Summary |
Traditionally, knowledge has been taken to yield a reductive analysis in
terms of (conceptually primitive) necessary and jointly sufficient conditions—most commonly, justified (or warranted) true belief. In 1963, however, Edmund
Gettier’s “Is Knowledge Justified True Belief?” challenged the reductive model
of knowledge by producing a series of counterexamples where, intuitively, a
justified true belief fails to be knowledge. Since Gettier’s original
challenge, the philosophical literature has been replete with attempts to
defend the reductive analysis against Gettier counterexamples (now generalized
well beyond the cases posed in 1963) and those claiming that such defenses
fail. |