I know Tyler is a slacker, but that is no excuse not to drink, so pick up your beer mr. halloween

To whom it may concern (stop)


this blog is dead (stop)

i just got word from cristothalgar (stippidydoo a stustu stop'er'eee'duu)

check it out (stop)

"I think your blog is dead... huh?" (end communication)

as i was pulled out of the real reality (aim conversations, if your confused ask about my theory on myspace and descartes meditations ---- matrix philosophy)))) i became disoriented

i don't know, but the final chapter (Couch Bandits) will be released tuesday as scheduled. i want my peeps to understand that i keep it on the real fosho with my umbrellas fodrizzle, my android unstunted, and my casual walkway with moderate traffic. I am writing for the sake of writing, i may not post everyday, but if that is the case, I am putting more time than just a day into what will eventually become my published future writing. So there will be times of silence, but im still on the thought attack. My current deterent is my due essays in epistemology.

So without further ado anu au woowoo waka waka skankology mustard stain:

Justification as Performance and Grounds

I. Introduction
In his short, but important article, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Edmund Gettier challenged our understanding of knowledge. Published in 1963, it has generated hundreds of responses. For a period of about ten years, the philosophical field of epistemology primarily focused on solving the Gettier problem. To this present day, there is no general consensus that the problem posed by Gettier has been solved, even though there have been many attempts at solving the problem. Fogelin thinks that Gettier was right to challenge the claim that justified true belief is sufficient for knowledge; however, Fogelin believes that Gettier’s conception of justification is at best weak. Fogelin states that Gettier understands justification as being epistemically responsible and that conception negates that having the right grounds are also a part of justification. We, the outside observers of the Gettier examples, have a wider range of information than the characters in the examples. We are able to pinpoint where Smith (character in example) went wrong (bad grounds) even though he was not epistemically irresponsible in believing the claim he inferred.

II. Understanding Gettier
Gettier wrote his article with the motivation to challenge our understanding of propositional knowledge. Propositional knowledge usually takes the form of “knowledge that P,” and P holds the place for some claim (e.g. knowledge that the earth is round). Propositional knowledge is usually attributed to practical knowledge, or normal claims. Propositional knowledge can be justified inductively (and deductively). If too many unreasonable constraints are made in the quest for inductive knowledge the implication would be that one would know very little about the world around him. Therefore, a set of rules to state necessary and sufficient conditions for someone knowing a given proposition must be adequate and not too strict. Gettier examples pose ordinary inductive procedure carried out in normal ways based on the following (or similar) conditions for knowledge: S knows that P if P is true, S believes that P, and s is justified in believing that P.
Before Gettier presented his challenge for someone to know P they would have to appeal to the three following conditions. (i) If P is true, (ii) S believes P and (iii) S is justified in believing that P, S is justified in claiming some sort of knowledge. For S to appeal to all three conditions implies that S has knowledge, i.e. the three conditions together are sufficient for knowledge. Gettier argues that the three conditions actually do not constitute a sufficient condition for the truth of the proposition that S knows that P.
Gettier comes to this conclusion by reasoning the two following points: (1) it is possible for a person to be justified in believing a proposition that is false, and (2) the principle of transitivity states that if s is justified in believing that P, P entails Q, S deduces Q from P and P accepts Q as a result of this deduction, S is justified in believing that P. However, if it is possible to be justified in believing something that is false, it is possible to deduce a true proposition Q from a false proposition P. If this is the case then the instance of belief in Q is not knowledge even though all three of the conditions that constitute knowledge sufficiently have been qualified.
Gettier shows that this is possible by the famous Gettier cases (or examples). Case I describes the Smith situation. Jones and Smith have applied for a job. The president of the company tells Smith that Jones will get the job and Jones has ten coins in his pocket. Smith deduces from these premises that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket (E). However, Smith is the man who gets the job and incidentally he also has ten coins in his pocket. E is true, Smith believes (E) and is justified in believing (E). It is completely incidental that (E); (E) is not true by virtue of the premises. Therefore, what is traditionally regarded as sufficient for knowledge has been satisfied. However, (E) is not an instance of knowledge.

III. Fogelin on Gettier
Fogelin’s take on the Gettier problem is that Gettier was right to critique justified true belief as sufficient for knowledge on Gettier’s conception of justification. Gettier does not define what he means by justification though. When Fogelin makes an attempt to understand Gettier’s (and most philosophers) conception of justification, he finds that this conception, drawn from Gettier’s examples, fails to fully show what it takes to justify a belief.
Fogelin begins his discussion by making the point that most philosophers have attacked Gettier’s point of transitivity. Fogelin wishes to attack the other main assumption that “It is possible for a person to be justified in believing a proposition that is in fact false in which S’s being justified in believing that P is a necessary condition of S’s knowing that P.”
Justification plays a central role in Gettier’s argument against biconditionals. Therefore, it is crucial to come to a clear understanding of what is meant by justification. Since Gettier never actually defines what he means by justification, Fogelin develops a definition of justification through Gettier’s examples. In each example Gettier uses, the character is epistemically responsible in inferring (E). There is nothing wrong with the process Smith uses to infer (E). Smith used an inductive procedure without any dubious steps or guessing. His evidence was strong, and he logically inferred a conclusion from premises that entailed such a conclusion. Epistemic responsibility is what Gettier means by justification. For one to be justified, one needs to follow rational guidelines in forming beliefs. When justification is defined this way, Gettier’s examples seem to be devastating to the claim that justified true belief is knowledge. Any weak proposition can be derived from something false and incidentally be true. Such a claim is justifiably arrived at, but fails to be a case of knowledge.

IV. Justification and Information
Fogelin claims that justification does not only mean epistemic responsibility, but also means that the grounds establish the truth. In saying that S is justified in believing that P is true, one is saying that s was epistemically responsible in believing that P and S has adequate grounds for believing that P. Said grounds must establish the truth of P. This does not mean entailment, but S’s grounds must be adequate for establishing the truth. Fogelin is not giving a guideline for what is adequate since his essay aims at a conceptual analysis. Applying this principle to the Gettier case makes it evident that Smith actually was not justified in believing that e. Fogelin claims that every Gettier case will have this effect. The main character in the example is always epistemically responsible, but the grounds he/she uses are never adequate for the belief to be justified.
However, it seems that if one has inadequate grounds for establishing a belief, then one by virtue of the circumstances in question, has to be acting episetmically irresponsible. In many cases, this will be true since grounds and epistemic responsibility overlap. Grounds can be easily obscured by the performance. There is a distinction though, however hard to determine within a situation. It is easier to view the two clauses as separated by a third person perspective (as we are doing currently). We the readers have a wider range of information than S does. This is important because the strength of an inductive argument can be affected by the adding of additional premises. Deductive arguments do not have this quality. If an argument is deductively valid and the premises are true the conclusion is guaranteed. Adding a premise (while the argument is still valid) will not change the truth-value of the conclusion. Inductive inferences are nonmonotonic.
We the readers of the examples have more information than the central characters. Say, if Smith would have known that he had ten coins in his pocket, but still thought Jones would get the job and was ignorant to the amount of coins in Jones pocket, Smith would not have made the same inference. Given a broader range of information, one can see that Smiths justifcatory grounds are undercut, though not in a way that S could be expected to recognize or take provision against (Fogelin). So it may seem that one has to be epsietmically irresponsible if one does not have adequate grounds, but it would be impossible for S to know his grounds are inadequate given his situation. Therefore, given the wider information the reader has, we can see that his grounds are inadequate albeit responsibly invoked. Fogelin calls this problem that Smith has an informational mismatch.

V. Conclusion

The traditional analysis of knowledge defines justified true belief as knowledge. Gettier found that there are instances when one has a justified true belief but not knowledge. Fogelin understands Gettier’s analysis as misunderstanding justification as only meaning epistemic responsibility. But justification also has to do with if the grounds adequately entail what is inferred. Therefore, such instances of belief are not justified.