 causal chain. Goldman’s analysis would rule out Gettier cases in that Smith’s beliefs are not caused by the truths of those beliefs; it is merely accidental that Smith’s beliefs in the Gettier cases happen to be true, or that the prediction made by Smith: " The winner of the job will have 10 coins", on the basis of his putative belief, came true in this one case.
4. Conclusive Reasons Condition:
Somebody’s belief in a proposition is based on a particular reason, such that if that proposition were not true, then that person would not have his stated reason as the reason for believing that proposition.
Fred Dretske (1971) developed an account of knowledge which he called "conclusive reasons", revived by Robert Nozick as what he called the subjunctive or truth-tracking account (1981). Nozick’s formulation posits that proposition P is an instance of knowledge when:
- P is true
- S believes that P
- if P were true, S would believe that P
- if P weren’t true, S wouldn’t believe that P
5. No Defeat Proposal:
A justified true belief counts as knowledge if and only if it is also the case that there is no further truth that, had the subject known it, would have defeated her present justification for the belief. In other words something is known as long as there is no evidence to the contrary.
All of the above proposed solutions are not without problems themselves. There are several sources where you can find them discussed in great detail, such as:
The major responses to Gettier that we’ve so far seen suggest that potential solutions should have it that, among other things, beliefs are not based on luck or false evidence, they should be appropriately causally related to the claim of knowledge, should be based on conclusive reasons and should remain undefeated. This is indeed a lot to ask for. In what ways might beliefs be justified in order to meet such criteria, thereby attaining the status of knowledge? And is it even possible?
To answer these questions, we shall be taking a look at various Theories of Justification, in Part 3 of this series.