I have been considering the Gettier problem further, and I would like to approach it from a slightly different angle. I have been arguing up to now that Smith is not justified in believing that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket, on the grounds that justification is not transitive. However, I have a further objection to Gettier's argument.

Consider the underlined statement above. It could mean (inter alia) either of the following things:

1. The man who will get the job, Jones, has ten coins in his pocket.

2. The man who will get the job, Smith, has ten coins in his pocket.

The first is justified but not true; the second is true but not justified. So there is no single belief that is both justified and true; hence the JTB condition is not met. The underlined statement above is really a catch-all formula for (at least) two different beliefs. Smith is not justified in believing the underlined statement simpliciter, as its scope is too wide. He is only justified in believing (1) above - and (1) is false.

But why cannot a false belief be justified?

What I meant was whether we are directly aware or indirectly aware of trees does not matter to whether or not there are trees, and we are aware of them.

It may be that trees are an inference from what we are directly aware of (although that needs more examination) but we know many things by inference we do not know non-inferentially, and if you are right, then mostly everything we know is known inferentially, and not directly.

I am not sure I know what you are getting at in the rest of your post. But, what I wanted to say was that if belief is a mental event, then knowledge is not a mental event. My point is that we can detect what we believe by simple introspection of our mental state, but we cannot detect what we know by simple introspection of our mental state. So in the sense that we cannot believe we believe something and not believe it, we can believe we know something, and not know it

I was not claiming that. How can you have thought I was? I specifically said "the first [statement] is justified but not true".

My point was to refute Gettier's claim that JTB is insufficient for knowledge. He claims that Smith has JTB of the proposition underlined in my previous post, but not knowledge of it; I claim that Smith does not have JTB, because part of what he believes (the "Jones will get the job" part) is false. So Gettier has not produced a counter-example to the JTB criterion of knowledge.

By 'being aware of a tree indirectly' you mean that we are not aware of the 'real tree,' but only of the set of phenomena labelled 'tree,' And that we can infer, from awareness of the existence of that 'tree,' the existence of a corresponding 'real tree.' Correct? If so, then when you conclude that 'there are trees' and 'we are aware of them,' what do you mean? There are certainly 'trees,' it is reasonable to assume that 'real trees' exist, but we certainly are not aware of the latter, at least not in the same way that we are aware of 'trees:' i.e. through experience. Which is to say that 'trees' exist within experience, and 'real trees' exist only as that abstract idea, without any specific detail, also within experience.



That is probably true.



But aren't knowledge and belief indistinguishable from the first person perspective, i.e. without third person verification? Are the experiences of believing that the sun is hot and of believing that the sun is an orange any different per se, i.e. regardless of 'veracity' as determined by verification? I contend that they are not different, as experiences per se.

I am sorry, but then I must be just missing your point. Could you explain why what he believes is false?

The proposition at issue is:

The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.

The phrase "the man who will get the job" is ambiguous. It could mean any one of the following:
1. whoever will get the job
2. Jones
3. Smith

Smith does not believe (1); he specifically believes (2). So, in none of its three senses does the bolded proposition satisfy the JTB criterion. (1) is not believed (nor, I think, justified); (2) is not true; and (3) is neither believed nor justified.

Smith believes the bolded proposition only if "the man who will get the job" is another name for Jones. And in this sense, the proposition is false.

Regarding BrightNoon's argument, I broadly agree with what you (kennethamy) say, but I wonder if you could address one particular point. BrightNoon argues that we cannot know the external world (or even whether there is one) by experience, because experience is inside our mind and any external world is outside it, so what is experienced cannot be external, and vice versa. I suspect that there is some kind of logical or semantic fallacy here, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Regarding BrightNoon's argument, I broadly agree with what you (kennethamy) say, but I wonder if you could address one particular point. BrightNoon argues that we cannot know the external world (or even whether there is one) by experience, because experience is inside our mind and any external world is outside it, so what is experienced cannot be external, and vice versa. I suspect that there is some kind of logical or semantic fallacy here, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

. I think that the phrase, "what is experienced" is ambiguous. It can refer to the experience itself, or it can refer to what the experience signifies. For example, "my experience of computers" can refer either to the internal happening in me, or it can refer to computers. If someone is interviewed for a job, and is asked whether he has "had any computer experience" the person is not being asked about his internal mental states. He is being asked whether he has ever interacted with computers. So, what is experienced can be either internal, or it can be external.

I think the logic holds. Let me present it again ultra-simply for discussion.

If the 'external world' is defined as that which exists beyond individual experience, then the external world cannot be a part of or include anything from individual experience.

If an individual is aware only of what is within his experience, and per the above logc no part of the external world exists within experience, then nothing of which he is aware can possibly be something in the external world.

Therefore it is not possible for a individual to be aware of the external world, or any part thereof, in any way. Anything of which he is aware cannot belong to the external world.

So, unless you doubt the premises of the argument (1. the external world is that which exists beyond experience, or 2. an individual is aware only of what exists within his experience), you must accept the conclusion (an individual cannot be aware of the external world in any way).

Does this not follow?

I think the logic holds. Let me present it again ultra-simply for discussion.

If the 'external world' is defined as that which exists beyond individual experience, then the external world cannot be a part of or include anything from individual experience.

If an individual is aware only of what is within his experience, and per the above logc no part of the external world exists within experience, then nothing of which he is aware can possibly be something in the external world.

Therefore it is not possible for a individual to be aware of the external world, or any part thereof, in any way. Anything of which he is aware cannot belong to the external world. You seem to think that we experience only our experiences. Experiences are not what we experience, they are how we experience what we experience.

So, unless you doubt the premises of the argument (1. the external world is that which exists beyond experience, or 2. an individual is aware only of what exists within his experience), you must accept the conclusion (an individual cannot be aware of the external world in any way).

Does this not follow?



What is experienced? Is the set of phenomena labelled computer, which one has experienced, 'what is experienced?' I say yes. The 'real computer,' the thing in the external world that is presumably the cause of those experienced phenomena, is not experienced. If it is part of the external world, it cannot, by definition, be experienced.

The fact we habitually refer to 'the computer' as something other than just the set of experienced phenomena (white, square, buzzing sound etc.), does not mean that we experience the 'real computer' as it exists outside of experience. Again, how would that be possible, for us to experience something which, by definition, is not experienced? Rather, we have in mind the idea, along with the set of phenomena, of 'physical thing' or 'real thing.' This idea is no more than the understanding that the set of phenomena refers to something constant, something 'real' which is the cause of that phenomena, which ensures that, having looked away from the computer and then back again, it will still be there. In other words, we are aware of the 'real computer' only to the extent that 'real computer' is the very idea in experience that it is; we are definately not aware of whatever that idea is supposed to refer to, and we can't say what it is supposed to refer to exactly, except in these general terms (i.e. 'that external thing which is the cause of the experiences called 'computer').
If we say that the 'real thing' is white, has keys, makes a buzzing sound, etc., then we are not any longer talking about the 'real thing' but rather about the set of phenomena.

In a sense. (If you remove the unnecessary modality at your conclusion. It does not follow from the premises.)

It is equivocation on the word "aware". Technically the argument type (i.e. of propositions) is d-invalid but the argument appears d-valid because of its sentence structure.

The solution is to distinguish between immediately aware and inferentially aware. No one is immediately aware of anything but sensations, but people are inferentially aware of lots of things.

If you want people to be sure what you're arguing, then feel free to present it in formal logic.

I prefer words.

words dissemble, words be quick
words resemble walking sticks,
plant them they will grow,
watch them waver so;
I'll always be a word man,
better than a bird man

I disgress...anyway, I disagree with your analysis.

To be 'inferentially aware' is to have an experience of that inference and the experienced phenomena from which it is drawn; to be 'aware immediately' is to have the experienced phenomena only. In either case, the awareness is of experience and not of anything outside experience; that in the former case the inference (as an experience: i.e. thought) is supposed to refer to something outside of experience does not mean that this other thing is actually experienced. Again, only the idea of it as such is experienced. The 'external thing' by definition remains external to experience, and cannot be experienced, though the idea that it exists is experienced (the inference).

How could anyone have computer experience (experience with computers) unless there are computers to experience? (To have experience with?). The computer is not the experience; it is what we experience (just as the stone is not our kick, it is what we kick) the cause of our experience. If it is not the cause of our computer experience, then what is? I have asked you this several times. We have experience, and that is how we know about external objects. The external objects are not the experiences we have. We do not experience our experiences. The experiences are how we experience what we experience. The experiences are not what we experience. We have experiences. We do not experience them.

People do not generally recall the inferences that they have drawn in the past but they recall and are i-aware of the conclusions. I think that your 'definition' of "inferentially aware" is wrong:
[INDENT]"To be 'inferentially aware' is to have an experience of that inference and the experienced phenomena from which it is drawn"
[/INDENT]As I have pointed out people are often i-aware without being aware of their inferences.

Yes, people are only d-aware of their d-experiences. Nothing about the existence of the external world follows from that.

Are there any alternative explanations of why we have the d-experiences that we have? The only explanation I can come up with is realism. How does the solipsist (try to) explain why we have d-experiences?

I know of no other plausible explanations. The only plausible explanation of what explains the experiences we have is that they are caused by external objects. That is why I keep asking my question.

I can't even think of a not extremely implausible alternative theory.

Very well. I didn't mean by 'aware of the inference' that they were neccessarily aware of the act of inferring, the 'logic' of the inference, though they may be. I meant rather that they are aware of what you calling the conclusion of the inference. E.g. If I am i-aware that the sun will rise tommorow, I am aware of at least the concept that the sun will rise tommorow, if not the phenomena of the sun rising on previous days or the logic that led from those phenomena to the above concept. Regardless, to be i-aware is to be aware of experienced phenomena of some kind, and to be d-aware is also to be aware of experienced phenomena of some kind. I would consider both to be sub-sets of what I first called more generally 'awareness.' And the distinction between them doesn't effect my argument because, though being i-aware and d-aware might ential awareness of different sorts of experience (concept or raw sensation), they are both awarenesses of experience, not of the external world beyond experience.



Agreed, and nothing constituting i-awareness is of the external world, though it may 'point' to it.

Thanks for your reply. I would say that if you can recite the alphabet quickly and without hesitation, so that you have no time to "work out" anything, you must be relying on your prior beliefs about the individual sequences of adjacent letters. (I can recite the alphabet in less than 4 seconds, so surely I must have these beliefs in my memory all the time.) But it is perfectly possible for someone to recite the alphabet rapidly without immediately having any belief (let alone a justified one) about the order-number of any given letter.

Another example:
I can be justified in believing the following:
1 + 2 = 3
3 + 4 = 7
5 + 6 = 11
7 + 8 = 15
9 + 10 = 19
without justifiably believing that
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 = 55
because I can carry the two-number sums in my memory without necessarily carrying the ten-number sum. I could give the answers to the two-number sums immediately, but might still (a) fail to believe the ten-number sum, or (b) believe it for a wrong reason (e.g. an incompetent teacher told me it).

I have been considering the Gettier problem further, and I would like to approach it from a slightly different angle. I have been arguing up to now that Smith is not justified in believing that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket, on the grounds that justification is not transitive. However, I have a further objection to Gettier's argument.

Consider the underlined statement above. It could mean (inter alia) either of the following things:

1. The man who will get the job, Jones, has ten coins in his pocket.

2. The man who will get the job, Smith, has ten coins in his pocket.

The first is justified but not true; the second is true but not justified. So there is no single belief that is both justified and true; hence the JTB condition is not met. The underlined statement above is really a catch-all formula for (at least) two different beliefs. Smith is not justified in believing the underlined statement simpliciter, as its scope is too wide. He is only justified in believing (1) above - and (1) is false.