Edmund Gettier

Edmund L. Gettier III (born 1927 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who owes his reputation to a single three-page paper published in 1963 called "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?"

Related Topics:
1927 - Baltimore - Maryland - American - Philosopher - Professor Emeritus - University of Massachusetts at Amherst - Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?

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Gettier was educated at Cornell University, where his mentors included the ordinary language philosopher Max Black and the controversial Wittgensteinian Norman Malcolm. Gettier, himself, was originally attracted to the views of the later Wittgenstein. His first teaching job was at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where his colleagues included Keith Lehrer, R. C. Sleigh, and Alvin Plantinga. Because he was short on publications, his colleagues urged him to write up any ideas he had just to satisfy the administration. The result was a three-page paper that remains one of the most famous articles in the history of modern philosophy. Gettier has since published nothing, but he has invented and taught to his graduate students new methods for finding and illustrating countermodels in modal logic, as well as simplified semantics for various modal logics.

Related Topics:
Cornell University - Max Black - Wittgenstein - Norman Malcolm - Wayne State University - Alvin Plantinga

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In his article, Gettier challenges the "justified true belief" definition of knowledge that dates back to Plato's Theaetetus. This account was accepted by most philosophers at the time, most prominently the epistemologist Clarence Irving Lewis and his student, Roderick Chisholm. Gettier's article definitively refuted this account, though some would say that the validity of this definition had already been put into question in a general way by the work of Wittgenstein. (And later, interestingly, a similar argument was found in the papers of Bertrand Russell).

Related Topics:
Justified true belief - Knowledge - Plato - Theaetetus - Clarence Irving Lewis - Roderick Chisholm - Bertrand Russell

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