AKANDE, Michael Aina PhD

Department of Philosophy,
Lagos State University, Ojo. Lagos.
Email: ainaakande@yahoo.com
Tel: 2348033326922

UNDERSTANDING THE LOGIC OF EDMUND GETTIER’S ANALYSIS OF

JUSTIFIED TRUE BELIEF
Abstract

Gettier’s analysis of knowledge as justified true belief is a milestone in epistemological

theorizing in Western philosophy, especially at the later part of the 20 th century. While
showing the problem of seeing knowledge as justified true belief (JTB), Gettier did not
provide a veritable solution to it. A careful perusal of his analysis will show that the
traditional notion of knowledge fails because of the adoption of its logic. I shall show this
by arguing that JTB approach favours formal logic because of its foundational approach
rather than sentential logic approach which is also important in epistemological
discourse. A foray into Gettier’s analysis through the adoption of some principles of
critical thinking will exposed the problem inherent in Gettier’s counterexamples. The
finding in this work is that Gettier limits justification to the structure of argument without
consideration for its content. My aim is to show some problems associated with Gettier’s
use of deductive logic as a basis for justification in his counterexamples. This work
shows that Gettier’s application of some principles of logic (addition and Existential
Generalization) and his notion of fact are faulty. It concludes that given this situation, one
of the conditions of knowledge (Justification) has not been met.

Keywords: Foundationalism, Gettier, , Justification, Knowledge, Logic.

Introduction

In doing the analysis of justified true belief (JTB) as the criteria of knowledge, the aim of Gettier

is to see whether the conditions for knowledge (truth, belief and justification) are individually

necessary or collectively sufficient for propositional knowledge. Truth as a condition is a

metaphysical concept because it relates to a correct description of reality. However, every

description of reality is from a stand point, as a result, an epistemic agent is require to provide

evidence in defense of the stand point that generates his/her belief. For instance a claim that ‘the

world will end tomorrow’ should attract evidence from astronomy and not just a hunch belief

like ‘I feel it in my bones’. A belief can be supported by pointing to its consistency or coherence

with other known beliefs or by how it corresponds to facts outside us. Coherence and

correspondence are theories of truth while truth and falsity are statuses of beliefs. A proposition

must be believed by a subject who is the claimant or holder. So, if one asserts a proposition and

the proposition is true and the person is able to provide reasons or evidence for believing it, then

he can be said to know it. This explains the relationship among the three concepts.

However, arguments are not evaluated by relationship among propositions alone, the relationship

between the claimant and his/her beliefs is of importance. Every argument starts with certain

assumptions or presumptions. Some of these assumptions are relevant and some are irrelevant.

Some are products of bias and various psychological or moral innuendos and as such they affect

the value of arguments. So, in the assessment of arguments, virtues like fairness, open-

mindedness and civility also come in, aside validity and strength which are formal ways of

assessing deduction and induction respectively (Doury, 2013).

In order to show that a subject’s true belief is justified, Gettier adopts the deductive system in his

examples probably because he believes justification is closed under such system. After all, if the

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premises of a deductive argument give necessary support to a conclusion that is validly inferred

then justification is achieved. Inductive argument does not have such characteristic, because no

matter the strength given by the premises to the conclusion, there will be a gap between them,

and this gap can generate a doubt. And if doubt is present then knowledge has not been

adequately served. In Gettier’s thinking therefore, if one asserts a belief he/she must accept such

assertion without doubt, especially if it is true. In this wise S knows that p if and only if p is true,

S accepts p and S is justified in accepting p. The problem discovered in Gettier’s analysis is the

possibility of inferring a true proposition from a false belief which is justified. Why this issue is

so will be our concern in the next section.

The Logic of Edmund Gettier’s Counterexamples

Edmund Gettier provides two counterexamples to show that it is not all cases of justified true

belief that are cases of knowledge. However, before he did this, he proposed two assumptions

which he believes are supported by the counterexamples. His belief is that if these assumptions

are acceptable then the inferences he made in his counterexamples are valid. In other words, if

Gettier’s assumptions suffice then his analysis will stand. The first assumption is, it is possible

for someone to be justified in believing a proposition that is in fact false. Secondly, for

proposition P”, if S is justified by believing P, and P entails Q and S’ deduces Q from P and

accepts Q as a result of this deduction, then S is justified in believing Q (Gettier , 1963: 121). He

drives home his point with the following counterexamples:

CASE I: Jones and Smith applied for the same job. After the interview, Smith approached the
president of the organisation to know who is going to get the job. To which the
president responded “Jones is the man who will get the job”. Smith is also aware that
Jones has 10 coins in his pocket. So, he concluded that ‘the man who will get the job
has 10 coins in his pocket’. However, it was Smith who eventually got the job and
when his pocket was searched, 10 coins was found there. This made his audience

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 acknowledge that Smith knows who will get the job. But unknown to Smith himself,
is the fact that he has 10 coins in his pocket at the time of announcing that “the man
who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket” (Akande, 2017:258).
For Gettier therefore, Smith has a true belief which is justified but unfortunately he does not

know because he has no evidence for its truth and the premise he has evidence for is false. So, it

follows that his conclusion, “the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket” became

true by an ‘accident of logical inference’. The second counterexample goes thus: Suppose Smith

has good evidence for the proposition below:

i. Jones owns a Ford car. And from that he inferred three disjunctions,
ii. Either Jones owns a Ford car or Brown is in Barcelona,
iii. Either Jones owns a Ford car or Brown is in Boston, and
iv. Either Jones owns a Ford car or Brown is in Brest-Litosk.
If by coincidence Brown is indeed in Barcelona, we may say that by believing in proposition 1

Smith has justified true belief. Yet Smith’s conclusion cannot be a case of knowledge since

Smith has no evidence whatever as to Brown’s actual whereabouts and the proposition “Jones

owns a Ford car” he has evidence for is false. So, the disjunction is true only by an ‘accident of

logical inference’.

The above situations depict that Smith inferences are true and they are validly deduced yet

knowledge is far from being attained. This exposes the problem of logical truth and its

relationship with reality. The question one can raise here is how well can logic imposes its

authority on reality? It is common to hear that logical truth are true in all possible worlds just as

when false, it is false in all possible world. However, the attachment or relationship between

logic and language cannot be jettison. Language is a human creation with its normative

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framework and every thought including logical ones must obey these norms if understanding is

to be achieved.

Logic is the study of the methods and principles used in distinguishing correct reasoning from

incorrect reasoning (Cohen & Copi: 2002:3). The subject matter of logic is argument, it is not

about our thought process but the results of this process are couched in form of propositions to

determine good reasoning from bad reasoning.

Logic has little to do with concrete events and experiences of the world that is why scholars have

design symbolic representation in order to avoid the problem of interpretation. Honer et al see

symbolic logic as “symbolic representation that attends human effort to understand” (Honer,

Hunt and Okholm, 1999:29-30). Logical arguments are either inductive or deductive. Inductive

inferences are probable while deductive inferences are made with certainty. This could be why

Gettier employs deductive arguments in his counterexamples purposely to avoid ambiguity. One

can be comfortable with this approach if one is only comfortable with the validity of an argument

but in epistemological explanations validity is not enough. Deductive system should aim at

soundness if it is employed in epistemic discourse because the (true or false) status of a belief is

an essential condition for knowledge. A perusal of Gettier’s first case reveals that though Smith’s

argument is valid but not sound. In other words, it is not all the statements in the argument that

are true. For instance:

1. Jones is the man who will get the job (F)

2. Jones has 10 coins in his pocket. (T)
3. Therefore, The man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket. (T)

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In a kind of flash back of event, Smith got the job rather than Jones, so the first premise is false,

the second premise is true and the conclusion is also true because Smith who got the job has 10

coins in his pocket.

In this case, the conclusion if taken in isolation is an indication that, Smith knows he will get the

job. However, if taken collectively and the meaning of propositions are concretized or reduced to

experience then there is going to be a problem. For example a recap of the argument will go thus:

1. Jones is the man who will get the job.

2. Jones has 10 coins in his pocket
3a. Therefore, Jones who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket.
Or we can apply the rule of conjunction which will give us this conclusion 3b: Therefore,
Jones is the man who will get the job and Jones has 10 coins in his pocket.
Given conclusion 3b, even if Smith is the man who eventually got the job has 10 coins in his

pocket, he cannot be said to know. Though logic explores all possible worlds by going beyond

the empirical world, its principles and rules (law of thought) are basically concerned with the

basic assumptions of reasoning rather than the factual events that lead to the reasoning. This to

my mind informs the reason why Gettier asserts that a false belief could be justified, not by fact

but by logical process.

The problem created by Gettier’s counterexample above is made barred when one shun the

universal appeal of logic and concentrate on the particular case. Also, the main thrust in any

deductive inference is that the information in the conclusion is already contained in the premises

but in the above case the entity Smith is not in the premises so it should not appear in the

conclusion. In this vein, Jones who is the entity in the premises is the logical candidate in the

inference ‘the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket’. Syllogistic deductive

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arguments favour consistency in the translation or meaning of words (information) contained as

such it does not accept a fourth term. In this case any slight changes in the meaning of the same

word can create problem in understanding the message of an argument.

In Gettier’s argument presented above, the change in meaning can be witnessed in the

relationship between the first and the last propositions where the term ‘the man’ now means any

man rather than Jones. This follows that Gettier’s problem is the problem of shift in meaning. In

this counterexample one can argue that the shift in meaning is generated by the nature of the

inference or principle of logic known as Existential Generalization which Gettier applies.

Existential generalization is a deductive inference that allows one to move from a specific

statement to a generalized statement. A.G.A. Bello reiterates that this rule enables us to move

from a singular proposition to its existential quantification, thereby making existential

quantification over an individual constant (Bello, 2000:275). It is use to relate individual things

to the attribute that they possess. Here, individual propositions are substituted with their

propositional function. The individual propositions contain individual constants while the

propositional function has individual variables. For example, the statement ‘Socrates is human’

(individual proposition) can be substituted with ‘someone is Human’ or ‘there is at least someone

who is human’ (propositional function). Socrates is human symbolizes as Hs where H stands for

human and s for Socrates (determined, therefore constant). Someone is human symbolizes as Hx

where H stands for human and x for the undetermined variable.

In Gettier’s second counterexample ‘Jones owns a Ford car’ will be (Propositional constant)

logically equivalent to someone owns a Ford car (variable) which can also be equivalent to ‘there

is at least one thing that owns a Ford car’. Using logical notation it will appear as: Given any X,

X owns a Ford  given any X, Fx. If it turns out that Smith rather than Jones owns a Ford car the

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inference will still be true. ‘Jones is the man who will get the job’ will appear as ‘there is a man

who will get the job’. In both cases the individual constant is substituted for individual variables

as such it can cause a shift in the meaning of original entities within the premises of the

arguments.

So, going back to our job counterexample, the statement “Jones is the man who will get the job”

will contain individual constant likewise the second proposition “Jones has 10 coins in his

pocket. But the conclusion (the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket) which is the

inference will contain individual variable because the concept ‘the man’ applies to no one in

particular.

Deriving from this, the justification in Gettier’s counterexamples will require reasoning from the

conclusion to the premises. To know who “’the man’ who will get the job” is, we need to go

back interpreting the meaning of the terms in the premises in relation to the conclusion. The

inconsistency in meaning between the premise and the conclusion portrays that the name

(concept) ‘Smith’ is abducted to fill in the gap created by the meaning of the phrase ‘the man’

since Smith is also a ‘man’.

In Gettier’s second counterexample, Smith is justified by observation to believed that Jones owns

a Ford car, he therefore proceeded to infer that ‘Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona’

using another principle of logic called Addition. The rule of logical addition permits one to add a

non-existent proposition to an existing true proposition (Copi & Cohen, 2002:363). Smith we

were told actually chose three places at random where Brown could be:

1. Jones owns a Ford car or Brown is in Barcelona

2. Jones owns a Ford car or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk

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3. Jones owns a Ford car or Brown is in Boston.
Each of these propositions is entailed by the proposition ‘Jones owns a Ford car’; though Smith

has no idea where Brown is. Fortunately, Brown is in Barcelona but it was discovered that Jones

owns no Ford car; he is only driving a rented one. By the principle of addition a disjunction can

be applied to a statement if it is necessary. For example: if P is true then one can infer that P v Q

is true since a disjunction only requires a component of the statement to be true. So, the

statement if ‘Jones owns a Ford’ is true then ‘Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona’ is

true and therefore justified by the principle of logical entailment.

One thing to note is that the entailment follows from perceptual evidence of Smith seeing Jones

driving a car and because seeing is believing Smith is justified in making the inference. The

validity of the inference itself confirms that Smith is justified in accepting the inference. The

principle of addition in logic allows one to add any proposition to an existing one if the added

proposition will help one to arrive at a needed position. For example an argument like this: (N v

O) > P, (P v Q) > R, Q v N, ~Q .: R ( Copi & Cohen, 2002: 595) can be proven to be valid thus:

1. (N vO) > P premise

2. (P v Q) > R premise

3. QvN premise

4. ~Q premise

5. N 3, 4, DS

6. NvO 5, ADD

7. P 1,6, MP

8. PvQ 7, ADD

9. R 2,8, MP (conclusion)

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From the above proof of validity the rule of addition is used twice in line 6 and 8. In both cases

there are inferences from already established truth in 5 and 7 respectively which enable the

transition at level 6 and 8 respectively.

The problem of the application of this rule in Gettier’s counterexample is that the ‘initial truth’

that ‘Jones owns a Ford car’ is not preserved in the disjunction. In this case the initial proposition

which was taken as true because of the factual evidence of Jones driving a Ford car is now false

but the added proposition is now true. It is like saying line 5 and 7 are now false but line 6 and 8

are true. The consequence of this is that Smith’s inference is true but Smith will find it very

difficult to accept it in his conscious state since he has no evidence for its truth. Beyond the

formal correctness of the inference the content of the argument is of significant value and that is

why the falsity of line 5 and 7 is a dent on the virtue of the argument. It will be difficult to justify

why a proposition that is false formed the basis of an inference.

Another way I devised to bring the understanding of the faulty psychology behind this case to

fore is to create a hypothetical example in criminal prosecution thus: Suppose a police officer has

evidence (circumstantial) that, Jones is a murderer and Smith is a member of Jones house. This

circumstantial evidence is then extended to Smith in order not to lose the case in court. The

police investigator decided to prosecute both Jones and Smith because he feels that at least one

of the occupants is the culprit though he was sure the culprit is Jones. He now infers that either

Jones is a murderer or Smith is a criminal.

Eventually, if it was discovered that Smith broke the traffic law, the inference will be true even

when Jones is not a murderer. The question then is can one say the police officer is morally

justified in making Jones goes through the stress (both physical and psychological) of court’s

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prosecution? Doury (2013:2) writes that a virtuous argument must obey the rules of validity

including being “ethical in the sense that it is grounded in virtues such as sincerity, honesty and

accountability.”

The failure of the investigator’s observation which made him believed that Jones is a murderer

should be explained as a result of certain inefficiency on his part. He was only lucky that a

criminal was eventually caught; the whole exercise could have been a waste of time and

resources. It is reasonable therefore think that inferential entailment only justifies a belief or

proposition but not the person that holds the belief because the fact of the case also counts.

A Reflection on the Role of Fact in Gettier’s Counterexamples

The purpose of this section is to show that the initial truths of the factual evidences that were not

preserved in the disjunctions are due to the nature of fact. Though, fact is an instrument one can

use in resolving a burden of proof yet it is not neutral in terms of status. Factual evidence can be

circumstantial or direct. When it is circumstantial it suggests truth but when it is direct it shows

truth. In this wise, truth can be revealed based on the quantity or/and quality of evidence supply

in a given situation.

A Fact is an event that has occurred or is actually the case. It can be defined as a state of affair

derived through careful observation or measurement. That is why it is referred to as empirical

evidence in some quarters. Facts in this wise are distinguishable from opinions, speculations or

matters of inference. Whatever is derived from another fact is at best a hypothesis or theory

which is opened to further observation or experimentation for confirmation.

It is for this reason that all conclusions from inductive arguments which depend on facts are only

probable. Though, fact is sometimes used synonymously with truth. For instance, statements like

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“It is a fact that the cup is red”, is another way of saying that “it is true the cup is red”. However,

facts have a reputation of being relative but agreeable among different observers.

The nature of fact is in contention among philosophers especially between rationalists and

empiricists. To the rationalists mind controls facts and observation is theory laden. The

empiricists on the other hand see a fact as a stand-alone atom which describes the reality as it is.

Holding a contrary opinion Thomas Kuhn (1962) said that, knowing what facts to measure and

how to measure them requires the uses of other theories. David Weinberger enumerates Kuhn’s

three major problems with notion of facts, firstly, there are so many things we called facts which

are only sensible if we understand an entire world around them. For example the statement

“Albany is New York’s capital only makes sense within a complex set of geopolitical

relationships”. So for him facts are not like ‘stand-alone atoms’ or bricks as commonly assumed.

Secondly, facts still have element of social construction to them. It is therefore, not purely about

how the world stands neither is it independent of our awareness. For example, ‘you have or have

not flown a biplane’ or that ‘you have or have not tasted crocodile meat’ have no relevance with

the way the world is. Kuhn grouse here is that what we call facts are sometimes inferences from

facts. Thirdly, facts are either the beginning of what we need to know, new or an ending spot of

inquiry. Kuhn description of facts and what we do with them fit into David Weinberger’s

explanation:

We ascertain a fact and, add it to the structure of knowledge and now

we can build further on that strong foundation. But as facts are
recognized as, not so atomic, not so independent of us and as linked,
the foundation becomes less like a stopping point and more like a web.
Now webs have strengths of their own just as brick foundations do.
For example, they are resilient and robust, properties that come from
the interconnection of all the pieces, not from the firm finality of each
piece (Weinberger, 2012).

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No wonder, Talcot Parson admits that “the importance of certain problems concerning the facts

will be inherent in the structure of the system” (1977:27). When facts are arranged to build a

body of knowledge, the failure or success of such system of knowledge is dependent on the

structure of the system rather than of a particular fact.

In this wise, the weakness of a particular fact will be subsumed within the strength provided by

the system. For the above reason this paper argues that justification of a belief or fact purely

within the system is not enough, as such the next thing to consider in the justification of a claim

is to turn to the status of inherent propositions and the virtue of the epistemic agent who gathered

and arranged the facts. This position is in line with Kuhn’s belief that observation may be

influenced by previous beliefs or experience of an agent (Bird, 2018). That is why it is necessary

to see if the claimer is hasty, biased, unfocused or patient, open-minded or firm. In other words,

in a system of facts some inferences can be supported by the nature of the system rather than the

status of individual fact contained just as the system of bricks arrangement can support a house

even when a particular brick is badly placed. So, in interpretation of observed phenomenon like

‘Jones is driving a Ford car’ and the inference that Jones ‘owns’ a Ford car or from the

experience of the agent that ‘the president of the company says Jones will get the Job’ to his

conclusion that ‘Jones will get the job’ requires a probe into Smith’s virtues like carefulness,

diligence and open-mindedness. Let me reiterate here that both propositions of Smith are not

facts but inferences which require further testing or confirmation. After al,l driving a car is not

the same as owning a car.

It is virtue that justifies an agent rather than validity or logical correctness of an argument. In

other words, one’s presupposition or mental disposition during observation or experience is

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important in assessing factual evidence. There is no doubt that every kiss is not a sign of love

else Judas Iscariot would have been seen as the disciple that loves Jesus the most.

Conclusion

In the foregoing, this work has been able to elucidate the thinking pattern in Gettier’s analysis of

JTB as an adoption of inferential justification of knowledge which is a foundationalist approach.

We have seen that in a body of knowledge it is possible for a proposition within a system to be

false yet, the system provides justification for the inference. Under such circumstance the

inference will be justified and true but the epistemic agent cannot lay a claim to knowledge

because there is a disconnection in what the agent believes and the proposition he/she asserts.

This leads us to the argument that logical justification of a true belief is not enough, there is a

need for moral justification of the agent who observed, gathered and arranged the proposition or

facts as the case may be. We say this because it is possible for a system of fact to provide a

foundation for a structure even when one fact is wrongly placed. A fact or proposition can be

wrongly placed if the agent does not exercise caution in inferring from his/her observation.

For instance, Smith thinking that based on the observation of driving a car one can infer that the

driver owns the car, habours a whole lot of theory which are not sacrosanct since driving a car

does not necessarily translate to ownership. In the same manner, Smith’s inference of ‘Jones will

get the job’ based on the assertion and personality of the president can cause a disconnection

between justification and truth since Smith is not sure if the president is the final authority in this

case. This shows that logic cannot impose its authority on reality because there will always be a

need to start from a fact or assumption of a fact which is a product of experience and a

disposition to experience. That is why some scholars argue that the assumptions you start with

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will determine your conclusion, which can make you a good logician and at the same time a

bankrupt, or a criminal (https//www.basicincome.com/zlogic). Consequently, any fact that can

be put into a proposition to form an argument can be suspected since it has involved a theory and

on the basis of this, inferential justification may establish a truth but may fail to justify the

epistemic agent because certain pre-assumptions are wrong. The famous Gettier-problem stems

from the wrong notion that justification of both beliefs and epistemic agents can be achieved

under a deductive system. The recommendation that follows from this analysis is to employ

separate criterion of justification for beliefs and the believer, since inferences from observations

are theory laden epistemologists will always have two problems to deal with: evaluation of the

fact and that of the believer that inferred from it.

References

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