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The Gettier Problem and the Parable of the Ten Coins
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
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‘Where have you been?’ I expect philosophers to ask me this when I tell them that this paper is on the Gettier Problem. I found it difficult to participate in the discussion of the problem until now because instead of wanting to consider what could be done to revive the project of identifying necessary and conditions for knowledge after the apparent damage done to it by Gettier counter-examples, I wanted to question the legitimacy of the project itself.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1995
References
1 Edmund, Gettier, ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’ Analysis, 23,(1963), 121–3.Google Scholar
2 The title of this papers is an allusion to the parable of nine copper coins in ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.’ Tlön is a planet of idealists where materialism was considered a scandalous doctrine. The parable was introduced as an argument for materialism, and enjoyed, Borges says, the ‘same noisy reputation as did the Eleatic paradoxes of Zeno in their day.’ According to the commonest version of the parable, X loses nine coins along a road on Tuesday. On Thursday, Y finds four coins on the road. On Friday Z finds three coins on the road and X finds two in his house. The logical conclusion, as this ‘feat of specious reasoning’ has it, is that the coins must have existed in the road and house, albeit in some secret manner, during all the time they were lost. Jorge, Borges, Ficciones (New York: Grove Press, 1962), 26.Google Scholar
3 New, C. G., ‘Some Implications of “Someone”,’ Analysis (1966), 26, 62–4. New is discussing an example of Keith Lehrer's. New, like Gettier and all the others parties to the discussion, is not thinking in terms of any particular story, but is satisfied to work with the example, however sketchily it is described.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 I am not arguing, as some did when the Gettier problem was first being discussed, that Smith cannot be justified in his belief because it has a false basis—that Jones will get the job—and it is only by a fluke that it turns out that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. (For someone who does argue in this way, see Charles, Pailthorpe,‘Knowledge as Justified True Belief,’ Review of Metaphysics, 23 (1969),27.) Rather, I am saying that the fact that Smith must be joking if he claims to have been right shows that he cannot be understood as saying that the job winner, whether it be Jones or someone else, has ten coins in his pocket. My focus is on what Smith is saying not on whether and when it can be justified.Google Scholar
5 Smith, James M.gives a similar example in ‘New Implications of “Someone”, II,’ Analysis, 26 (1966), 208. As Smith describes the situation, Jack is worried that no one will talk to him because he behaved badly at the party. Jim reassures him that Jenkins or Evans will talk to him just to spite the other one. “Well, then,” Jack says, “I'll have someone to talk with.” Whether or not Jack is reassured is not a consequence of Existential Generalization but of his willingness to overlook the reasons why Jenkins or Evans will talk to him.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Keith, Lehrer, Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 1974), 20–1.Google Scholar
7 James, Smith, op. cit., 207.Google Scholar
8 For a survey of the literature on the Gettier problem, see Shope, R. K., The Analysis of Knowing (Princeton University Press, 1983).Shope identifies almost one hundred Gettier-like examples, most of which were designed as counterexamples to attempts at solving the Gettier problem.Google Scholar
9 I am especially indebted to Richard Manning and Arthur B. Cody for their help with this paper.