Justified True Belief in the Face of Skepticism

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of friends and hears his friend John speak of his new scooter, showing their friend Evan pictures of the scooter, providing the receipt proving the purchase of the scooter. Through this observation, Charles believes that John is an owner of a new scooter, while also coming to the conclusion that someone within their group of friends owns a new scooter. However, what Charles does not see is that John is not the actual owner of the new scooter, but their friend Dan is, unknowing to Charles.

Within the example, Charles was fully justified in his belief that John owned a scooter, and therefore fully justified in deducing that someone in the class owned a scooter. However, the false premise that made Charles believe that John owned the scooter, when he did not, invalidates the idea that his justified beliefs equate to knowledge. This brings forth the argument that justification does not act as a strong enough qualifier to ensure that true belief does equate to the existence of knowledge. Seen especially within the development of the Gettier counterexample, there always remains the possibility that justification is built upon a false premise, therefore nullifying the claim of knowingness by an individual. From an infallibilist standpoint, the JTB theory cannot qualify knowledge to a complete degree, as the possibility of outlying false premises have the potential to shape reasonable justification, yet invalidate the existence of knowledge.

The Justified True Belief theory makes the claim that the qualifiers of truth, belief and justification provide sufficient proof in favor of the existence of knowledge. However, seen especially within Gettier’s development of a counterexample, a deduction may have complete justification in the face of evidence, yet not comply to the standard of knowledge, as the justification becomes tainted by false premises during the process outlined in JTB. In the counterexample, though justification for the deduction existed, knowledge could not due to the false premises interfering with justification, therefore requiring additional qualifiers for the proof of the existence of knowledge. The JTB theory works to advance the idea of what potential qualifiers are necessary when proving the existence of knowledge, yet lacks a system of checks beyond justification, therefore not standing as an infallible theory of analysis for the existence of knowledge.