Knowledge and Justified Belief What is knowledge? This is the question we used to be sure of according to Plato’s theory of recollection, which tells that the knowledge is the justified belief; if this belief is true, then there is some fact make the proposition for this belief to be true; since the belief is justified by some evidence; therefore people comes up with the standard analysis of knowledge. This idea has been generally agreed till Edmund Gettier came up with the article questioning if knowledge is the justified true belief. Gettier provides two cases wherein intuitively the subject gains a justified true belief does not equal to knowledge. By contrast, Gettier’s arguments indicate the situation in which someone has a belief that is both true and well supported by evidence but fails to be knowledge. That is, it is sufficient and necessary to have belief, truth and justification to define knowledge as in classical theory, yet, the Gettier’s theory by questioning knowledge that justifiably believe one of the true proposition and dismiss the other is necessary and sufficient add-on to the classical theory to redefine knowledge. First of all, according to Plato’s theory of knowledge, that knowledge is justified true belief, or as Gettier concluded Plato’s classical theory of knowledge as: “ S knows that P if and only if P is true; S believes in P and S is justified in believing P” (Gettier 1). In the Meno, written by Plato, he believes that knowledge appears to be more valuable than true belief. As what I learned in class about Plato’s idea of knowledge, he implies Meno that true opinion “is no less useful than knowledge.. They are worthless until one ties them down by (giving) an account of the reason why” (Plato 96d). Additionally, in the Meno, Plato makes the comparisons between the true belief versus knowledge in finding the way to Larissa are the basically in the same practical way. In order to distinct between knowledge and true belief, Plato points ut that the knowledge is that of being “tied-down” to the truth, which compares to true beliefs, knowledge gives people confidence to rely on that is not easily lost as true beliefs occurred. To illustrate the traditional analysis of knowledge, first we need to consider belief as the factor of the propositional knowledge. People can not know something without believing it and not everything people believe is knowledge that people do believe many false things and this belief can be hold without awareness on out physical body. The second part of the knowledge comes to the truth that people believe, this is where the persons belief that “P” needs to be true. It is necessary because people can not believe something false in the traditional understanding of knowledge and people can belive something true without knowing it. On the other hand, if this “P” is incorrect, it is not knowledge. For example, Ann believes that she is pregnant before she did the pregnancy test and the results turn ut to be positive, clearly she did not know it before so that the belief and truth are not enough. Therefore, the justification can support the belief for “P” to be true. These justifications are the guidelines that produce true beliefs which is based upon good evidence by observing or reasoning. The propositional knowledge is the knowledge with indicative statement such as fish has no feet-the knowledge of a truth or fact and it is described as “P” in the classical analysis of knowledge. The three basic conditions of belief , truth and justification are supposed to jointly sufficient to build up the knowledge. According to Gettier’s theory of knowledge, he refuted the classical analysis of knowledge, he provided two cases which fit the analysis of knowledge but fail to count as knowledge. In Getter’s argument, he pointed out that people could be justified in believing a false proposition and the justified belief is not accurate under the reasonable implication of mind. In the first case that Getter described: Smith and Jones applied for the job, Smith has strong beliefs that Jones will get the position of the job and jones has ten coins in his pocket. Smith has all this doubts of evidence concludes that the man who has ten coins in his pocket will get the job (Gettier 2). This conclusion is true but not because Jones is that man, but rather because Smith might also has ten coins and the job in hand. In other words, the possible true fact abut Jones, which Smith found out are coincidentally happens on Smith as well, but he is not aware of this fact. Smith is justified in believing that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket only through the connection to the first fact about Jones is the man who will get the job and Jones has ten coins in his pocket; and any possibilities about “the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket” (Gettier 2), such as Smith is the man who will get the job, is irrelevant to the fact that Smith beliefs about Jones. Since Smith has only justify the belief on Jones, instead of comparing to himself, therefore, Smith does not have the knowledge of who will get the job. For the first two conditions of beliefs, Smith is strongly believing in them even though they are false. Suppose the assumption which indicates that: if someone is justified in believing “P” and “P” is compatible with “X” therefore someone is justified in believing the “X”. Therefore, Smith is thereby justified in believing the man who has ten coins in his pocket will get the job, but, in fact he does not know that he has ten coins in his pocket and he will get the job eventually. Smith’s belief is thereby at least true although not in the way in which he was expecting it to be true. Since, the fact that the man has ten coins in his packet will get the job is not known by Smith, therefore, Smith’s belief in not knowledge and he failed to know that the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Now we go back to the classical analysis of knowledge from Plato, if its three key points of belief, truth and justification are sufficient for knowledge where there is situation that one could have a justified true belief without knowledge, then the belief-truth-justification are not sufficient for defining knowledge. In other words, from the first case provided by Gettier, he indicated that the belief which is true and justified but not knowledge, if this is true, the classical analysis of knowledge will be not true. Gettier’s case indicated that justified belief in a true proposition is not equal to knowledge, Gettier’s argument is to show that the classical analysis provides truth, belief and justification are not entailed for knowledge which mean they’re not jointly sufficient to define knowledge. In the second case, Smith ruled out the lucky guesses as cases of knowledge, even though Smith has strong belief and evidence that are justified can nevertheless be just as lucky as it seems like knowledge. To sum up, the analysis of Plato’s justified true belief is true if and only if it comes with three factors of belief, truth and justification. It provides the basic outline of the theory. In additional to this statement, as Gettier claimed in his article: “ It is possible for a person to be justified in believing a proposition that is in fact false”(Gettier 1). In Smith case, he has good evidence for the false proposition on who will get the job by noting looking at the big picture. If the false proposition exists, the justified belief is meaningless to take into account for knowledge. In other words, the justified belief needs to be examined before making any assumptions or doubts. The improvement which Gettier pointed out is to build the additional examination for the justification to the truth in order to make the believable truth is produced by a reliable cognitive process. The Gettier’s questioning is needed to justify the classical theory of propositional knowledge in the way of strengthen the justification of beliefs, taking the instance “lucky” condition of truth into account to define the knowledge. Meno’s theory concerns the questions of why knowledge is more valuable than true belief whereas Grettier put additional components on evaluating the reliableness of knowledge. To sum up, Gettier’s questioning on propositional knowledge is the modification that is needed to proof the definition of knowledge.

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