Table Of ContentOUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/03/2017, SPi
Explaining Knowledge
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Explaining Knowledge
New Essays on the Gettier Problem
edited by
Rodrigo Borges, Claudio de Almeida,
and Peter D. Klein
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In memory of Fred I. Dretske
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Preface
1964 was a bad year for predictions in epistemology. But it was a great year for
epistemologists to be hopeful. It was the year when Roderick Chisholm teamed up with
a small group of influential authors for a book on fundamental issues in philosophy.
Speaking as, perhaps, the foremost authority on epistemology, Chisholm complained
of a dearth of creativity and implicitly expressed a wish. In hindsight, it is more than a
little ironic that his essay should begin with the following couple of sentences: “Most of
the problems and issues constituting the ‘theory of knowledge’ were discussed in detail
by Plato and Aristotle and by the Greek skeptics. There is some justification, I am afraid,
for saying that the subject has made very little progress in the past two thousand years”
(Chisholm 1964: 239). It would be an understatement to say that Chisholm was having
his wish fulfilled while those words were being committed to paper. A few months
earlier, in 1963, Edmund Gettier published a paper that sparked the deepest, most
extensive revision of any philosophical field since our ancient sources laid down the
foundations of philosophical inquiry. It took Gettier only 995 words to revolutionize
epistemology! To many of us, his paper epitomizes the clarity and precision that
the best philosophy so often seeks, but so rarely achieves.
Twenty-three years after he published his landmark paper, Gettier was described by
John Pollock (1986: 180) as being the philosopher who “single-handedly changed
the course of epistemology.” Seven years later, Alvin Plantinga introduced Gettier and
the Gettier Problem with the following dramatic metaphor: “Knowledge is justified true
belief: so we thought from time immemorial. Then God said, ‘Let Gettier be’; not quite
all was light, perhaps, but at any rate we learned we had been standing in a dark corner”
(Plantinga 1993: 31). Why think of Gettier’s paper as a godsend (of Plantinga’s kind or
otherwise)? Very simply put, because, quite apart from its own philosophical merits,
the ferment created by the paper changed the way we look at just about everything
to which the adjective ‘epistemological’ applies. The Gettier paper has become the
epistemologist’s calling card, no less. A working knowledge of its content has become a
requirement on anyone claiming to be even only superficially familiar with the field of
epistemology. Moreover, some of the great epistemological issues that predate the
paper might well have disappeared without it, because, as Chisholm correctly reported,
epistemology had stagnated. It was not, at the time, the flourishing discipline that it
has since become. It needed the kind of surprise that sparks innovations. The Gettier
Problem is to epistemology what the Michaelson-Morley Experiment was to physics,
because it caused the re-examination of the work of generations of philosophical
geniuses who had pondered Plato’s question “What is knowledge?”
But, once you turn to the Gettier Problem and to the issue of whether its effect is, as
Plantinga (1993: 32) thought, “entirely salutary,” disagreements arise. David Lewis’s
view is representative of the majority: the Gettier Problem, he suggested (Lewis: 1983),
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viii preface
is the closest thing to a proof we might have in philosophy, which, to Lewis and like-
minded philosophers, is something a philosophical argument should aspire to being
(or to resembling). But a vocal minority, in recent years, has begged to differ. Timothy
Williamson (2000), for example, argues that seeking a solution to the Gettier Problem
perpetuates a task that is doomed to fail: the task of finding a reductive explanation of
knowledge. Others, like Stephen Stich (2010), have claimed that the fascination with
the Gettier Problem promotes the wrong methodology for epistemological inquiry,
one that helps to keep philosophy distinct from natural science, one that, moreover, has
been based on false empirical generalizations concerning intuitive assessments of
those occasions when we do and when we do not possess knowledge.
We surely have come a long way from the kind of stagnant philosophical field
that Chisholm worried about. And the Gettier Problem remains at the center of this
renewed discipline we often refer to as ‘post-Gettier epistemology.’ This volume offers
abundant evidence for the claim. The newly commissioned papers in this volume are
representative of state-of-the-art scholarship on most of the issues directly connected
to the Gettier Problem. We trust that it will prove to be a valuable source for anyone
wishing to study one of the fundamental problems in contemporary philosophy as
a whole. In fact, we believe that no other collection of papers offers as much useful
discussion of the Gettier Problem as you will find here. For the reader’s convenience,
the Gettier paper, itself, is included. And, to add a little flavor to the volume, as a visual
reminder, we present a facsimile of the original publication in Analysis 23: 121–3
(by permission of the Analysis Trust and the publisher).
Our Introduction explains our take on some of the philosophical issues raised by
the Gettier paper. Its goal is twofold: to introduce some of the wide-ranging themes
undergirding the Gettier Problem to those not already familiar with them and to pro-
vide a popular perspective, not necessarily our own, on those themes. Pursuing both
goals simultaneously in a relatively short introduction came with the price of having to
gloss over some important aspects of the very complex debate about the problem. But
we trust that those aspects will emerge as you read through the papers.
We wish to thank Peter Momtchiloff, editor for philosophy at Oxford University
Press, whose helpfulness and timeliness was matched only by his patience. Rodrigo
would like to thank his wife Lizette Nieves for her support and understanding. Claudio
thanks Ana Vera for what he regards as a miraculous supply of tea and sympathy. Peter
thanks his wife, Anne Ashbaugh, for her helpful comments on the seemingly endless
drafts of his paper, and he is grateful to his co-editors for doing most of the work of
putting this collection together.
We are, of course, also grateful to everyone who agreed to contribute to the volume,
but we are especially pleased to include Fred Dretske’s contribution. Sadly, Fred passed
away before this volume went to press. However, he had already finished his paper. We
thank Fred’s son, Ray Dretske, and Fred’s widow, Judith Forston, for locating the paper
on Fred’s computer and for sending it to us, as per his wish. The three of us knew Fred
and deeply admired his philosophical acumen, as well as his warm and supportive
presence. We dedicate the book to his memory.
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preface ix
References
Chisholm, R. M. (1964). Theory of Knowledge. In Schlatter, R. (Ed.), Philosophy (pp. 233–344).
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Lewis, D. (1983). Philosophical Papers, Volume I. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plantinga, A. (1993). Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pollock, J. (1986). Contemporary Theories of Knowledge. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Stich, S. (2010). Philosophy and WEIRD Intuition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33: 110–11.
Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
