In a message dated 3/13/2015 6:21:20 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes in "Re: Some Gettier examples":
Donal
Logician to the stars
Which may be a good occasion to learn where and from whom Gettier learned
logic in the first place.
Like Donnellan (that apparently Max Black was unable to pronounce) Gettier
was educated at Cornell.
(I would think Black pronounced "Gettier" alla French, with emphasis on the
't' being "double", as Black would put it).
Gettier's mentors at Cornell (or Sage if you mustn't) were, inter alii,
Max Black and Norman Malcolm.
-- The same that Donnellan had.
Both Black and Malcolm had specialised in "Witters" (cfr. Austin, "Some
like Witters, but Moore's MY man".
Gettier, himself, was therefore, also attracted to the views of the later
Witters.
(Scholars on Witters distinguish between an early Witters, a later Witters,
and a middle Witters -- not in that order: the Middle Witters came after
the early Witters, and was superseded by the Later Witters. In the
scholarship that Witters originated this is important because the Later
Witters
refuted the early Witters, but was indifferent towards the Middle Witters --
So
note that Gettier's original interest was in the Later Witters ONLY).
And then he (Gettier) left Cornell (or Sage).
Gettier's first teaching job was at Wayne State University in Detroit,
Michigan.
He had to 'learn' philosophy as Witters would have ("lehren"). "Detroit",
incidentally, was pronounced by Black, also alla French.
At Detroit (or "Wayne", as Gettier prefers), Gettier's colleagues were
Keith Lehrer, R. C. Sleigh, and Alvin Plantinga -- "all very intelligent men,"
in the words of J. M. Geary ("Indeed, I would not know in what order to
rate them").
Because Gettier was short on publications -- and recall the adage to
Plato's "Academy", "Publish or perish" -- and these were the days of the death
penalty and the intricate use of parchments -- Gettier's colleagues urged
him to write up any ideas he had just to satisfy the administration -- the
"Wayne" administration, if you must. This is a _state_ university; which means
that it is a state administration, too (unlike Cornell).
The result was a three-page paper that remains one of the most famous in
recent philosophical history.
According to anecdotal comments that Plantinga has given in lectures,
Gettier was originally so unenthusiastic about the essay that he wrote it, had
someone translate it into Spanish, and published in a South American
journal.
But this can be all wrong -- South American does not really have a word for
'justify' which is an English word. What South American may have is a
_concept_ for 'justify'.
In any case, the translation was perhaps a _different_ essay, since South
American uses different types of clauses and a different vocabulary
altogether.
In any case, the essay was later published in the United States.
Gettier has since published nothing. -- In the St. Augustinian sense, he
has, as Witters says (when criticising Toulmin from borrowing all his ideas
for his DPhil Cantab, "The place of reason in ethics" from Witters),
"Perhaps I am myself to blame, because although I never published-published
those
views, I did make them PUBLIC in seminars and stuff, which is a form of
'publish'. (Grice preferred to speak of his 'unpublications', which, he was
proud to say, 'by far outnumber my publications!'.
However, Gettier has invented and taught to his graduate students new
methods for finding and illustrating counter-models in modal logic.
Modal logic is not the forte of the later Witters, so it is evident that
the later Witters was only Gettier's ORIGINAL interest. By the time he wrote
his essay, he had heard Plantinga mention Plato and Ayer, which are the
only authors Gettier quotes in his essay. Gettier later got involved with
modal logic.
Gettier also taught his students simplified semantics for various modal
logics -- by 'simplified' he means, figuratively, 'swallowable', since some of
the semantics alla Kripke are just "too much", and totally
counterintuitive.
In his article, Gettier challenges the "justified true belief" definition
of knowledge that dates back to Plato's Theaetetus, but is discounted at the
end of that very dialogue.
So, it's not that Plato HELD the view. With Plato you are never sure,
since, on top, he has Socrates SAY things.
But Gettier also cites from Ayer, who did maintain the view (even if he
used 'certainty' instead of 'knowledge').
This account of knowledge (episteme) as justified true belief (doxa) was
accepted by most philosophers at the time, most prominently the
epistemologist Clarence Irving Lewis and his student, Roderick Chisholm.
(Interstingly, Donnellan's PhD disseration for Cornell was on necessary
truth in C. I. Lewis).
(And Max Black pronounced Chisholm as "cheese' em").
Gettier's article refuted this account by Lewis and Chisholm though some
say that the validity of this definition had already been put into question
in a general way by the work of, who other but the later Witters.
(Grice disagreed since he stated cleverly that Witters did not know how to
use 'know').
Later, a similar argument to Gettier was found in the papers of Bertrand
Russell -- 'unpublications', as Grice would prefer.
The logic of Gettier's reasoning is simple, or complicated, "depending on
your point of view".
Cheers,
Speranza
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