Other Responses To Gettier
The Gettier problem is posed in terms of a problem in first-order logic, but the introduction into the discussion by Gettier of terms such as belief and knows moves the discussion into the field of epistemology. Here, the sound (true) arguments ascribed to Smith, then need also to be valid (believed) and convincing (justified) if they are to issue in real-world discussion about justified true belief. Gettier's problem has attracted a range of more sophisticated responses. The different directions that these responses have taken are constrained by the structure of Gettier's argument: if knowledge is solely justified true belief, then there cannot be any cases of justified true belief that are not also cases of knowledge; but Gettier claims that his counterexamples are cases of justified true belief without being cases of knowledge. Therefore, in this account, one is to either accept Gettier's conclusion — and elucidate a new conceptual analysis for knowledge — or else deny one of Gettier's two claims about his counterexamples (that is, either deny that Gettier cases are justified true beliefs, or else accept that Gettier cases are knowledge after all).
One response, therefore, is that in none of the above cases was the belief justified: it is impossible to justify anything which is not true. Under this interpretation the JTB definition of knowledge survives. The problem is now not to define knowledge but to define justification.
However, most contemporary epistemologists accept Gettier's conclusion. Their responses to the Gettier problem, therefore, consist of trying to find alternative analyses of knowledge. They have struggled to discover and agree upon as a beginning any single notion of truth, or belief, or justifying which is wholly and obviously accepted. Truth, belief, and justifying have not yet been satisfactorily defined, so that JTB (justified true belief) may be defined satisfactorily is still problematical, on account or otherwise of Gettier's examples. Gettier, for many years a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst later also was interested in the epistemic logic of Hintikka, a Finnish philosopher at Boston University, who published Knowledge and Belief in 1962.
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