Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? part 1 Essay - 3,002 words

Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? What is knowledge? Can we as a whole actually be certain of our knowledge? If so, how? Are we not all based upon illusions and misconceptions, which in actuality create our society today? Knowledge is supported and evidenced by faith or by the 'arrogance of religion'. Faith is supported by psychological beliefs that have little or no proven evidence. By simply believing and having this faith, a person creates a rationale for accepting ideas and happenings. Truth is seen from this faith. On the contrary, knowledge is also acquiesced by scientific or empirical based theories. By ignoring religious beliefs in miracles, revelations and other unexplained occurrences, the search for knowledge is primarily founded upon facts and tests of the natural sciences.


A primary facet of faith coincides with the acceptance of religious standpoints. Thus, with the approval of science-based evidence, there is an arrogance or disapproval of religion as the source knowledge. Therefore, there are two different perspectives that proclaim to maintain the certainty of knowledge: justification by faith alone and the neglect of religion or evidence from specific observations. These two arguments serve as the basis of the search for the certainty of knowledge. Though many of these theories represent justified claims, an absolute truth of knowledge has still not been resolved. Therefore in reality the uncertainty of knowledge is in fact unknown and will continue to remain unknown as long as the question of faith still lingers.


Not a single person is born with truth, but is rather authoritatively ordained with his knowledge whether it be through scientific or religious means. All is based upon a single thread of evidence or the recklessness of opinions or assumptions. Many philosophers have often construed the problems of justification as though they were problems regarding the knowledge possessed by a social group; and it does of course make absolutely good sense to ask what statements we are justified in believing, and why we are justified in believing them. But such a question cannot be answered without first answering a more fundamental, egocentric question: Why am I, at the present moment justified in believing some statements and not justified in believing other statements? For the most part people believe in statements as a response to societal pressures and for personal content. Society needs to be comforted by having strong beliefs, which can reduce the stresses of uncertainty. Hence in order to actually believe and justify knowledge, one must have some form of this faith.


Edmund L. Gettier, American philosopher, is famous for his theory regarding the knowledge as justified true belief. A very illustrious view about knowledge is that it involves belief and truth; that is, a person, S, knows that p only if it is true that p and S believes that p. Nevertheless, believing truly that p is not generally satisfactory for knowing that p: knowledge evidently requires something more. A natural thought is that the omitted ingredient is justification. Suppose, for instance, that someone, S, is of the opinion, i.e. is sure, that Robert Maxwell is not dead, and assume, for the sake of argument, that it is in fact true that he is not deadthat he is alive and living well in Brazil, say. Would we be obligated to maintain that S knows that Robert Maxwell is not dead? The answer is surely not.


The intuition is that S does not know this fact except she has proof which justifies or guarantees her belief. So knowledge would seem to involve justification as well as truth and belief. On what has become to be known as the conventional view of knowledge, supposedly originating in Platos Thaeatetus, truth, belief and justification are not only required for knowledge, they are also mutually sufficient. According to the Justified True Belief theory (JTB), S knows that p if and only if, the following conditions are maintained: it is true that p S believes that p S is justified in believing that p Edmund Gettier does not argue that the conditions mentioned above are necessary to maintain knowledge. His view regarding this theory is that the conditions are not mutually sufficient, meaning that S and p can be met even though S does not know p. Gettier makes two important assumptions about the related notion of justification (and, in the ligh ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: justified, believing, perkins, justification, absolute truth

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