The link to the actual paper [1] seems to be overloaded. [1] http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~kleinsch/Gettier.pdf
Alternative host [no paywall]: https://fitelson.org/proseminar/gettier.pdf
Gettiers in software engineering (2019)
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Re: Gettiers in software engineering (2019)
#72Relevant (deleted, as far as I can tell) tweet: > When I talk to Philosophers on zoom my screen background is an exact replica of my actual background just so I can trick them into having a justified true belief that is not actually knowledge. https://old.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyMemes/comments/gggqkv/get...
Hmm. That seems like a better example of the problem than either of the examples at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem . The cases cited in the article don't seem to raise any interesting issues at all, in fact. The observer who sees the dark cloud and 'knows' there is a fire is simply wrong, because the cloud can serve as evidence of either insects or a fire and he lacks the additional evidence needed to…
It’s not super clear there, but those are examples of a pre-Gettier type of argument that originally motivated strengthening, and externalizing, the J in JTB knowledge— just like you’re doing!
Gettier’s contribution — the examples with Smith — sharpens it to a point by making the “knowledge” a logical proposition — in one example a conjunction, in one a disjunction — such that we can assert that Smith’s belief in the premise is justified, while allowing the premise to be false in the world.
It’s a fun dilemma: the horns are, you can give up justification as sufficient, or you can give up logical entailment of justification.
But it’s also a bit quaint, these days. To your typical 21st century epistemologist, that’s just not a very terrifying dilemma.
One can even keep buying original recipe JTB, as long as one is willing to bite the bullet that we can flip the “knowledge” bit by changing superficially irrelevant states of the world. And hey, why not?
Re: Gettiers in software engineering (2019)
#73The impossibility of solving the Gettier problem meshes nicely with the recent trend to Baysianism and Pragmatism. Instead of holding out for justified true belief and "Bang-Bang" either labeling them True or False, give them degrees of belief which are most useful for prediction and control.
I don't understand the Gettier problem. The example of the cow for example: You do not have a justified belief there is a cow there, all you can justify is that there is the likeness of a cow there.
To be able to claim there is a cow there requires additional evidence.
Re: Gettiers in software engineering (2019)
#74> true, because it doesn't make sense to "know" a falsehoood That's a problem right there. Maybe that made sense to the Greeks, but it definitely doesn't make any sense in the 21st century. "Knowing" falsehoods is something we broadly acknowledge that we all do.
False propositions are not knowledge, only true propositions are knowledge. Therefore you cannot know something true that is actually false, you can only believe something true that is actually false. Precisely describing how one moves from belief to knowledge is exactly what epistemology is about.
Re: Gettiers in software engineering (2019)
#75An old timer I worked with during my first internship called these kinds of issues "the law of coincidental failures" and I took it to heart. I try a lot of obvious things when debugging to ascertain the truth. Like, does undoing my entire change fix the bug?
I wonder if there is a law of coincidental succeeses too. (if you're an old timer, you might call this some sort of Mr. Magoo law, or maybe "it seems to work for me")
Re: Gettiers in software engineering (2019)
#76Gettier cases tell us something interesting about truth and knowledge. This is that a factual claim should depict the event that was the effective cause of the claim being made. Depiction is a picturing relationship: a correspondence between the words and a possible event (eg a cow in a field). Knowledge is when the depicted event was the effective cause of the belief. Since the paper mache cow was the cause of the b…
Dumb counterpoint: if it’s not a true belief, is it a false negative or a false positive? Any third option I can think of starts with “true”…
QED - proof by terminological convention!
Re: Gettiers in software engineering (2019)
#77> true, because it doesn't make sense to "know" a falsehoood That's a problem right there. Maybe that made sense to the Greeks, but it definitely doesn't make any sense in the 21st century. "Knowing" falsehoods is something we broadly acknowledge that we all do.
> "Knowing" falsehoods is something we broadly acknowledge that we all do.
Only in abstract discussions like this one. And in some concrete discussions on certain topics, not "knowing" seems to be essentially impossible for most non-silent participants.
Re: Gettiers in software engineering (2019)
#78I'm not sure I see the big deal. Justification is on a scale of 0 to 1, and at 1 you are onmiscient. We live in a complicated world; no one has time to be God so you just accept your 0.5 JTB and move on.
Or for the belief part, well, "it's not a lie if you believe it".
And as for the true bit, let's assume that there really is a cow, but before you can call someone over to verify your JTB, an alien abducts the cow and leaves a crop circle. Now all anyone sees is a paper-mache cow so you appear the fool but did have a true JTB - Schroedinger's JTB. Does it really matter unless you can convince others of that? On the flip side, even if the knowledge is wrong, if everyone agrees it is true, does it even matter?
JTB only exist to highlight bad assumptions, like being on the wrong side of a branch predictor. If you have a 0.9 JTB but get the right answer 0.1 times and don't update you assumptions, then you have a problem. One statue in a field? Not a big deal! *
* Unless it's a murder investigation and you're Sherlock Holmes (a truly powerful branch predictor).
Re: Gettiers in software engineering (2019)
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe the people who use "know" in the way you don't are talking about something other than brain states or qualia. There are lots of propositions like this; if I say, "I fathered Alston", that may be true or false for reasons that are independent of my brain state. Similarly with "I will get home tomorrow before sunset". It may be true or false; I can't actually tell. The same is true of the proposition "I know ther…
"I know I fathered Alston" .. the reasons it may be true or false are indeed independent of brain state. But "knowing" is not about whether it is true or false, otherwise this whole question becomes tautological. If someone is just going to say "It is not possible to know false things", then sure, by that definition of "know" any brain state that involves a justified belief in a thing that is false is not "knowing".…
How about "beliefs that seem to be true are not necessarily true, and the causes of those beliefs may not be valid, especially if examined more closely"?
Or, try renaming the variables and see if it still bothers you identically.
Re: Gettiers in software engineering (2019)
#80I'm not sure I see the big deal. Justification is on a scale of 0 to 1, and at 1 you are onmiscient. We live in a complicated world; no one has time to be God so you just accept your 0.5 JTB and move on. Or for the belief part, well, "it's not a lie if you believe it". And as for the true bit, let's assume that there really is a cow, but before you can call someone over to verify your JTB, an alien abducts the cow an…
edit: Then there's the whole "what is a cow" thing. Like if you you stuffed a cow carcass with a robot and no one could tell the difference, would that still be a cow? Or what if you came across a horrifying cow-horse hybrid, what would you call that? Or if the cow in question had a unique mutation possessed by no other cow - does it still fit the cow archetype? For example, what if the cow couldn't produce milk? Or was created in lab? Which features are required to inherit cow-ness? This is an ambiguity covered by language, too. For example, "cow" is a pejorative not necessarily referring to a bovine animal.
edit: And also the whole "is knowledge finite or infinite?". Is there ever a point at which we can explain everything, science ends and we can rest on our laurels? What then? Will we spend our time explaining hypotheticals that don't exist? Pure theoretical math? Or can that end too?