Edmund Gettier | |
|---|---|
 Gettierc. 1960s | |
| Born | Edmund Lee Gettier III October 31, 1927 (1927-10-31) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Died | March 23, 2021(2021-03-23) (aged 93) |
| Education | |
| Doctoral advisor | Norman Malcolm |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic philosophy |
| Main interests | Epistemology |
| Notable ideas | Gettier problem |
Edmund Lee Gettier III (/ˈɡɛtiər/; October 31, 1927 – March 23, 2021) was an Americanphilosopher at theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. He is best known for his article written in 1963: "IsJustified True Belief Knowledge?",[1] which has generated an extensive philosophical literature trying to respond to what became known as theGettier problem.
Edmund Lee Gettier III was born on October 31, 1927, inBaltimore, Maryland.[2]
Gettier obtained hisB.A. fromJohns Hopkins University in 1949. He earned hisPhD in philosophy fromCornell University in 1961 with a dissertation on “Bertrand Russell’s Theories of Belief” written under the supervision ofNorman Malcolm.[2][3]
Gettier taught philosophy atWayne State University from 1957 until 1967[2] initially as an Instructor, then as an assistant professor, and, latterly, as an associate professor.[4] His philosophical colleagues at Wayne State included, among others,Alvin Plantinga andHéctor-Neri Castaneda.[5]
In the academic year of 1964–65, he held a postdoctoralMellon Fellowship at theUniversity of Pittsburgh.[4] His recorded field of research was "Bertrand Russell's theories of belief, and their effect on contemporary thought."[6] While at Pittsburgh, he met a youngBas C. Van Fraasen[7] and published his first and only book review ofJohn Passmore'sPhilosophical Reasoning.[8]
In 1967, Gettier was recruited to the faculty of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, being promoted to full professor there in 1972.[4] He taught there until his retirement, as Professor Emeritus, in 2001.[4]
Gettier died on March 23, 2021, aged 93.[4]
Gettier's fame rests on a three-page article, published inAnalysis in 1963, that remains one of the most famous in recent philosophical history. In it, Gettier challenges the definition ofknowledge as "justified true belief" that dates back toPlato'sTheaetetus but is discounted at the end of that very dialogue. This account was accepted by most philosophers at the time, most prominently theepistemologistClarence Irving Lewis and his studentRoderick Chisholm. Gettier's article offeredcounterexamples to this account in the form of cases in which subjects had true beliefs that were also justified but for which the beliefs were true for reasons unrelated to the justification. Some philosophers, however, thought the definition of knowledge as justified true belief had already been questioned in a general way by the work of Wittgenstein.[citation needed] (Later, a similar argument was found in the papers ofBertrand Russell.[9])
Gettier provides several examples ofbeliefs that are both true and justified, but that we should not intuitively term knowledge. Cases of this sort are termed "Gettier (counter-)examples". Because Gettier's criticism of the justified true belief model is systemic, some of his examples, that demonstrate the philosophical issues, lack practical plausibility; for example, one scenario hypothesizes that one job-seeking candidate is somehow aware of exactly how many coins are in the other candidate's pocket. Accordingly, other authors have imagined more realistic and plausible counterexamples. For example: I am watching the men's Wimbledon Final, and John McEnroe is playing Jimmy Connors, it is match point, and McEnroe wins. I say to myself: "John McEnroe is this year's men's champion at Wimbledon". Unbeknownst to me, however, the BBC were experiencing a broadcasting fault and so had broadcast a tape of last year's final, when McEnroe beat Connors. I had been watching last year's Wimbledon final, so I believed that McEnroe had bested Connors. But at that same time, in real life, McEnroe was repeating last year's victory and besting Connors. So my belief that McEnroe bested Connors to become this year's Wimbledon champion is true, and I had good reason to believe so (my belief was justified) — and yet, there is a sense in which I could not really have claimed to "know" that McEnroe had bested Connors because I was only accidentally right that McEnroe beat Connors — my belief was not based on the right kind of justification.
Gettier inspired a great deal of work by philosophers attempting to recover a workingdefinition of knowledge. Major responses include:
A 2001 study by Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich suggests that the effect of the Gettier problemvaries by culture. In particular, people fromWestern countries seem more likely to agree with the judgments described in the story than do those fromEast Asia.[11] Subsequent studies were unable to replicate these results.[12]
What is interesting, according to philosopherDuncan Pritchard, is that Gettier wrote his paper in a bid to get tenure and that he had little interest inepistemology as he never published anything else in the field, and declined to attend a 2013 conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of his article's publication at the University of Edinburgh.[13]
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)I met Gettier in Pittsburgh while I was a graduate student there and he a visiting scholar; I immediately envied him his counterexamples, his smile, and the fun he got out of doing philosophy brilliantly.
