegenmittel

It means that belief about what's happened and/or is happening can be true/false, whereas belief about what will happen later can only be capable of becoming true/false later.

There can be no such thing as knowledge in cases involving temporality and change — DasGegenmittel

It does not follow from the fact that predictions are incapable of being true/false at the time they're made, that there can be no such thing as knowledge in cases involving temporality and change. Assuming they're justified and believed, predictions can become true despite being incapable of being so at the time they're articulated/made. They become JTB by virtue of turning out to be true. If they turn out to be false, then they cannot be knowledge, because knowledge cannot be false.

If his cases are examples of justified false belief, then his challenge to those formulations fails to hit the target. <-------Can we agree on that much, for now?
— creativesoul
Since these are statements about future events, they do not constitute knowledge but rather speculation (credence), and the result is not knowledge either, as it does not necessarily and sufficiently follow from the premises. Luck is a temporal phenomenon; the outcome could have been different: good luck (JTB) & bad luck (JFB) — DasGegenmittel

On my view, as it pertains to the temporal aspect, the first case is quite different from the second in that he former is the sort of claim that cannot be either true or false at the time the statement is made, while the latter is the sort of claim that can.

You seem to want to say that the first case cannot be knowledge because it cannot be true or false at the time it's made. However, we do find out that his belief turns out to be false, because Jones does not get the job. Hence, on my view, at the time S made the claim, it was well grounded and unknowable. It ended up being justified false belief. That just follows from my own framework regarding what kinds of things can be true/false(in the sense relevant to the paper) and how they become so.

I suspect we're in at least some agreement on that.

The second case is another matter altogether when it comes to the temporal aspect. It's false when made because "Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona" was true at the time because Brown was in Barcelona. Whereas S believed it was true because Jones owned a Ford.

This is precisely where the JTB concept fails: it assumes that truth is already determined, that it is static. — DasGegenmittel

I argue in favor of JTB. The account differs tremendously from historical convention though, in that I do not treat belief and propositions as equivalent. Nor do I treat belief and reports thereof as equivalent, self-reporting notwithstanding. Perhaps it may be a result of those differences that I can say that the characterization above fails. It's also odd for me to see another treat JTB as though it has agency.

But it is not unfair to say that they turn on a proposition (belief) which is ambiguous and is interpreted (applied) differently in two different contexts - the subject's belief/knowledge and the context of what we might call objectivity. — Ludwig V

At time t1(the duration of trusting the broken clock) S cannot admit of believing that a broken clock is working. They don't know they do. At time t2(after becoming aware of the clock's working condition), then and only then, can they readily admit/acknowledge/realize that at time t1 they believed a broken clock was working.

Which account warrants/garners deference/preference here, before or after becoming aware?

The fatal weakness of JTB is its lack of temporal precision. — DasGegenmittel

Smith obviously cannot possibly be describing (thinking of) the clock as broken and it makes nonsense of the story to attribute such a belief to them. — Ludwig V

Seems to me that that's a tad too strongly put. Conventional belief attribution practices may end that way, but that's a flaw born of conflating propositions and belief in addition to not keeping in mind that our knowledge base evolves over time, knowledge about our own past belief notwithstanding.

What if the individual under our consideration while pointing towards the broken clock said something like, "Hey guys! Yesterday, at exactly 2 o'clock, do you know that I believed that that broken clock was working. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? I just looked at it like I normally do and then went on about my business as usual. :lol: I even made it home on time!"

I don't see the nonsense in this, or my account of it. If it's there, could you set it out and show it to me?

Broken clocks are not reliable time tellers.

That's about the J part.

The content of belief is not equivalent to a report of it.

That's about the B part.

we must respect the believer's description of their own belief. — Ludwig V

After they become aware that they believed a broken clock was working or before?

:wink:

What we have are competing explanations for the Gettier problem. One grants that Gettier has showed a problem with the justification aspect of JTB. That is the basis of the project. Another argues that both Gettier cases are examples of justified false belief, and thus pose no problem for JTB; case closed. You're arguing in the vein of the former, and I, the latter.
— creativesoul

I accept your suggestion—if indeed there is a way back to actual arguments—and I welcome it.

Please take another careful look at what the Gettier problem entails according to my position, and what must be concluded from it.

In brief: in contingent scenarios—such as our dynamic reality—there is no fixed truth. We are subject to possible perceptual errors, and the concepts that underpin our assertions are therefore not absolute. Dynamic reality is an infinite game played with incomplete information.

This is precisely where the JTB concept fails: it assumes that truth is already determined, that it is static. But in dynamic contexts, truth can change unexpectedly—due to what we might call epistemic good or bad luck. JTB presumes one can reliably assert truths about the future based on current justification and belief. Crude as it may sound, this becomes evident in everyday application scenarios.

Moreover, there are at least two epistemically relevant time points: (1) the moment of justification and belief, and (2) the moment when the truth value of the proposition becomes (retrospectively) evident. The failure of JTB lies in its temporal indifference—it does not account for the possibility that a justified belief at t₁ might turn out to be false at t₂, even though no irrationality occurred.

Any JTB that is currently accepted in a dynamic scenario may turn out to be false. This is epistemologically paradoxical: JTB is meant to define knowledge strictly—but definitions, by their nature, must offer consistent and temporally robust criteria. They should fix what something is once and for all. But that doesn’t happen here.

This implies: any dynamic scenario in which one makes a justified assertion according to JTB—and in which the circumstances then change—produces a counterexample: a “justified false belief,” such as in the broken bottle or the “fastest way to work” cases. These are not marginal exceptions; they are systematic results of a conceptual flaw.

The fatal weakness of JTB is its lack of temporal precision. If it were to incorporate temporal dimensions, it would have to make them explicit. It does not. Thus, at the very least, it is imprecise—and for a definition, this imprecision is fatal, because definitions are meant to offer definitive and stable characterizations of the concept they define.

I simply wanted to highlight these core issues once more. — DasGegenmittel

I may be inclined, if you like, to offer candidates of JTB that are not Gettier cases. We could then apply your concepts/reasoning to them and see what that looks like, and/or how well the criticism you levy fits a case of JTB. That could be interesting. I'm much less interested in applying criticism of JTB to cases that are not.

Anyway, I'm okay with our views being different. I wasn't okay with being invited to criticize and then being given the response that was given to what was/is valid critique. I've said enough to support that criticism.

I'll leave you to it now. Pardon the interruption.

If we treat Smith’s belief as a justified false belief (because at the point of justification, the actual truthmaker is not in view), JTC interprets this as a prime example of epistemic fragility. The justification is disconnected from the actual truth conditions — and once the fuller context is revealed (i.e., the crisis occurs), the belief’s epistemic validity collapses. — DasGegenmittel

This presupposes that the belief had epistemic validity to begin with. "It is three o'clock" does not follow from believing that a broken clock is working. "There is a barn" does not follow from mistaking a barn facade for a barn(believing that a fake barn is a real one). "There is a sheep in the field" does not follow from believing that a sheet is a sheep.

I don't usually think of the Gettier cases as all alike. — Ludwig V

Yes, generally speaking.

I would further say that there are significant differences between some and others. However, all of them, I think, directly involve and/or work from the idea/notion of epistemic luck, which is usually taken as a problem with the justification aspect of JTB. However, as you may remember from our past conversation(s), I think that that grants too much to begin with by asserting that they are indeed cases of justified true belief, or assenting to such claims/conclusions. I find them to be cases of misattributing belief to S, including Russell's clock.

Many of the objections to my account of that case involve the idea/claim that S cannot believe that a broken clock is working. Yet, my account lends itself very well to experiment in which S will admit to believing exactly that after becoming aware of it. By my lights, that supersedes any and all objections based upon past conventional belief attribution practices. In addition, the experiment supports the idea that we cannot knowingly believe a falsehood and/or contradiction. It also supports the idea that we do not always know what we believe at the time we believe it, and hence when it comes to a difference between an 'objective' account of another's belief and a believer's own account, the believer's account does not always warrant deference/preference regarding which account is more accurate just because it's their own account. This, in turn, supports the idea that we cannot recognize our own mistakes and/or false belief at the time. It highlights the need for another to point them out to us, as well as underscores the need to be able to trust others enough to do so. Such is one way to manage the recognition of our own fallibility.

If your reliable boss says to you that a person with brown hairs, in this room will get a higher salary tomorrow. Are you justified in believing so that a person in this room with brown hair, you, will get a higher salary tomorrows? Would you "know" that you will get the higher salary? — DasGegenmittel

On my view, predictions of future events(belief about what will happen later) are capable of neither being true or false at the time they're made.

Yes. I don't usually think of the Gettier cases as all alike. Most of the later ones avoid the (rather obvious) mistakes that the actual Gettier cases make. But it is not unfair to say that they turn on a proposition (belief) which is ambigous and is interpreted (applied) differently in two different contexts - the subject's belief/knowledge and the context of what we might call objectivity. — Ludwig V

Yep. Detached from the believer, "P" can mean very different things as is clearly shown by the difference in truth conditions between Smith's belief and the same marks examined as a proposition completely divorced from Smith. Attributing different meaning to P is to misinterpret P. I'm not fond of the notion of "objective", although I find Searle's notion/use more acceptable than others.

Since you mentioned/used it, the first case aims at Chisholm's formulation directly below.
 
S knows that P IFF, (i) S accepts P, (ii) S has adequate evidence for P, and (iii) P is true.

As the key meaningful part of Smith's own belief articulation, "The man with ten coins in his pocket" picks out one and only one individual. Jones is the ONLY man that Smith believes will get the job, regardless of pocket content. Thus, Smith's belief, as Gettier articulated, is true if and only if, Jones gets the job and has ten coins in his pocket.

On the contrary, when P is examined as a proposition that is completely divorced from Smith's inference, "The man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job", is true if/when any man with ten coins in his pocket gets the job. This reasoning shows that there are very different sets of truth conditions regarding P, depending on whether P is considered in isolation from the believer(Smith) or examined with consideration of that.

Hence, the first case rests on judging Smith's belief using truth conditions of what is not(as does the second case). It is only as a result of not noticing and highlighting that conflation, that it seemed/seems okay to say that Smith's belief was/is true. When the inference of Smith is rightly taken into consideration "The man with ten coins in his pocket" means Jones and only Jones. Jones does not get the job. Hence, Smith's belief is justified and false.

Gettier missed/misses the mark.

Irrelevant to the point being made. Gettier's claim to fame is/was that his examples undermine/undermined two widely accepted formulations of JTB by virtue of purportedly showing how they could be satisfied, resulting in examples that are clearly not cases of knowledge, but rather were cases of epistemic luck/coincidence.

If his cases are examples of justified false belief, then his challenge to those formulations fails to hit the target. <-------Can we agree on that much, for now?

Is Smith's belief accidentally true or is it false? It cannot be both. It is a problem for JTB, only if it's true.

If it is justified false belief, then it is not JTB and the problem dissolves completely.
— creativesoul

The Problem is not only present "if it's true". — DasGegenmittel

Sure it is.

Gettier offered two cases which purportedly qualified as JTB yet were not knowledge. If Gettier offered two cases of justified false belief, there would be no problem at all.

Consider the classic Gettier case: Smith believes “the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket,” based on strong evidence that Jones will get the job and that Jones has ten coins. Unbeknownst to Smith, he will get the job — and he, too, has ten coins. The belief is accidentally true but justified on false premises.

If we treat Smith’s belief as a justified false belief... — DasGegenmittel

Is Smith's belief accidentally true or is it false? It cannot be both. It is a problem for JTB, only if it's true.

If it is justified false belief, then it is not JTB and the problem dissolves completely.

On your view, are Gettier cases, in both the actual paper and the various cottage industry cases, examples of justified true belief? — creativesoul

Formally, yes — Gettier cases do fulfill the traditional criteria of JTB... — DasGegenmittel

Okay. Good.

How would it affect/effect your view/explanation if both cases are examples of justified false belief, rather than justified true belief?

On your view, are Gettier cases, in both the actual paper and the various cottage industry cases, examples of justified true belief?

Good morning Ludwig! :smile:

I'm not well read on Hobbes' variation and its details/consequences, although what you say seems about right with respect to unassembled parts of ships not being equivalent to ships.

For me, and I may be missing something, the ship and the river both trade on the ambiguity of what counts as being the same thing. Things can be the same in multitudes of ways. I've not worked it out in a long time, but I suspect there's either an equivocation fallacy regarding what counts as being "the same", such that either it's used in two distinct senses in the same argument, or if all change results in a different thing, it's an untenable criterion for the reason mentioned heretofore; the impossibility of naming/talking about things.

The issue with this particular thread is that it grants too much to start with in granting that Gettier cases are examples of true belief. Issues with change/flux are irrelevant with respect to that.

I see a shattered ego, but no stable argument.
It’s a pity you lack the integrity to present counterarguments rigorously.
If you were serious, you would’ve brought something to the table.

I’m well aware of the matter at hand, and I’ve made that abundantly clear.
Unlike you, at least I don’t need to put others down to make a point. — DasGegenmittel

Nice example of an ad hom argument charging others of the same. Goes nicely with the earlier ad hom you offered in response to the very simple criticism of Gettier 'problems'. I was hoping for something better than a rhetorical flourish of personal attacks. I was hoping for something a bit more relevant, I suppose.

What we have are competing explanations for the Gettier problem. One grants that Gettier has showed a problem with the justification aspect of JTB. That is the basis of the project. Another argues that both Gettier cases are examples of justified false belief, and thus pose no problem for JTB; case closed. You're arguing in the vein of the former, and I, the latter.

Do we find agreement in this general description of our situation?

That's a start.

The ship never stops being the ship.

If a change in physical constituency demands different identity, then it would be impossible to name things fast enough.

That's where I'm at regarding everchanging ships and rivers.

I can readily accept that we don’t share the same conviction. — DasGegenmittel

Presupposes you know mine.

I don’t find your argument convincing — DasGegenmittel

Presupposed you know the argument and it's logical consequences.

it’s perfectly fine with me if you don’t share my position. — DasGegenmittel

So far, I haven’t had the impression that you’ve taken the underlying dualism seriously (or at least contingency); instead, you seem to stick to your line of thinking which is inevitably paradoxical. — DasGegenmittel

Please, set this line of thinking out, along with it's consequences.

I don’t have the time right now to go into detail, and I don’t believe you’ve thoroughly examined the arguments I’ve presented. For further questions read the introduction piece, my comments or the essay with which I made my case and lost any burden whatsoever.

You clearly do not understand the charge being levied against your entire endeavor/project.

Hey Ludwig! Hope you are well in this unsettled world.

I don’t find your argument convincing — DasGegenmittel

What argument? Set it out.

The burden here is yours, not mine. The assumption you're working from is misguided. You're assuming that Gettier showed a problem for the J in JTB. You're not alone. Most convention agrees. I've mentioned the problem. I've shown otherwise. If justification is not the problem with Gettier cases, and it's not, then the Gettier 'problem' dissolves completely, and it does. I roughly sketched this case, to which you seemed to agree with the heart of it. Now follow it through. In both Gettier cases, S's belief is not true, and Gettier's account/report of/on that belief was inaccurate(as already argued in my first post).

It's justified false belief.

If it is the case that both Gettier examples are cases of JFB, then the Gettier problem dissolves completely. Barn facades, sheets blowing in the wind, and broken clocks all suffer much the same fate. They dissolve when S's belief is more accurately put and then reexamined.

We can never be certain any particular thing is true except that, perhaps, we exist. — T Clark

I can be certain of far more than that. I think your conflating truth with certainty/confidence.

All sorts of claims are true, regardless of whether or not I am certain, regardless of whether or not we can check and see.

It means really, actually, for real true, which, of course, nothing ever is. That's why JTB is such a bonehead definition. — T Clark

Nothing is true? The irony. The name-calling doubles the icing.

Indexing or timestamping can document this shift, but they do not prevent it. — DasGegenmittel

Timestamping is not used to prevent change, whether that be changes in the way things are or our knowledge about them.

I suppose I'm not seeing the need for lengthy complicated explanations replete with the coinage of new concepts/notions/kinds of knowledge to help explain what's going on in Gettier cases.

The problem is belief, not justification. <-----That needs to be better put. The problem is that the accounting practice in use when setting out S's belief is a malpractice. Correcting the clear unambiguous misattribution of belief to S completely dissolves the purported problem.

Your notion of "change" is untenable. I'm reminded of Heraclites' river.

Change is irrelevant to JTB. At time t1(insert well-grounded true claim here) and viola!