Abstract
If the history of the Gettier Problem has taught us anything, it is to be skeptical regarding purported solutions. Nevertheless, in “Manifest Failure: The Gettier Problem Solved” (2011), that is precisely what John Turri offers us. For nearly fifty years, epistemologists have been chasing a solution for the Gettier Problem but with little to no success. If Turri is right, if he has actually solved the Gettier Problem, then he has done something that is absolutely groundbreaking and really quite remarkable. Regrettably, however, while Turri’s account is both intuitive and elegant—improving upon many seminal projects within contemporary epistemology—I argue in this paper that any success against Gettier counterexamples it affords is merely fleeting. Straightforwardly, this is done in two sections. In §1, I briefly sketch Turri’s proposed solution to the Gettier Problem. Then, in §2, I level a counterexample against it. Unfortunately for Turri and his solution, in this paper we will see history repeat itself.
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Notes
And this is in keeping with a body of literature that suggests that virtue-theoretic proposals (like Turri’s) are ultimately going to be unable to viably surmount the Gettier Problem—see Pritchard 2003, 2005, chap. 7; Pritchard 2007; Pritchard et al. 2010, chap. 3; Kallestrup and Pritchard 2012. But what is more, it is keeping with the growing pessimism regarding the possibility of any reductive account of knowledge (virtue-theoretic or otherwise) viably surmounting the Gettier Problem—see Williamson 2000; Floridi 2004; Church forthcoming.
It is worth stressing that Expert Botanist exhibits all of the features of a regular, run-of-the-mill Gettier case. As Turri explains, “Gettier cases follow a recipe. Start with a belief sufficiently justified (or warranted) to meet the justification requirement for knowledge. Then add an element of bad luck that would normally prevent the justified belief from being true. Lastly, add a dose of good luck that ‘cancels out the bad,’ so the belief ends up true anyhow” (2011, 1). The case of Expert Botanist exhibits this “double-luck” structure hallmark of Gettier counterexamples, and insofar as we are willing to assume that this double-luck structure precludes knowledge I think we are safe in assuming that David genuinely lacks knowledge.
In “Getting ‘Lucky’ with Gettier” (forthcoming), I analyzed the nature of luck in terms of degrees so as to lend credence to Linda Zagzebski’s (1994) diagnosis of Gettier problems as inescapable. By my reckoning, even a minute degree of luck (of the right sort) is enough to preclude knowledge. And if I am correct, degrees of luck will seemingly map onto degrees of manifestation, thus offering explanatory power for the thesis proposed in this paper. And as such, this paper fits nicely within a broader literature that suggest the Getter Problem is not viably avoidable within the reductive model of knowledge.
If we were tempted to think that knowledge suits degrees, then we might suppose that degrees of knowledge correspond to degrees of manifestation. If this were the case, could Turri argue that Gettier counterexamples (in this case, those counterexamples that exhibit manifestation) are merely instances of weak, low-grade knowledge? Seemingly not. What cases like Expert Botanist show is that Gettier counterexamples can be created that exhibit a very high degree of manifestation, and as such even scenarios which would presumably exhibit a very high degree of knowledge can be Gettiered.
References
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Philip Ebert, Patrick Greenough, Felix Pinkert, and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments and feedback. This work was supported in part by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
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Church, I.M. Manifest Failure Failure: The Gettier Problem Revived. Philosophia 41, 171–177 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9418-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9418-5