Gettier's Gap: It's about time (and change)

Aristotle demonstrated that "knowledge", claimed by Parmenides as "being", is inconsistent with the reality of "becoming" which was asserted by Heraclitus. These two aspects of reality, being and becoming are simply incompatible. The solution to this problem is dualism.

Plato demonstrated in The Theaetetus, that "knowledge" as we know it cannot be described as JTB. This is because the possibility of falsity cannot be excluded, therefore we cannot hold truth as a criterion. In other words, the requirement of truth cannot be justified, therefore the idea that knowledge is JTB cannot itself be knowledge.

And if we remove the requirement of truth, we are left with justified belief, and this does not properly represent what we request from knowledge. So Plato concludes The Theaetetus with the proposal that trying to understand knowledge with the preconceived notion that it is some form of JTB is actually misleading.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Plato demonstrated in The Theaetetus, that "knowledge" as we know it cannot be described as JTB. This is because the possibility of falsity cannot be excluded, therefore we cannot hold truth as a criterion. In other words, the requirement of truth cannot be justified, therefore the idea that knowledge is JTB cannot itself be knowledge.

I always thought the T in JTB was weird. I mean it makes sense, but then it makes Knowledge just as inaccessible as Truth itself. We only have access to justifications about our beliefs, there's no oracle who can tell us if that belief satisfies the T or not.

So we can only really appeal to our justifications when calling a certain belief "knowledge", we can't ever appeal to the raw T.

So are we just supposed to be agnostic about if any belief is knowledge? Because... well, of course if we think it's J then we think it's T, but we can't really distinguish between the beliefs we think are justified and are actually true vs the beliefs we think are justified but aren't true. I mean, if we could - if we could know, "I'm justified in this belief but it isn't really true", then we wouldn't believe it anymore.

It just feels like the J is doing all the work and the T is coming along for the ride.

Reply to DasGegenmittel I've read about half in seriousness and about half skimming because of time this morning. What I can say so far: Well done. This is a serious paper that a LOT of work went into and there's no way I could answer such a piece without really looking into it in depth. I'll comment more later.

Welcome to the forum.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

However, we typically regard knowledge as stable and reliable, a foundation we can trust. Gettier problems like this challenge the traditional JTB definition by revealing cases of accidental knowledge, suggesting that justification, truth, and belief alone are insufficient for genuine knowledge.

Of course what we call knowledge isn't, never will be, and never can be "stable and reliable." This demonstrates that justified true belief definition of truth is fundamentally flawed. JTB does not describe knowledge as we normally think of it, use it, or act based on it. The unnecessary and convoluted Gettier "problem" just highlights that fact.

My approach? Focus on the practical justification needed before we act on specific knowledge rather than on it's truth.

Reply to DasGegenmittel

I very much like the general thrust of your thesis and find much agreement with it, but as a minor quibble:

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Knowledge is treated today as if it were static and timeless, as Plato might have suggested, [...]

Knowledge so construed would be lacking in any possibility of being wrong - and so would be infallible by entailment. Such that the notion of infallible knowledge to me corresponds what you’ve termed “static knowledge”.

Plato, via Socrates’s voice, however, is almost always understood to present the case for what is called - not Cartesian Skepticism, which is about doubting everything till some infallible knowledge is supposedly obtained - but Ancient Skepticism, whose aim can well be argued via today’s terminology to present the case that there can be no such thing as infallible knowledge, else what you’ve termed static knowledge. Such that the very knowledge that “there can be no infallible knowledge” will of itself be fallible knowledge - else what you term “dynamic knowledge” - this rather than infallible or else static.

@Metaphysician Undercover
You pointed out the tension between Parmenides’ being and Heraclitus’ becoming, referencing Aristotle, who saw these opposites as irreconcilable. Your proposed solution is a dualism that separates both aspects. This is precisely where my distinction between Static Knowledge and Dynamic Knowledge comes in:
• SK refers to timeless, secure knowledge (e.g., mathematics).
• DK is tied to changing conditions (e.g., the fastest route to work today).

Immutable and timeless elements (see deduction) are often conflated with mutable and temporal ones (see induction), as is the case in many Gettier examples. The expectation that knowledge should work the same way in inductive contexts as it does in deductive reasoning is, as you imply, unfounded. The epistemic monism currently dominant in the field is therefore deeply problematic. That’s why I wrote my paper Justified True Crisis—because this issue often goes unrecognized. It’s reassuring to know there are people out there who think along similar lines.

In relation to Plato’s Theaetetus, you argue that knowledge cannot be understood as “Justified True Belief” (JTB) because we can never completely rule out the possibility of falsehood. Therefore, “truth” cannot serve as a sufficient criterion, and JTB itself cannot be equated with knowledge. This interpretation reflects a typical post-Gettier skepticism, namely that the concept of truth itself remains “inaccessible.”

In my model, this doesn’t mean we discard truth altogether. Rather, the discussion around Gettier cases (e.g., the stopped clock) highlights the need to distinguish between static and dynamic knowledge. We still need “truth” as a goal and standard for knowledge, but we must accept that in DK-domains, our beliefs are constantly subject to revision, and we can never claim absolute certainty in changing environments.

@flannel jesus
You find the “T” in JTB problematic because we can never know with final certainty whether something is truly true. Ultimately, we only rely on our justifications (J) and beliefs (B). That’s exactly what we see in everyday dynamic contexts: we live in a world where everything flows and changes, and we can only partially verify whether a belief is really true.

This is where the idea of Justified True Crisis (JTC) comes in. In dynamic contexts, we may hold an assumption about what is true, but it must always remain open to potential correction. You could say we operate in a constant crisis mode: we have to act, even though we don’t have ultimate certainty about the “T” in JTB. That’s precisely why justification (J) does most of the work in practice, while truth (T) in a dynamic setting is only attributed hypothetically.

@Philosophim
Thanks so much for the kind feedback. I’m looking forward to any further questions you might have as you dig deeper into the text. And yes, a lot of work went into it ;D… I really hope it reads well, makes sense, and is useful. It’s tough to get feedback when you’re no longer in university. I wrote the essay after finishing my Master’s because I wanted to explore this idea further. The essay is like a bottle thrown into the sea, hoping to be found.

@T Clark
Thanks, it’s a pleasure to be able to talk with you all. You mention that knowledge in everyday life isn’t really “stable and reliable” the way we often wish it were—or the way the JTB definition implies. The Gettier case is really just an elegant illustration of this. You suggest instead focusing on practical justification before taking action.

This aligns very well with my introduction of Dynamic Knowledge: we might try to treat knowledge as a solid foundation, but in reality, there are always gaps and uncertainties. That’s exactly why I propose that in dynamic contexts, we shouldn’t rely on the illusion of “eternal validity,” but rather see knowledge as an ongoing process that must handle uncertainty and revision (JTC).

@javra
You find the idea of distinguishing between “static” and “dynamic” knowledge interesting and connect it with Plato’s (or rather Socrates’) skepticism in the Theaetetus. I think this connection is spot on and can be deepened by taking a more nuanced look at Platonic epistemology:
• Static Knowledge can be understood as an aspirational ideal, most clearly expressed in Plato’s treatment of mathematics, logic, or the theory of Forms—domains in which knowledge appears “unchanging and timeless.” While these ideals may seem to offer infallibility, they remain, for Plato, somewhat out of reach in the sensible world.
• Dynamic Knowledge, by contrast, aligns more closely with the core of Ancient Skepticism, as voiced through Socrates in the Theaetetus: the view that no claim to infallible knowledge can ultimately hold. Even the assertion that “there is no infallible knowledge must itself be fallible—thus placing it within the realm of DK; It’s important to emphasize that knowledge here is usually understood monistically, not dually—and that’s precisely the problem. In areas like everyday experience, empirical science, or historical understanding, knowledge is inherently provisional and context-dependent. Here, skeptical questions like “Can I be sure I have hands?” (cf. JTC) remain meaningful, even as practical certainties like “I have hands” are asserted. But depending on the epistemic standards at play, such claims are always vulnerable to what I call a crisis: "To differentiate dynamic knowledge with its crisis-like nature at this point, the Platonic conviction, ???? (doxa), can be substituted with the ancient Greek ?????? (krisis). ?????? also means an opinion but more importantly, it conveys assertion and judgment, implying a crossroads. Thus, the structure and effectiveness of the JTB definition are preserved, with the difference that it is adapted to the reality and limits of concept knowledge." (see JTC, p. 25)

In this light, Plato doesn’t simply reject knowledge, but dramatizes the limits and tensions between the ideal of certainty and the reality of fallibility—between SK and DK. The aporia in dialogues like the Theaetetus reveals not a collapse of knowledge, but a shift toward understanding it as dynamic, contextual, and always open to revision.

In other words: Plato’s JTB framework implicitly aims at fixing knowledge in timeless validity, yet remains in a paradoxical or aporetic state due to the underlying “either/or” between change/unchange and temporal/timeless (see the Ship of Theseus).
JTC, by contrast, makes visible that in many contexts, knowledge must be continually justified, challenged, or defended anew. The duality opens up a “both/and” perspective, depending on the nature of the object under investigation. The two perspectives don’t contradict each other—they complement one another. That, in my view, is what makes the distinction between SK and DK fruitful.

Reply to DasGegenmittel I'm very glad we agree.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

You mention that knowledge in everyday life isn’t really “stable and reliable” the way we often wish it were—or the way the JTB definition implies. The Gettier case is really just an elegant illustration of this. You suggest instead focusing on practical justification before taking action.

This aligns very well with my introduction of Dynamic Knowledge: we might try to treat knowledge as a solid foundation, but in reality, there are always gaps and uncertainties. That’s exactly why I propose that in dynamic contexts, we shouldn’t rely on the illusion of “eternal validity,” but rather see knowledge as an ongoing process that must handle uncertainty and revision (JTC).

Your formulation seems unnecessarily complicated to me. As I see it, the purpose of knowledge is to allow us to make decisions, to act, effectively and safely. Recognizing there will always be uncertainties in that knowledge, we need to decide how much risk of failure we can tolerate and how much justification we need to limit that risk. In order to provide that level of uncertainty, we need to determine what the consequences of failure are. If I risk losing $10 in a bet, the consequences and required justification are small. If the risks include endangering human life, much more justification is needed.

So, in this context, knowledge is adequately justified belief based on the consequences of failure.

Hmmm, remind me why Gettier is even a problem.

The businessman believed himself to be justified that the time was correct. However, in retrospect, after learning that the clock was broken, he would realize that his belief wasn't justified. The clock was right only twice a day, and just by chance he picked one of those. His belief wasn't justified, it was only apparently justified, and it was true merely by luck.

Truth, as @flannel jesus points out, is always uncertain. Perhaps the same holds for justification as well. What counts as justification is always subject to revision in the light of new information. We only ever think something is true, and we only ever think its truth is justified. Therefore, we only ever think we know something, and that belief needs to always be held in proper suspicion. At least for what @DasGegenmittel calls dynamic knowledge.

Could that be all there is to it?

@T Clark

TL;DR: Your proposal works well as a practical heuristic. But without a clearer framework, many of the beliefs we treat as “knowledge” wouldn’t actually qualify — not because they’re false, but because their justification dissolves over time. Justified True Crisis (JTC) formalizes that pragmatism by asking why we treat something as “justified enough,” when we take the Weiji-Jump, and how we manage that risk epistemically.
Not to complicate knowledge, but to take its fragility seriously — and to ground it in conceptual knowledge: not claims about reality itself, but about the best models we have at a given time. Without that, we risk treating coincidence as certainty. And once the world changes, we confabulate continuity — while JTB keeps calling it knowledge, even if the bottle has already shattered.

In more Detail:
I see your point. You’re offering a pragmatic perspective that I broadly agree with: knowledge must enable action despite uncertainty. In my work on Dynamic Knowledge (DK) and Justified True Crisis (JTC), the goal isn’t to complicate things unnecessarily, but rather to methodically account for that uncertainty — without falling into dogmatic pseudo-certainty.

You write: “Knowledge is adequately justified belief based on the consequences of failure.” That’s very close to what I argue with JTC. The key difference is that JTC doesn’t just focus on the immediate utility of a belief for action. It also emphasizes the awareness of epistemic crisis — the recognition that our justification may be context-sensitive, fragile, or even coincidental. The Weiji-Jump (??; meaning crisis, precisely combines this with the risk (?: wei) associated with uncertainty and the opportunity (?: ji) into one term.; Inspired by Kierkegaard’s concept of the "leap of faith") refers to precisely that moment: a decision is made despite uncertainty, but with a reflective grasp of the risks involved. I’m not just proposing a new definition, but outlining a form of epistemic responsibility — especially important in complex, dynamic environments.

Now, why does this need to be more than JTB or a pragmatic cost-benefit approach? Because those models collapse when confronted with time-sensitive or shifting contexts. Let me illustrate this with a simple case:

Imagine you see a bottle sitting on a table at 12:00. You say, “The bottle is intact.” At 12:02, you hear a crash — it has fallen and shattered.
Did you know the bottle was intact?

Under JTB: ? justified (you saw it), ? true (at the time), ? believed — so: knowledge.

But epistemically, your statement is unstable. What you actually knew was: “The bottle was intact at 12:00.” Without temporal indexing, your statement becomes retroactively misleading — even though it was “true” in a narrow JTB sense. The JTB model implicitly assumes that once a belief qualifies as knowledge, it remains so — even if the real-world referent (like an intact bottle) changes moments later, unless we explicitly update or retract the claim. But if we continue to treat the original statement as knowledge after the bottle breaks, we’re no longer tracking reality — we’re confabulating coherence where none exists. Consider as well Gettier’s job application case: at t?, Smith believes he knows that “Jones will get the job” (definiendum) and “has ten coins in his pocket” (definiens). However, at t?, it turns out that Smith himself gets the job and — unknowingly — also has ten coins in his pocket (similar to the broken bottle; new information).

This is where DK becomes essential (and more detailed):
• DKa addresses how a concept (e.g., “intact”) adjusts to the context and change.
• DKh tracks whether that concept remains coherent across time.

These two components are complementary; both necessary and jointly sufficient to describe knowledge in dynamic settings. JTC operationalizes this into a model for decision-making: not just whether you’re justified, but when, how, and under what conditions of risk you’re willing to treat a belief as knowledge.


@hypericin Great summary — yes, that’s exactly the core of dynamic knowledge. But the reason Gettier still matters is that it shows how easily we confuse fragile, coincidental beliefs for solid knowledge. It’s not just a theoretical issue — it’s a practical warning: we often act on what only seems justified in retrospect.

The Ship of Theseus illustrates how both identity and knowledge can shift over time — subtly, gradually — without us noticing. That’s the danger of dogmatic knowledge: it assumes timeless certainty and ignores change. In dynamic contexts, this isn’t just naïve — it’s a failure of risk management.

That’s where Justified True Crisis (JTC) comes in: it reframes knowledge not as a fixed state, but as a responsible, time-bound assertion made in awareness of uncertainty.

Here, conceptual knowledge plays a key role. It’s not knowledge of reality itself, but of our best available concepts — abstracted, structured, and always partial. We don’t access the world directly; we model it. As Popper argued, our theories are nets we cast to catch the world — but we must never forget they are nets.

JTC takes that seriously: it treats knowledge as something we claim through concepts, knowing they’re fallible — but also knowing they’re the most reliable tools we have to navigate a changing world.

Reply to hypericin dynamic knowledge aka "we're doing the best we can, and according to the best we can, this seems right right now".

Honestly yeah, I don't think there's all that much to it. We have degrees of confidence, things we're almost certain of and things that are a bit more speculative.

As long as you're self aware enough to tell when you should be certain, when you should be very confident, and when you should have a belief that's easily shaken by new evidence, you should be okay.

Reply to DasGegenmittel

The point is that truth as representation or correspondence has many failures to keep pace with reality. In any case we are still restricted to the subject-object division. That is why I advocate the construction of knowledge as working with reality. A truth is not something you discover or think about or believe in. But in a very different way it is something that is constructed. The subjective part should not be taken as the epicenter from which knowledge is constructed. If we take scientific work as an example we are actually working with reality constructing synthetic identities in which theories, phenomena, operations and relations converge in the same flow of human action in a harmonic way so to speak.

Reply to DasGegenmittel
I agree with pretty much every thing you say. The one part we may differ is that I question the validity of the Gettier problem. In the sense that it attacks JTB. If the businessman was not justified in his belief, then it is not a counterexample of JTB. It's just that, to truly know whether something is a JTB, we need to adopt the omniscient perspective implicitly taken in the thought experiment. In the real world, empirical knowledge is always provisional.

@hypericin Yes, absolutely—we share similar perspectives. Still, Gettier remains important because he challenges us to explain the lack of supposed knowledge in a way that the current debate around Gettier cases fails to grasp. Highlighting the problems that arise from this and offering a way out of the conceptual fly-bottle is precisely what I aim to do.

Plato and Aristotle both knew—as I believe you do as well—that JTB alone is insufficient in dynamic contexts (though it may suffice in static ones), contrary to the dominant interpretation today. Consider, for example, Plato’s aporia at the end of the Theaetetus, or Aristotle’s view that statements about the future are contingent. If one were to claim that Plato believed JTB applies meaningfully in dynamic contexts, his entire theory of Forms—and the idea of the fleeting shadows of the sensible world—would be rendered meaningless.

Gettier appeals to our modern intuition that we can have knowledge of the temporal and changeable world, as @JuanZu also illustrates. Unfortunately, this assumption is flawed. Every perception—even when enhanced by technological means—is only an approximation of reality, because reality itself is temporal and mutable. What appears whole in one moment can be altered in the next. We cannot see when atoms are missing, nor can we perceive the flow of electrons. Our perception saturates reality in such a way that we experience things as unified objects or quantities, though they are fundamentally individual—take the example of the original kilogram (which wasn't a kilogram anymore because of radiation of itself), which has been replaced by definitions grounded in natural constants (which, at least for now, are considered invariant).

Subjective human perception cannot be eliminated by supposedly objective, yet still technologically mediated, perception. Technology may offer finer resolution than our senses, but it too is bound by the limits of perception. It is a substitutive tool—not a replacement. That’s why epistemic humility is crucial, and, where possible, the use of tools—as @JuanZu implied—is helpful.

But knowledge is only possible of concepts that attempt to capture this mutable and temporal world. And since, as @hypericin rightly noted, true knowledge in a changing world would require an omniscient perspective—which we cannot attain—we ultimately cannot possess absolute knowledge. Many resist this idea, which is why they cling to a kind of dogmatic pseudo-knowledge.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Plato and Aristotle both knew—as I believe you do as well—that JTB alone is insufficient in dynamic contexts (though it may suffice in static ones), contrary to the dominant interpretation today.

I was going to ask you if Gettier problems are really all that much different from the Allegory of the Cave, but I bounced it off ChatGpt first, and it didn't seem like I was making much of a point, but I don't know. They say all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. Is there some truth to that here?

That’s an interesting question @RogueAI – one I’ve actually never thought about this way before, since Gettier cases and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave usually aren’t connected in academic philosophy, at least not explicitly. So thank you for that. And yes, there’s definitely something to it: both deal with the question of what real knowledge is, and both expose forms of false or illusory knowledge. In Gettier cases, we have a “justified true belief” that, on closer inspection, turns out to be a mere coincidence. Similarly, the prisoners in the cave take shadows on the wall for reality, simply because they lack access to the bigger picture. Both scenarios reveal that knowledge requires more than justification and truth – it also needs context, perspective, and an awareness of epistemic change. In that sense, the Cave even anticipates aspects of the so-called (atypical) Fake Barn Gettier case: the illusion seems real because it occurs under epistemically unreliable conditions.

Plato covered an astonishing range of topics and shaped them in a way that still resonates – that’s part of why he holds such a foundational status. But that doesn’t mean everything else is just derivative. I think the idea that “all philosophy is a footnote to Plato” can be misleading. There are independent contributions. But maybe that’s not the point. We all stand in relation to what came before us – and that’s a good thing. The key is to stay aware of those connections so we can recognize what we might want to do differently.

Reply to DasGegenmittel :up:

Welcome to the forum!

Just as a side note, this is the intro to Flowers for Algernon, and it's always made me tear up:

Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Every perception—even when enhanced by technological means—is only an approximation of reality

This is precisely the idea that I criticize. If we abandon the idea that we are trying to represent reality faithfully, the matter becomes something very different. Science can no longer be conceived as knowledge but as technique. A human technique that, as I have said, constitutes synthetic identities. That is, as a device of reality that can function or not. Here to function means to be in continuity with reality but no longer in a representative sense of our beliefs but in a sense of fitting or adjustment. So a truth is not something that is discovered but that is produced, truth is the synthetic identity where different courses of action converge and resonate with each other, as a well-adjusted device.

Reply to DasGegenmittel

You put a lot of emphasis on change. I'm wondering if you are under emphasizing a more fundamental epistemic problem.

As I see it, the core problem of knowledge is that we don't perceive reality itself, but rather we experience sensations which are something like signals emanating from reality, much like Plato's shadows. Based on these signals, we construct models of the reality that produced them. The problem is, there are always multiple models that fit the signals we receive. Some seem more likely, some less, some seem absurd, yet for any set of observations there is never just one possible model. This is true both of everyday life and of science.

This directly leads to the Gettier problem. The businessman saw the clock , and saw the train arrive at the proper time. Naturally he assumed that the clock was functioning, and had told him the correct time. He probably never considered the alternate model which also equally fit his observations: that the clock was broken, but by chance was stopped at the correct time. With imagination you can construct still less likely, yet consistent, models (i.e. the clock was painted on the wall, or a hallucination sent to him by a benevolent train spirit).

Notably, this problem would obtain even in a static, unchanging universe.

What do you think? How does this jibe with JTC?

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Your proposal works well as a practical heuristic. But without a clearer framework, many of the beliefs we treat as “knowledge” wouldn’t actually qualify — not because they’re false, but because their justification dissolves over time.

The required justification applies at the time when a decision is required, not at some time in the future when previous justifications have "dissolved." If things change, additional justification may be needed, again, depending on the consequences of failure.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

In my work on Dynamic Knowledge (DK) and Justified True Crisis (JTC), the goal isn’t to complicate things unnecessarily, but rather to methodically account for that uncertainty — without falling into dogmatic pseudo-certainty...

...JTC doesn’t just focus on the immediate utility of a belief for action. It also emphasizes the awareness of epistemic crisis — the recognition that our justification may be context-sensitive, fragile, or even coincidental.

In my experience as an engineer, accounting for uncertainty is the decider's job, it's part of the engineering process and there are specific standards of practice. Strikes me that is true for other fields also. It's the deciders responsibility to evaluate the uncertainty, acceptable risk, and level of justification available and make their decisions on that basis.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Imagine you see a bottle sitting on a table at 12:00. You say, “The bottle is intact.” At 12:02, you hear a crash — it has fallen and shattered.
Did you know the bottle was intact?

Under JTB: ? justified (you saw it), ? true (at the time), ? believed — so: knowledge.

But epistemically, your statement is unstable. What you actually knew was: “The bottle was intact at 12:00.” Without temporal indexing, your statement becomes retroactively misleading — even though it was “true” in a narrow JTB sense. The JTB model implicitly assumes that once a belief qualifies as knowledge, it remains so — even if the real-world referent (like an intact bottle) changes moments later, unless we explicitly update or retract the claim.

I've already stated that JTB is not a good definition of knowledge. My definition - adequately justified belief - addresses the issue you identify, without unnecessary complication.

@RogueAI beautifully written passage! :)

@JuanZu I find it exciting to think about it from a different angle. What I still struggle with is that knowledge seems so difficult to perceive. So, we’re working with reality, which is a good thing. And that’s what we do every day in our private lives and, let’s say, in science as well. Things happen—some we perceive, some we don’t—some we understand, some we don’t, and some we can justify, others not. That’s roughly the state you describe as harmonious, when thought of prior to any kind of language. But once we begin forming concepts, things become imprecise—and I agree with that. However, I don’t think it’s enough to rely solely on experience, because it doesn’t allow us to sufficiently anticipate how the world is to be understood. Only by digitizing the world into concepts can we make predictions about things not yet encountered. We can’t think the world 1:1 in all its atoms, nor perceive it that way in everyday or scientific practice. I hope I’ve captured the core of your thought.

@hypericin You point out two major problems that I also recognize:

1. Digitalization: Reality is digitalized through perception into something we can process. Things appear black or white … perception draws the line. But after many layers of complexity, things that are fundamentally different may appear the same—for example, a clock that’s broken yet shows the correct time, or more starkly, the man with ten coins who was thought to be Jones but turns out to be Smith. In a reality unshaped by linguistic digitalization, such a case wouldn’t pose a problem—we’d simply be surprised that Smith also has ten coins. Our expectation just wouldn’t have matched what turned out to be the case.

2. Alternatives: You bring up alternatives. That’s discussed in science
under the terms “relevant alternatives” and “possible worlds.” It’s a popular line of thought—and yes, there’s something to it, because the world can indeed be different from what we expect: see the lottery problem. Our expectations can be wrong, which is why Popper sees them as nets—something can always slip through. That’s why, in my view, we only ever have knowledge of concepts, but never of reality itself, since it could always turn out to be wrong. It’s a knowledge process that can never be fully completed, only made more precise.

Discussing these alternatives and finding the best concept we currently have is a collective process of weighing and refining: see Rashomon effect. After all, perceptions and assessments differ. Some people believe they’ll win the lottery, others think that’s very unlikely. These processes—especially when they’re self-reflective—I view, at a higher level of complexity, as DKorg: a kind of knowledge that’s aware of itself, like in societies or in individuals who think about their own knowledge and thus become aware of what they’ve learned. It’s like a knowledge about one’s own knowledge. Coming back to your point: JTC makes it explicit that our assessment can be wrong, precisely because we can be wrong. We’re not omniscient, as you once put it.

Viewing the universe as static only presents this problem if the observer is temporal and subject to change: I love the idea of the Trainspirit. xD
He himself is part of the knowledge question, because, as hinted in DKorg, he seeks knowledge of himself. Even the one who strives for this only has a concept of himself—and will have to adjust that over time. But stepping back a bit: when we freeze things—make them static and “unbecoming”—we can make absolute statements about them, at least insofar as we only refer to what can be logically derived. The same holds for mathematical, truly static knowledge. But this gets very complicated here, because the dimensions we have to consider when it comes to real things are far more diverse. It’s harder to calculate atoms, molecules, electrons, and quarks than just 2+2=4. Humans make mistakes because they are temporal and changeable. But we learn and adapt. So the JTC model has a basic assumption: the reasonable or rational believer.

There are some other problems tied to this, but I haven’t had the time to work them in or fully think them through. The published essay is also only half the story. It’s really important to also address perception, because there are various effects that need explaining. I’ve split it up because I don’t want people to get discouraged by a wall of text—36 pages is already too much. The JTC essay is the highest level I could reach on my own without the supervision of a professor. I work as a philosophy teacher, but not as an academic. And I’ve already put way too much work into it, not knowing whether it’ll ever pay off. But I still believe in it (for now) and feel responsible for the idea—and it’s a joy to talk about it with you all. :)

@T Clark If knowledge is to be defined, it must have necessary and sufficient conditions. These conditions indicate that whenever they are fulfilled, what is defined—here, knowledge—must always be present. That’s the point of a definition. JTB fails here because, as shown with the broken bottle, this knowledge state is subject to change. If time is a factor in the definition—because knowledge doesn’t work without it—then time must be included in the definition. It’s not enough to adjust belief or the concept retroactively, or to simply cancel out previous knowledge. It’s clear here that something wasn’t known, and that the definition fails. And yes, knowledge is proclaimed before the expected event occurs, but in dynamic scenarios, we see that this can be wrong, even though one did everything possible to avoid the error—just like in Gettier cases. Smith was adequately justified, but it turns out that this alone isn’t enough to guarantee truth: the boss ends up choosing Smith instead of Jones. Your approach also resonates with “reliabilism” in the sciences. Excluding truth entirely would be dangerous, in my opinion, because then nothing would actually have to happen or exist. What would we even be talking about then? The point about standards is very important in dynamic environments, because they arise only there, not in static ones—see epistemic contextualism (e.g., the Flight or Bank Case). My proposal, JTC, offers an alternative definition that counters this through a dual conception of knowledge by introducing the crisis, which describes a branching path and includes temporal awareness. On page 29, the exact conditions are clearly defined and less implicit. I definitely see myself in your perspective, and the attempt to make things less complicated is always a good one. How would you make time and changeability visible in your definition? After all, they are—at least in dynamic conditions—definitional.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

You pointed out the tension between Parmenides’ being and Heraclitus’ becoming, referencing Aristotle, who saw these opposites as irreconcilable. Your proposed solution is a dualism that separates both aspects. This is precisely where my distinction between Static Knowledge and Dynamic Knowledge comes in:
• SK refers to timeless, secure knowledge (e.g., mathematics).
• DK is tied to changing conditions (e.g., the fastest route to work today).

This roughly correlates with the division in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, theoretical and practical knowledge. Each of those two is divided into branches and there is a differing degree of certitude expected from each different field. You'll notice though, that the two are not completely divided in reality, as practical knowledge consists of applying theory, and theoretical knowledge would be useless if there was no practical purpose for it. This is why intuition is assigned the highest position, because intuition is the type of knowledge which oversees these relations.

So in theory we divide the two, being and becoming, as fundamentally incompatible, but in reality, and in practise, the two continually intermix. If they weren't actually intermixing, we'd have "the interaction problem" commonly attributed to dualism. The reality of the intermixing creates the need for a third principle which provides the basis for describing the intermixing.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Immutable and timeless elements (see deduction) are often conflated with mutable and temporal ones (see induction), as is the case in many Gettier examples. The expectation that knowledge should work the same way in inductive contexts as it does in deductive reasoning is, as you imply, unfounded. The epistemic monism currently dominant in the field is therefore deeply problematic. That’s why I wrote my paper Justified True Crisis—because this issue often goes unrecognized. It’s reassuring to know there are people out there who think along similar lines.

I believe that this is the issue of "understanding". Understanding requires the differentiation between the types. Conflating everything into a monism produces misunderstanding, and is itself a form of misunderstanding.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

In relation to Plato’s Theaetetus, you argue that knowledge cannot be understood as “Justified True Belief” (JTB) because we can never completely rule out the possibility of falsehood. Therefore, “truth” cannot serve as a sufficient criterion, and JTB itself cannot be equated with knowledge. This interpretation reflects a typical post-Gettier skepticism, namely that the concept of truth itself remains “inaccessible.”

In my model, this doesn’t mean we discard truth altogether. Rather, the discussion around Gettier cases (e.g., the stopped clock) highlights the need to distinguish between static and dynamic knowledge. We still need “truth” as a goal and standard for knowledge, but we must accept that in DK-domains, our beliefs are constantly subject to revision, and we can never claim absolute certainty in changing environments.

This is the complex issue, what directs the intermixing, the guiding light, the intuition. Notice that you say "we still need 'truth' as a goal". That itself, may not be true. The goal is the end, that for the sake of which, what Plato called "the good", and goals are freely chosen. So knowledge appears to have a deep pragmatic base, the practical side driving its advancements and evolution toward what is deemed as "good". You can see how modern science has developed toward prediction as its goal, and the capacity to predict does not require truth. Modern mathematics and other theoretical principles are designed toward statistics and probabilities, and the truth about what is going on behind the scenes of the things being predicted is unimportant.

The result is a separation between 'the good" which is the goal of knowledge, and "the truth" which is merely a possible goal. So epistemology may set out JTB as the goal for knowledge, an ideal, what knowledge ought to be in theory, but knowledge in reality is not an immutable eternal thing, it is actually evolving with practise. Because of this, "Truth" is replaced by other goals, and justification is relative to those goals, and there is a difference, or separation between knowledge as it ought to be, and as it really is.

Personally, I find no issue between JTB and change. That's what proper indexing/timestamps are for.

Gettier exposed much less familiar and/or commonly recognized issues. One main issue(by my lights) was the notion of belief Gettier worked with. Western convention shares this problem as well. One consequence of that misguided/incomplete notion of belief is that the belief under consideration in many(arguably all) Gettier cases, as well as many other traditional conventional considerations, is not equivalent to the belief of S(whomever that may be). Salva Veritate applies.

The first case, S believes he himself will get the job. "The man with ten coins in his pocket" when severed from a speaker who is only referring to themself has a very different set of truth conditions than when we keep in mind that the speaker was referring to himself. "The man with ten coins in his pocket" was referring to S himself, and no one else. Severed from S, "The man with ten coins in his pocket" refers to any man. A change in truth conditions is a change in meaning, and as such that alone serves as adequate ground to reject that example outright. S never believed anyone other than himself would get the job. We know that. S did not get the job. Therefore, S's belief was false. The lesson: Not all belief is equivalent to propositions. The problem: We treated(and still treat) belief as if it/they were equivalent to propositions.

The second example has Gettier incompletely reporting on S's belief. Belief that Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona is believed to be true because S believes Jones owns a Ford. The proper accounting practice keeps this in mind. Convention/Gettier does/did not. Again, the problem is severing the belief from the person and then treating it as a proposition without attachment to a believer. He believed that the proposition "Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona" was true because Jones owned a Ford. It was not true because of that. Therefore, S's belief was false and misrepresented by Gettier/convention. Same lesson. Same problem.

:wink:

Carry on.

Quoting creativesoul

Personally, I find no issue between JTB and change. That's what proper indexing/timestamps are for.

Timestamps are not sufficient, because what is at issue is the fundamental difference between a describable state-of-being, and the activity of becoming. What Aristotle demonstrated is that we cannot adequately describe any activity as a succession of states-of-being because there is a basic incompatibility between these two.

If state A changes becomes state B at a later time, then the change has occurred in the time between A and B. If we describe the change between A and B as state C, then changes have occurred between A and C, and also between C and B. If we continue to describe changes in terms of intermediary states, we'd posit D as between A and C, and E between C and B, and we are on our way to an infinite regress of states-of-being, without ever describing the activity which is the change which occurs in the time between distinct states. Therefore we cannot ever adequately describe active change, or becoming, in terms of states-of-being.

@creativesoul

When belief is detached from the believer and treated purely as a proposition, the truthmaker relation shifts. The truthmaker is no longer embedded in the subject’s intentional context but tied to an abstract sentence whose reference becomes contingent. This shift is central to nearly all Gettier-style cases: there are atypical cases like the fake barn case. The Fake Barn case is atypical among Gettier cases because the subject’s belief is based on accurate perception and seems justified internally. The epistemic flaw arises not from faulty reasoning, but from an unreliable environment the subject is unaware of.

In my framework, I describe this as a Conceptual Coincidence: the belief appears justified and aligns with a true outcome, but the alignment is accidental. It’s like inserting a puzzle piece from a different set—formally, it fits, but the image is wrong. The outline matches, but the content does not.

A key factor here is time. In dynamic contexts, justification, truth, and belief do not remain synchronously aligned. What was once justified can lose its validity as new information arises—while the belief itself may still turn out to be true. Time, therefore, does not merely order beliefs chronologically; it introduces epistemic instability. Indexing or timestamping can document this shift, but they do not prevent it.

Dynamic Knowledge (DK) addresses such situations by treating knowledge as processual and time-dependent. Justified True Crisis (JTC) refers to the kind of knowledge asserted under these conditions—temporarily matching, but potentially revisable. The “correct” piece may later need to be replaced when more of the picture is revealed.

?

@Metaphysician Undercover

You’re pointing to an important distinction: knowledge operates between the poles of stability and change. In DK domains, propositional truth alone is insufficient because meaning and justification shift with time and context. That’s why I introduce Justified True Crisis (JTC) as the epistemic format suited to DK. It replaces the static notion of belief (doxa) with the structurally unstable moment of krisis.

Intuition plays a mediating role. It signals when assumed stability gives way to transformation—similar to Plato’s atopon, the strange or out-of-place. This is when a weiji-jump becomes necessary: a decision under uncertainty, justified in the moment, but open to revision.

In practice, knowledge does not always aim at truth alone. It often aims at orientation, prediction, or action. This makes truth one normative value among others. In dynamic contexts, epistemic justification becomes relative to goals, not absolute. The Rashomon Effect is one example: multiple perspectives coexist without convergence on a single, stable truth.

Timestamps, while not sufficient, are nevertheless necessary for any attempt to articulate change. The shift from being to becoming cannot be described adequately through a chain of static states. As Aristotle argued, change is not captured by a succession of positions; rather, it exists between them. It’s a different kind of phenomenon—continuous, processual, and epistemically elusive. Yet without temporal markers, we would lack the coordinates needed to locate, compare, or even recognize shifts in state. Timestamps provide the necessary structure within which the insufficiency of static snapshots becomes visible. They do not capture becoming, but they allow us to trace its outline.

In this context, DK is not a lack of certainty, but an ideal in its own right. Knowledge is modeled as a limit process: not something one has, but something one approaches. The limit in the DKa and DKh formulas represents the asymptotic approach to ideal knowledge in dynamic contexts. It shows that knowledge evolves step by step, reducing uncertainty over time, but never fully reaches absolute certainty: see as well bayesian epistemology as complementary approach. It models the continuous refinement of justified beliefs under changing conditions. I distinguish two complementary dimensions:

• DKa (Adaptability): How a concept (K) adjusts to a given context (C) at a specific time (t). Textually:
DKa(K, t, C) = the limit of f(JTC(K, t), Adaptation of K to C at t) as ? approaches zero.

• DKh (Historicity): How a concept (K) maintains coherence across different time points. Textually:
DKh(K, t) = the limit of f(JTC(K, t), Adaptation of K over time) as ? approaches zero.

DKa and DKh function similar to a time-change diagram, much like the way blood sugar is monitored in diabetics. DKa reflects momentary adaptations—like daily glucose levels—while DKh captures the overall trajectory, akin to the HbA1c value. This illustrates a key insight: to meaningfully understand a state over time, two components are required—its immediate responsiveness (adaptability) and its long-term continuity (historicity). Only together do they define a coherent identity through change (and time).

JTC mirrors the structure of JTB—justification, truth, and belief remain essential—but reinterprets them dynamically. Truth is no longer static but contextualized within time. Justification adapts, and belief becomes a crisis-aware assertion. Together, these preserve the functional core of JTB while enabling knowledge to operate under uncertainty. JTC is not a rejection but a temporal simulation of JTB—an epistemic snapshot in motion, like Zeno’s arrow suspended mid-flight.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Timestamps, while not sufficient, are nevertheless necessary for any attempt to articulate change. The shift from being to becoming cannot be described adequately through a chain of static states. As Aristotle argued, change is not captured by a succession of positions; rather, it exists between them. It’s a different kind of phenomenon—continuous, processual, and epistemically elusive. Yet without temporal markers, we would lack the coordinates needed to locate, compare, or even recognize shifts in state. Timestamps provide the necessary structure within which the insufficiency of static snapshots becomes visible. They do not capture becoming, but they allow us to trace its outline.

I agree with this, and this use of time stamps to understand change is commonly found as cause and effect, which is a temporal ordering. In physics, the matter gets complex because special relativity employs the principle of the relativity of simultaneity. This allows that spatially separated events can have different temporal ordering depending on the frame of reference used. I believe it is common practise in cosmology for example, to choose the frame of reference according to principles of giving the proper temporal order to events which are known to be causally related. That is the "light cone" principle.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

In this context, DK is not a lack of certainty, but an ideal in its own right. Knowledge is modeled as a limit process: not something one has, but something one approaches. The limit in the DKa and DKh formulas represents the asymptotic approach to ideal knowledge in dynamic contexts. It shows that knowledge evolves step by step, reducing uncertainty over time, but never fully reaches absolute certainty: see as well bayesian epistemology as complementary approach. It models the continuous refinement of justified beliefs under changing conditions. I distinguish two complementary dimensions:

To me, this is equally problematic, because it sets out what knowledge ought to be as an ideal, without properly addressing what knowledge really is, in its actual existence, the ontology of knowledge. The fact that it "never fully reaches absolute certainty" indicates that knowledge never is the way that it is shown to be. So we are still stuck with the same problem that Plato demonstrated with JTB, we do not have a good understanding of what "knowledge" actually is, in its real existence.

Unless we address the issue of what knowledge actually is, how it exists as the property of particular individuals, we still have that ought/is separation between what knowledge ought to be, and what it really is. And, if we keep focusing on the ought, without addressing the is, the knowledge which is the property of individuals, might actually be progressing in a different direction and we wouldn't even know it. So for example, we may be allowing our criteria for justification to be getting more and more lax, so that the knowledge which individuals have may be actually getting a lower and lower degree of certainty, and moving away from the ideal, though we claim we are moving toward the ideal.

The "uncertainty principle" is an example of how we are inclined to allow ourselves to move away from the goal of certainty, allowing uncertainty right into our knowledge, as an acceptable part of it. The matter/form division of Aristotle relegated unintelligibility to matter, ensuring that only the aspects of reality which were designated as intelligible were allowed to be part of our formal knowledge. The unintelligible aspects were segregated, and excluded.

Elsewhere, I've argued that the inclination toward "formalism" is a cause of this trend, to allow aspects known to be unintelligible, to enter into knowledge. In its quest for absolute, ideal principles, (which is really impossible) formalism allows elements of uncertainty right into the basic premises, the axioms. This contaminates the entire formal structure, allowing uncertainty to lurk everywhere instead of excluding it from the formal structure, which ensures that valid logic produces certainty and relegates uncertainty to the truth or falsity of the premises. The formalist axioms already incorporate uncertainty.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

JTC mirrors the structure of JTB—justification, truth, and belief remain essential—but reinterprets them dynamically. Truth is no longer static but contextualized within time. Justification adapts, and belief becomes a crisis-aware assertion. Together, these preserve the functional core of JTB while enabling knowledge to operate under uncertainty. JTC is not a rejection but a temporal simulation of JTB—an epistemic snapshot in motion, like Zeno’s arrow suspended mid-flight.

This appears like you are trying to justify uncertainty. This would be a step in the wrong direction, as explained above, a movement away from certainty.

@Metaphysician Undercover I really enjoy writing with you.

I’ll definitely take a closer look at the light cone principle; it sounds very interesting, especially given how it frames causality and temporal order across different reference systems. That kind of relativistic nuance seems highly relevant when thinking about knowledge in dynamic, time-sensitive contexts.

As for formalism, I would see its value not as a denial of epistemic complexity, but as a strategic abstraction that helps us handle that complexity more clearly. Bertrand Russell emphasized formal logic as a way to bring rigor and transparency to philosophical analysis, especially in contexts where intuition alone can mislead. Similarly, Wittgenstein, particularly in the Tractatus, showed how formal language structures can outline the limits of what can meaningfully be said—and, by implication, where silence (or contingency) begins.

So while formalism may abstract from the flux of real experience, it also provides a frame within which uncertainty can be recognized and discussed, rather than hidden or mystified. In this sense, it remains a useful epistemic tool—even, or especially, in the face of contingency.

Knowledge is not always the same—its nature depends crucially on the kind of objects we are trying to understand; see your remarks on ontology. The structure of what we know determines the structure of how we can know it. The classical model of knowledge as Justified True Belief works especially well when we are dealing with static objects: things that are timeless, invariant, and independent of any observer. Mathematical truths, logical principles, or geometrical forms fall into this category. They do not change; they hold universally, and their truth is not context-dependent. In such cases, knowledge can be fixed and absolute. There is no room for contingency—no possibility that things could have been otherwise.

But many of the things we seek to understand are not static—they are dynamic. They unfold over time, they shift depending on context, and they are deeply tied to perspective. Political decisions, medical diagnoses, ethical judgments, historical interpretations—these are not states of being, but processes of becoming. Their truth is often provisional, subject to change as new information emerges. These are contingent realities: things could easily have turned out differently. And that is precisely where JTB begins to falter. It presupposes a stable truth, a single fixed point that can be justified and believed. But when the object of knowledge itself is in motion, this model fails to account for the epistemic dynamics involved.

Take, for instance, a medical diagnosis. Based on today’s data, it may be fully justified and considered true. Tomorrow, with new symptoms or better tests, it may need revision. Was the original diagnosis wrong? Not necessarily—it was true within its temporal and evidential context. The same applies to a weather forecast, a military decision made in the fog of war, or a policy shaped by incomplete data. These are not cases of error but of epistemic contingency. They demand a different kind of epistemology.

That’s where Justified True Crisis comes in. JTC keeps the structure of JTB—justification, truth, belief—but interprets it dynamically. Truth is no longer eternal, but indexed to time and circumstance. Justification becomes adaptive rather than static. And belief is no longer naïve conviction, but an assertion made in full awareness of crisis and fallibility. In this way, JTC does not abandon epistemic rigor—it deepens it by incorporating the ontological instability of dynamic objects.

JTC does not celebrate uncertainty—it makes it visible and manageable. It does not collapse into relativism, but recognizes that epistemic responsibility looks different when the object of knowledge is itself in flux. Those who insist on static certainty in dynamic contexts risk dogmatism. JTC, by contrast, models an epistemology of humility—one that knows that not all knowledge can be possessed; some knowledge must be navigated.

In this context, I’ve introduced the distinction between philosophía and philoprosdokía to articulate two complementary orientations within epistemology—and, more broadly, within philosophy as the love of wisdom (theory & practical orientation in one). Philosophía, the “love of (certain) knowledge,” seeks clarity, permanence, and formal structure; it reflects a top-down, analytical approach aiming at timeless truths and secure foundations. Philoprosdokía, the “love of expectation,” is attuned to temporality, contingency, and the unfolding of meaning; it aligns with the continental tradition’s interpretive, historical, and speculative character. Rather than opposing each other, these modes trace the spectrum between static and dynamic knowledge and echo Plato’s divided line: the former oriented toward the intelligible and unchanging, the latter toward the sensible and becoming. Together, they offer a more complete account of philosophical wisdom—one that integrates both structure and orientation, certainty and anticipation.

This distinction is not meant as a hierarchy, but as a hermeneutic tool—a way to understand different epistemic approaches in relation to the nature of their objects and aims. In this sense, it also mirrors the broader divide often drawn between analytic and continental philosophy: the former aligning more closely with philosophía in its emphasis on logical structure, language, and conceptual precision; the latter resonating with philoprosdokía, in its engagement with historicity, lived experience, and the open horizon of meaning.

Rather than reinforcing the gap between these traditions, the JTC framework—and the underlying distinction between philosophía and philoprosdokía—offers a shared space, in which both orientations find their place: one grounding, the other opening; one structuring, the other navigating. Together, they reflect the dual necessity of seeking understanding where stability is possible, and of maintaining responsiveness where contingency prevails.

Knowledge, in such cases, is not a state—it is a stance; see the quote at the beginning of the paper.

This dynamic interplay between philoprosdokía and philosophía also sheds light on the enduring challenge posed by Gettier cases. These thought experiments expose the fragility of knowledge when static definitions are applied to dynamic, time-sensitive scenarios. From the perspective of philosophía, Gettier cases appear as epistemic anomalies—exceptions to be patched. But through the lens of philoprosdokía, they are not failures, but symptoms of a deeper truth: that knowledge, when tied to contingent realities, resists fixation. JTC embraces this tension by reframing Gettier-style coincidence not as a flaw in the structure of knowledge, but as a sign of its temporality—an indication that some beliefs (credences) can only be justified within their moment, not beyond it. In this way, the Gettier problem becomes less a refutation of knowledge and more a doorway into a more flexible, temporally aware epistemology.

P.S. If you’re curious how this dual perspective plays out visually, take a look at the diagram in the JTC paper—it maps Static Knowledge and Dynamic Knowledge; Page 25.

Reply to DasGegenmittel
Thanks Das, I'm going to hold off on any further reply right now and take a look at your essay.

Quoting flannel jesus

there's no oracle who can tell us if that belief satisfies the T or not.

Can this be rounded off, though? Are there not cases where you would say, given there is literally no possible further indicator, that something can be secured in it's T-Truth? Say "It is raining right now"? I don't think brain in vat arguments do much to this. We could all be dreaming - so what? Without an indication that's happening, and plenty that it's not, why question?

Reply to AmadeusD when you say "no possible further indicator", you're saying "nothing further than the justification we currently have", so it's still the J doing all the work. The T is redundant.

I mean, what does J mean? Obviously justified, but justified in what? Justified in thinking the belief is true.

So what work is T doing in JTB, since the only access to truth you just laid out is a matter of justification, and not truth itself?

Maybe knowledge should be SJB, sufficiently justified belief.

Quoting flannel jesus

The T is redundant.

I think you've missed my point - that is T truth, as far as we could possibly conceive. I dont understand why we would say anything else.. I do think jettisoning truth works better on paper, but it certainly wouldn't be helpful for the general use.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

But once we begin forming concepts, things become imprecise—and I agree with that. However, I don’t think it’s enough to rely solely on experience, because it doesn’t allow us to sufficiently anticipate how the world is to be understood. Only by digitizing the world into concepts can we make predictions about things not yet encountered. We can’t think the world 1:1 in all its atoms, nor perceive it that way in everyday or scientific practice. I hope I’ve captured the core of your thought.

When we think of imprecision we still have the idea of knowledge as a representation of reality, that is to say, as similarity. But I take a different approach to the matter, since the idea of representation entails problems like the one you have pointed out.

However, we can think in another way. We can think of our relation to the world as the relation of a translator to a different language. Translation is never a representation but a transcription. It is a matter of places and times that are structured in the language of arrival from the times, places, distances, tempos, etc. of the language of departure. The source language is the world. Each translation does not try to reflect something of what is translated but imposes its own structure.

Consequently, it is no longer a question of the clock surpassing us and surpassing our concepts, but rather that our concepts irremediably, like any translation, do not represent anything other than converting it into something, hence the usefulness of the notion of transcription. We transcribe what the clock says, but this transcription is a completely different world. But fluid and changing, just like our clock. Our concepts are also fluid and changing because they are transcriptions such that if we could watch the time to the rhythm of the clock our thinking would change ceaselessly along with the clock.

We must ask ourselves if there is something as fixed and stable knowledge that is not changing as a "real time" transcription changes. So imprecision is not something proper and essential to the concept, but something relative like our physical impossibility to follow the clock in real time. But our knowledge is indeed something changeable like our clock, only that it differs in tempo, as a transcription can be made in real time or in delayed time. Thus the difference is not between being and becoming, but difference of becomings.

Reply to AmadeusD the T is implicit in the J. Idk what you mean by jettisoning truth, we're just getting rid of it as a criteria for what we call knowledge. We know a belief when it's reached a particular threshold of justification.

This post is not in response to anything specific discussed so far in this thread, but I just came across this discussion of Robert Boyle's ideas about knowledge in "The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science" by E.A. Burtt and I thought it was interesting, by which I mean I am sympathetic to it's point of view. This is a quote from Boyle, an Irish physicist living in the 1600s. "Verulam" refers to Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam.

Robert Boyle:“Our great Verulam attempted with more skill and industry (and not without some indignation) to restore the more modest and useful way practised by the ancients, of inquiry into particular bodies without hastening to make systems, into the request it formerly had; wherein the admirable industry of two of our London physicians, Gilbert and Harvey, had not a little assisted him. And I need not tell you that since him Descartes, Gassendi, and others, having taken in the application of geometrical theorems for the explanation of physical problems; he and they, and other restorers of natural philosophy, have brought the experimental and mathematical way of inquiry into nature, into at least as high and growing an esteem, as it ever possessed when it was most in vogue among the naturalists that preceded Aristotle.”

And here's Burtt's comment:

E.A. Burtt:If your ultimate aim is to know, deductions from the atomical or Cartesian principles are likely to give you most satisfaction; if your aim is control of nature in the interest of particular ends, you can often discover the necessary relations between qualities immediately experienced, without ascending to the top in the series of causes.

Reply to JuanZu
I have questions :

- You propose transcription as an alternative to representation – but how can a transcription be true or false if it explicitly rejects the notion of representing something external? (In representational terms, something is true if it matches reality, and false if it doesn’t. Truth means accurate correspondence between thought or language and the world.)

- If a transcription doesn’t mirror reality but instead "imposes its own structure" or creates "an entirely different world," then how do you determine whether a transcription is epistemically successful or not?

- Could you give a concrete example of what a transcription looks like – in everyday life, science, or philosophy – and how one would judge whether it is better or worse than another?

- And what does transcription look like linguistically? Since any form of language already implies differentiation, structure, and thus representation, how can transcription escape this? Isn’t every linguistic expression already a form of representation?

@T Clark
Aww, that’s amazing. :) It fits perfectly with the themes we discussed earlier here. If I had more time, I would study Bacon in greater depth.

Reply to flannel jesus I don't see how it could be, given it's stated separately? Justification is the reason for believing. Not it's veridicality. Also, that is jettisoning Truth from the concept. Not sure what was missed there, tbh. Truth has no use if your takes are to be the way of things. It's a pointless, senseless concept with no referent.

Quoting AmadeusD

Justification is the reason for believing. Not it's veridicality. Also, that is jettisoning Truth from the concept. Not sure what was missed there, tbh. Truth has no use if your takes are to be the way of things. It's a pointless, senseless concept with no referent.

Quoting flannel jesus

We know a belief when it's reached a particular threshold of justification.

This exchange made me think of this quote from Stephen J Gould.

Stephen J Gould:In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.

Reply to T Clark A good quote! And unless we're giving credence to religious revelation, I can't see another avenue for use of Truth.

Reply to T Clark Reply to AmadeusD

All the same, why justify any belief whatsoever if not to best evidence that the belief is in fact true (i.e., that the belief in fact does conform to that which is real)?

If no cogent answer can be here given, then, while in no way being infallible, declarative knowledge can only be "a belief which one can justify as being in fact true". Hence, JTB in the sense just mentioned.

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p.s.: Tacit knowledge, by its very properties, doesn't get justified by us, not until it becomes declared (if it can so be to begin with), at which juncture it becomes declarative knowledge as per the above - but this only if we are then able to so justify it as being true. For example, we all tacitly know ourselves to be human Earthlings (rather than Martians or some other extraterrestrial) - such as, for example, when reading a sci-fi novel about extraterrestrials - but we will not consciously find any need to provide justification for this tacit knowledge-that (which is different from tacit know-how; e.g. knowing how to riding a bicycle) until the moment it gets brought up into explicit conscious awareness as a concept and becomes in any way affirmed or upheld (i.e., declared) by us as conscious beings. That said, other forms of tacit knowledge - such as, as one universal example, our tacit knowledge of the wisdom, or it's degree, with which we are endowed - will not so easily become declarative knowledge on account of our inability to properly justify the position - this even when made explicit in consciousness. For, in the latter case, we do not commonly hold declarative knowledge of what wisdom is to begin with - this other than its rather vague dictionary definitions. .

Reply to AmadeusD it's funny that we both took that quote to be supporting our respective sides.

My side is saying, "belief" already means "I think it's true", and justified means "justified in thinking it's true", so to me, knowledge is just a belief that we're sufficiently justified in - that's what the quote is saying to me. So we don't call a belief knowledge when it's JTB, we call a belief knowledge when it's JB and the J is strong enough. T is the aim of the justification, we and the aim of knowledge, rather than an element inside of it.

Reply to flannel jesus

While I get what you’re saying, here fully utilizing the definitions of “belief” and “justification” you’ve provided, I yet believe that the truth component to declarative knowledge will in one way or another still be an important component. This for reasons such as the following (here trying my best to present a good and easy to understand example):

A blatantly given lie – say, that one is currently at the North Pole - will be a declared belief a) which the liar in question knows full well to be false and b) which the liar in question will nevertheless attempt to justify to the best of his/her ability so as to convince others of its truth.

Here, then, one has a rather commonplace example of what can be termed a Justified False Belief.

Is the known to be false belief which the liar upholds via justification then of itself the liar’s declarative knowledge of what in fact is the case? It will, after all, be a Justified Belief – but it will not be a belief that is both justified and true.

It seems obvious to me that, while the liar in question can well declaratively know that it is a JFB, the JB in question will nevertheless not be what the liar in question in fact knows to be the case.

Yes, one might start questioning the interpretation of the words "belief" and "justification" in the above example, yet lies do occur among humans often enough - and, imo, ought to be both taken into account and properly accounted for. In this case, as they pertain to knowledge.

Quoting javra

why justify any belief whatsoever if not to best evidence that the belief is in fact true (i.e., that the belief in fact does conform to that which is real)?

Belief that it is true doesn't rise to knowledge. Justifying that belief seems to be doing the work, and actual Truth not attainable. So, I return to comments about hte uselessness of 'Truth' in that conception. We don't have Truth in any meaningful sense, if any of the discussions of same are to be taken seriously. Claiming that something is true is far, far beyond what JTB does. A 'true' belief, is one which is justified. Gettier cases are the prime example of why the T cannot do the job you want it to.

Quoting flannel jesus

My side is saying, "belief" already means "I think it's true", and justified means "justified in thinking it's true"

Nowhere is this is Truth actually present. Just belief in it. So, we're in the same position, epistemically, as a JFB.

Quoting AmadeusD

So, I return to comments about hte uselessness of 'Truth' in that conception.

You'll notice I did not write nor specify "Truth" with a capital "T" - which I think we both interpret to be some sort of absolute or complete truth. I did define truth as conformity to what is real.

Are you then maintaining that "conformity to what is real" is useless?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Your notion of "change" is untenable. I'm reminded of Heraclites' river.

Change is irrelevant to JTB. At time t1(insert well-grounded true claim here) and viola!

Quoting AmadeusD

A good quote! And unless we're giving credence to religious revelation, I can't see another avenue for use of Truth.

As the quote indicates, Gould was specifically writing about scientific knowledge, not knowledge in general. He was an atheist, but I don't think what he wrote was intended to address religious revelation.

Quoting flannel jesus

it's funny that we both took that quote to be supporting our respective sides.

My side is saying, "belief" already means "I think it's true", and justified means "justified in thinking it's true", so to me, knowledge is just a belief that we're sufficiently justified in - that's what the quote is saying to me. So we don't call a belief knowledge when it's JTB, we call a belief knowledge when it's JB and the J is strong enough. T is the aim of the justification, we and the aim of knowledge, rather than an element inside of it.

As I understand it, what you've written here is consistent with what Gould wrote and with my understanding of what knowledge is, but, I think we agree, it is not justified true belief as it is usually formulated. You write "knowledge is just a belief that we're sufficiently justified in." I write "knowledge is adequately justified belief based on the consequences of failure." I think we're saying the same thing.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Indexing or timestamping can document this shift, but they do not prevent it.

Timestamping is not used to prevent change, whether that be changes in the way things are or our knowledge about them.

I suppose I'm not seeing the need for lengthy complicated explanations replete with the coinage of new concepts/notions/kinds of knowledge to help explain what's going on in Gettier cases.

The problem is belief, not justification. <-----That needs to be better put. The problem is that the accounting practice in use when setting out S's belief is a malpractice. Correcting the clear unambiguous misattribution of belief to S completely dissolves the purported problem.

Quoting javra

All the same, why justify any belief whatsoever if not to best evidence that the belief is in fact true (i.e., that the belief in fact does conform to that which is real)?

If no cogent answer can be here given, then, while in no way being infallible, declarative knowledge can only be "a belief which one can justify as being in fact true". Hence, JTB in the sense just mentioned.

As I understand justified true belief as it is usually discussed, it does not mean justified to best evidence that it is true. It means really, actually, for real true, which, of course, nothing ever is. That's why JTB is such a bonehead definition.

Quoting T Clark

It means really, actually, for real true, which, of course, nothing ever is. That's why JTB is such a bonehead definition.

Replace "true" with "conforming to that which is real". Is nothing ever conformant to what is real?

As to the traditional JTB interpretation, I agree that the interpretations could use adjustments.

Quoting javra

Are you then maintaining that "conformity to what is real" is useless?

I'm with T Clark here. Nothing meets the criteria you're using, without plain supposition. Therefore, for what the word truth is mean to entail, it is useless as a criteria for belief in these terms, imo. I understand the distinction you're making, but the description is what Truth would be, if ascertainable.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

You propose transcription as an alternative to representation – but how can a transcription be true or false if it explicitly rejects the notion of representing something external?

Quoting DasGegenmittel

And what does transcription look like linguistically? Since any form of language already implies differentiation, structure, and thus representation, how can transcription escape this? Isn’t every linguistic expression already a form of representation?

It is like when the phenomenon of translation occurs. It simply works and does its job [to make us understand each other] here the transcription is given by the relationship between two sign systems, places, distances, times and tempos are assigned between the signs in such a way that both languages become the version of the other transformed, transcribed.

Another example is communication. When a person communicates something to a second person he is actually causing an effect on this second person by structuring his language in such a way that understanding takes place. But there is no representation, there are only causes and effects. To communicate something to someone is to cause an effect in another person. It is no longer a matter of representing to ourselves what the other thinks, but of determining ourselves as the other, thinking as the other, to the extent that our language is configured and determined by the words of another person.

The word transcription is a host of genetic transcription, but I generalize it to ontology.

Quoting AmadeusD

Nothing meets the criteria you're using, without plain supposition. Therefore, for what the word truth is mean to entail, it is useless as a criteria for belief in these terms, imo. I understand the distinction you're making, but the description is what Truth would be, if ascertainable.

Ok, thanks for you answer. I disagree. I guess I could ask for justification of what you affirm in fact conforming to the actual state of affairs regarded, i.e. justification for it in fact being true. But that would nullify your system of thought.

Would it then be fair to suppose that you live in a world, an umwelt, devoid of truth?

Quoting T Clark

It means really, actually, for real true, which, of course, nothing ever is. That's why JTB is such a bonehead definition.

Nothing is true? The irony. The name-calling doubles the icing.

Quoting creativesoul

Nothing is true?

As Descartes told us, there is only one thing we know is really, actually, for real true.

Quoting javra

Is nothing ever conformant to what is real?

We can never be certain any particular thing is true except that, perhaps, we exist.

Quoting T Clark

We can never be certain any particular thing is true except that, perhaps, we exist.

Man, I'm a diehard fallibilist. To me the cogito is fallible as well. And I fallibly maintain that we can never be infallibly certain of anything, period - not even that we exist. That said, yes I'm (fallibilistically) certain of this. And a whole lot more. Including that we're now communicating in the English language. To not even mention things such as that the sun will once again rise tomorrow.

The type of "truth" you're here implicitly addressing would be an intrinsic aspect of what the OP terms 'static knowledge". But, while epistemic truths can only be fallible to different degrees and extents, this in no way takes away form the fallible certainty that there does occur such a thing as ontic reality. To which all epistemic truths need to conform.

Quoting T Clark

We can never be certain any particular thing is true except that, perhaps, we exist.

I can be certain of far more than that. I think your conflating truth with certainty/confidence.

All sorts of claims are true, regardless of whether or not I am certain, regardless of whether or not we can check and see.

Quoting javra

Would it then be fair to suppose that you live in a world, an umwelt, devoid of truth?

Well, that isn't really my position. My position is that the way you are using 'truth' results in this state of affairs. Nothing rises to the required level, so there is no Truth.

Taking part of your above response to Clark, I would say that you're on the right track there as far as my views go. Quoting javra

there does occur such a thing as ontic reality. To which all epistemic truths need to conform.

I agree. But we can never know if such is the case. It is just hte strongest possibly supposition we must have to do or care about anything. If all was genuinely in flux, we wouldn't care a lick from moment to moment, i'd think.

Quoting T Clark

but I don't think what he wrote was intended to address religious revelation.

Neither was mine. I was excluding it, as religious revelation would surpass the level of certainty he indicates.

Quoting T Clark

Gould was specifically writing about scientific knowledge

Are you suggesting there is some other type of knowledge that approximates truth? Or is the breadth of 'scientific knowledge' peculiarly narrow here?

Quoting creativesoul

Change is irrelevant to JTB. At time t1(insert well-grounded true claim here) and viola!

Nope. Every (pseudo-)“knowledge” claim in the real world is problematic. Gettier cases are a direct counterexample to this thesis: the boss’s decision can change, and the clock might be accidentally broken. (Epistemic) luck is inherently defined by change—it’s a temporal category. There is no luck in a deterministic system. Every so-called “well-grounded claim” in non-static environments rests on credence and is therefore never absolutely certain. JTB can't handle this truth.

Present a counterexample:
Show me one dynamic scenario in which a belief is justified and true at (epistemic)time t?, and remains a clear case of knowledge over all possible points in time—despite contextual change, shifting information, or epistemic instability. Enjoy.

Quoting AmadeusD

My position is that the way you are using 'truth' results in this state of affairs.

I don't yet follow: I don't think you are here saying that the use of epistemic truth of itself results in the ontic state of affairs which the given truth references. This would be the quite literal position that "It is so because I/you/we/they so say it is", i.e. that one's affirmation of itself causes that affirmed to be or else become real. (This very much like the omni-creator deity concept and his supposed "word".)

Nevertheless, this is how your statement so far reads to me.

Quoting AmadeusD

I agree. But we can never know if such is the case.

We always (fallibly) know if such is the case. It's just that, being fallible, our knowledge is subject to the possibility of being wrong - but, until our justifications for it being right fail, there is no reason whatsoever to presume that our fallible knowledge is not in fact right. In other words, not in fact conformant to the ontic reality it references - and, hence, true.

We can never infallibly know if such is the case. Yes. But this plays no part in fallible knowledge of any kind - this as just addressed.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Every so-called “well-grounded claim” in non-static environments rests on credence and is therefore never absolutely certain. JTB can't handle this truth.

Present a counterexample:

So I don't, and can't, fallibly know as JTB that the sun will rise once again tomorrow? This where (fallible) JTB: signifies: non-complete and hence fallible justification for a belief being conformant to that which is, was, or will be ontically real.

Quoting creativesoul

Your notion of "change" is untenable. I'm reminded of Heraclites' river.

Change is irrelevant to JTB. At time t1(insert well-grounded true claim here) and viola!

So, if knowledge is JTB, and change is irrelevant to JTB., am I correct to conclude that we cannot have knowledge of change, therefore?

My notion of change is untenable to you, because change is unintelligible to you.

Quoting javra

I don't yet follow

Your use of Truth precludes us from ever having it. Nothing to do with our influence on it.

Quoting javra

We always (fallibly) know if such is the case.

Contradiction, on your own terms. That's my entire point. We don't know anything if our knwoledge is, at base and always, fallible. That's why 'T-Truth' is nonsense as far as JTB can go (on my view!).

Quoting javra

But this plays no part in fallible knowledge

Knowledge requires infallibility, on your terms. I am struggling to understand how your responses to me (nad Clark, i guess) run in tandem with your explications of your own points. They seem contradictory to me, so maybe i'm not seeing something.

To respond to a point you made to another commenter: No, You cannot 'know' the Sun will rise tomorrow, because it hasn't happened you. You can expect it to, with certainty (which is about your belief, not about whether it refers correctly to anything). You cannot know if you're going to involve fallibility.

Reply to javra I don't know what you're getting at here. If someone knows something is false, they don't believe it, and if they don't believe it they don't know it.

Reply to AmadeusD that's exactly right! If you have two beliefs, both with equal and very strong epistemic justification, but one of which turns out to be true, one of which turns out (obviously unbeknownst to you) to be false, you're going to call both of them knowledge. Because... why wouldn't you? You don't know the false one is false. By what criteria could you decide to call the false one not knowledge? You can't decide what to call it based on information you don't have.

So since you can't actually use the T to actively decide what to call knowledge, but you can use the J, the T seems.... weird. It's not clear what it's doing there.

We call stuff knowledge, and some of the time, that knowledge is wrong.

@javra

We cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow — even if it seems rational to believe so. The first major reason is the classic problem of induction, as formulated by David Hume. There is no logically necessary connection between past experiences and future events. The fact that the sun has risen every day in the past only gives us a strong expectation — not certainty — that it will rise again tomorrow. Our belief is inductively justified, but not logically or metaphysically guaranteed.

Example: A turkey is fed every morning by a farmer. It expects food each day — until one day, it is slaughtered. Its belief was based on past regularity, but ultimately false.

Secondly, the Gettier problem shows that even a belief that is true and justified may not amount to knowledge if it is accidentally correct. Suppose someone uses a flawed astronomical model to predict that the sun will rise tomorrow — and it does. The belief turns out to be true, but the justification was faulty. In such cases, the truth and justification align by coincidence, which undermines the epistemic link required for genuine knowledge.

Example: A student looks at a broken clock and says, “The bus will come in three minutes,” because the clock coincidentally shows the right time. The bus does come — but not because the reasoning was valid.

In Short: verification bad, falsification goooooood. KarlPopper approves this Message & JTB is not a fan of this. She becomes a dogmatic diva if father falsification rumors on her virtues.

Third, statements about future events are not timelessly true — and thus do not fulfill the Platonic standard of knowledge embedded in the traditional JTB (Justified True Belief) model. A statement like “The sun will rise tomorrow” is contingent, dependent on temporal and physical conditions. In contrast, real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths.

Example: The proposition “2 + 2 = 4” is true in all places and at all times. “The sun will rise tomorrow,” however, is true only if certain physical systems remain undisturbed — making it dependent, not eternal.

A fourth reason lies in the dynamic and unstable nature of reality. We do not live in a static world. Even if past evidence strongly supports tomorrow’s sunrise, unpredictable cosmic events could disrupt it — like solar anomalies, gravitational shifts, or even the philosophical possibility of simulation. This unpredictability introduces a layer of epistemic risk that undermines absolute claims.

Example: A massive volcanic eruption could darken the sky globally. The sun might rise, physically — but it would not be perceived. In this case, the meaning of “sunrise” itself becomes unstable.

Finally, we lack epistemic certainty because our access to the future is inherently limited. Our astronomical models are well-tested, but ultimately hypothetical and fallible. There is always a non-zero chance that new information or events could invalidate our predictions. Therefore, the statement “The sun will rise tomorrow” is a well-justified expectation, but not knowledge in the strong, infallible sense.


Conclusion: Although our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is highly reasonable, it fails to meet the strict criteria of knowledge due to its reliance on induction, vulnerability to coincidence, temporal contingency, and the unpredictability of the world. What we have is not certainty — but a well-grounded expectation that remains, in the end, fallible.

Response (JTC Perspective): From the standpoint of Justified True Crisis (JTC), the expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow qualifies not as infallible knowledge of a future fact, but as conceptual knowledge: the justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, while remaining open to epistemic revision. Within this framework, knowledge is not about asserting timeless metaphysical truths, but about maintaining orientation through conceptual structures that are coherent, context-sensitive, and situationally valid.

It is not knowledge of the world directly, but of its conceptual derivatives — the structured ideas we abstract from experience in order to navigate reality.

This belief is therefore not treated as ontically absolute, but as a fallible, yet operationally reliable assertion— justified within a defined scope. That scope is not “what will be,” but rather: “Given current knowledge and absent disconfirming information, the concept of ‘sunrise tomorrow’ remains applicable.” Within that conceptual and temporal frame, the belief is in fact infallible relative to its defined conditions, because it makes no claim beyond them.

In this way, JTC redefines knowledge as a dynamic epistemic performance, where infallibility is not global, but internally consistent within bounded, crisis-aware justifications. The key is reflexivity: JTC acknowledges the limits of what is known, and treats conceptual knowledge as both actionable and self-limiting — true not in spite of its limits, but because it defines them.

@JuanZu

Your answer avoids the core of both questions by replacing epistemological accountability with vague functional metaphors. If transcription rejects representation, how can it be assessed as true or false? Saying “it simply works” is not an answer—it’s an evasion.

1. Truth is reduced to function.
You compare transcription to translation or communication and argue it “works” by producing effects. But epistemic truth is not about effects. A placebo pill works—but it’s not what it claims to be. A broken clock shows the correct time twice a day, yet it doesn’t know the time. A political speech can move crowds and still be full of lies. Functionality is not sufficient for truth—and certainly not for knowledge.

2. You smuggle representation back in.
You claim transcription avoids representation by being a causal process, but even “causing understanding” requires structure, differentiation, and encoding—i.e., a representational system. A musical score is not the sound itself, but it represents it. A map is not the territory, but it represents spatial relations. Even a simple “yes” only means something because of its embedded structure. There is no escaping representation in language—there is only denying it while depending on it.

3. Ontological generalization doesn’t solve the epistemic issue.
Referring to “genetic transcription” or ontological transformation shifts the discussion from epistemology to biology or metaphysics. But biological processes don’t make beliefs justified or true. DNA transcription can be error-prone—mutations happen. So even your analogy proves the point: transcription doesn’t guarantee correctness. It’s a process, not a standard of epistemic evaluation.

Iiiiiiiiiin sum:
If transcription neither represents nor distinguishes truth from falsehood, it can’t be part of a knowledge theory. Your response replaces justification with causality, and epistemic evaluation with metaphor. Knowledge, however, is not what simply happens—it is what can be justified, challenged, and revised. Without that, we’re not doing epistemology—we’re doing poetry.

Still, it was genuinely cool to think about. The idea of reframing epistemic acts in terms of transformation instead of representation was provocative. Thanks for that impulse.

Quoting AmadeusD

Knowledge requires infallibility, on your terms.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

We cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow — even if it seems rational to believe so. The first major reason is the classic problem of induction, as formulated by David Hume. There is no logically necessary connection between past experiences and future events. The fact that the sun has risen every day in the past only gives us a strong expectation — not certainty — that it will rise again tomorrow. Our belief is inductively justified, but not logically or metaphysically guaranteed.

You both hold knowledge to be an epistemically infallible given. I'll just re-post this and call it a day:

Quoting javra

Man, I'm a diehard fallibilist. To me the cogito is fallible as well. And I fallibly maintain that we can never be infallibly certain of anything, period - not even that we exist. That said, yes I'm (fallibilistically) certain of this. And a whole lot more. Including that we're now communicating in the English language. To not even mention things such as that the sun will once again rise tomorrow.

The type of "truth" you're here implicitly addressing would be an intrinsic aspect of what the OP terms 'static knowledge". But, while epistemic truths can only be fallible to different degrees and extents, this in no way takes away form the fallible certainty that there does occur such a thing as ontic reality. To which all epistemic truths need to conform.

In other words, there can be no infallible justification, no infallible truth, and no infallible belief. This just as much as one cannot grasp the horizon were one to run fast enough toward it. Ergo, there can be no infallible "guaranteed" knowledge as JTB. All the same, I very much know that this conversation has so far been in the English language just as much as I know that the sun will rise again tomorrow. This knowledge that I do hold then being "fallible beliefs which are fallibly justified and thereby fallibly true". To say that this is then not "real" knowledge is to then insist that "real knowledge" equates to "infallible knowledge" Good luck with that then.

Quoting flannel jesus

I don't know what you're getting at here.

Never mind, then.

Quoting flannel jesus

I mean, what does J mean? Obviously justified, but justified in what? Justified in thinking the belief is true.

Yes, but there's a wrinkle. Obviously, if the justification in question is conclusive, then it follows that the belief is true. But what if the justification is not conclusive? It follows that you may be justified in believing, but wrong. Are you then justified in believing or not? For me, you are still justified in believing, but the T clause means that I can't be said to know. Without this clause, knowledge simply becomes equivalent to belief. I don't think any philosopher would buy that. (Gettier says you can be, and that's the basis for his paradoxes.)

Quoting flannel jesus

Maybe knowledge should be SJB, sufficiently justified belief.

But does sufficiently justified mean that the belief cannot possibly be false? Anything less than that leaves you open to thinking that you know, when you merely believe.

Quoting flannel jesus

So what work is T doing in JTB, since the only access to truth you just laid out is a matter of justification, and not truth itself?

You are right to think that the T clause is not doing any work if you are asking yourself whether you know that p, given that you believe it. But if you believe it, then you have already decided that the belief is true, and justified, so yhe T clause is indeed redundant.
But when you are asking whether someone knows that p, it is a different ball game. You might endorse S's justification, but that's not automatic; you might disagree with them. You have to decide for yourself, and when you say that they know that p, you commit to asserting that p is true. When you say that they believe that p, you are witholding that commitment. (If you say that someone thinks that p, you are (normally) asserting that p is false, or that S's justification is invalid or unsound.)
Granted that there are problems about the J clause, I can't see that SJB any of the problems about the J clause, but just collapses knowledge into believe. Your point that a T clause is always in practice applied by individuals in the light of their own judgements is a general comment on the concept of truth, and so has no special force in this context.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Therefore we cannot ever adequately describe active change, or becoming, in terms of states-of-being.

You seem to leave open the possibility that we might adequately describe change in some other way. It occurs to me that we do already describe change in terms of processes.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The solution to this problem is dualism.

I don't think that's a solution - especially as I'm not clear what the problem is. We have two different ways of describing the world. End of story.

Quoting AmadeusD

We could all be dreaming - so what? Without an indication that's happening, and plenty that it's not, why question?

Yes. "We might all be dreaming" implies "We might all not be dreaming" or even "We might all be awake". If the weight of all the evidence is in favour of the latter, it is not rational to believe the former. To put the point another way, to acknowledge a possibility imples recognizing the ability to distinguish what is possible from what is the case.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

A student looks at a broken clock and says, “The bus will come in three minutes,” because the clock coincidentally shows the right time. The bus does come — but not because the reasoning was valid.

Well, if the clock was working, it would still not come because the student correctly predicted it's arrival. What this case does show is that there are almost always many unspoken and unthought-of assumptions in any reasoning. In this case, suppose that the clock was working. The student's assumption was valid. Is that any more or less a bit of luck? Do we say that the student didn't know?

Quoting DasGegenmittel

“The sun will rise tomorrow” is contingent, dependent on temporal and physical conditions. In contrast, real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths.

So are you endorsing Plato's definition of knowledge?

Quoting DasGegenmittel

The proposition “2 + 2 = 4” is true in all places and at all times.

I've never understood the concept of a proposition. But I don't see how "2+2=4" could be either true or false in a world in which it didn't exist, couldn't be formulated*. We are able to do that, and we apply it retrospectively.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

This unpredictability introduces a layer of epistemic risk that undermines absolute claims.

If you mean by this the situation in your shattered bottle example, I don't see any epistemic risk at all. At 12:00, I knew that the bottle on the table. At 12:02, the bottle wasn't on the table and I had heard it fall. I knew that it was no longer on the table.
However, at 12:00 I was probably assuming that it would be there when I returned. Given that I didn't know about the forthcoming crash, did I know it would be there when I return? That does need thinking about. This a variety of Russell's clock and of the Harman-Vogel paradoxes, and probably relates to Aristotle's point that judgements about the future are contingent (which you mentioned on page 1 pf this thread).

Quoting DasGegenmittel

A massive volcanic eruption could darken the sky globally. The sun might rise, physically — but it would not be perceived. In this case, the meaning of “sunrise” itself becomes unstable.

That doesn't impact what we know about the sun in current circumstances. BTW, Hume's response was to say that we will continue to rely on the past, whatever the sceptic says. After all, there is - there can be - no more rational alternative. So it is not irrational to do so.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Conclusion: Although our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is highly reasonable, it fails to meet the strict criteria of knowledge due to its reliance on induction, vulnerability to coincidence, temporal contingency, and the unpredictability of the world. What we have is not certainty — but a well-grounded expectation that remains, in the end, fallible.

So perhaps it is not appropriate to apply your strict criteria for knowledge.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

From the standpoint of Justified True Crisis (JTC), the expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow qualifies not as infallible knowledge of a future fact, but as conceptual knowledge: the justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, while remaining open to epistemic revision. Within this framework, knowledge is not about asserting timeless metaphysical truths, but about maintaining orientation through conceptual structures that are coherent, context-sensitive, and situationally valid.

If "the sun will rise tomorrow" is a justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, it is knowledge of a fact. To be sure, it holds under current conditions, but that just means that it is true here and now. Things may change, and we will revise our opinions as required in the new circumstances and it is not inconceivable that such things may happen. But those are just possibilities. That it is true now will not change.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

JTC acknowledges the limits of what is known, and treats conceptual knowledge as both actionable and self-limiting — true not in spite of its limits, but because it defines them.

I can see that this is different from a platonic view of knowledge. But I don't see any radical difference from "our" concept of knowledge. It certainly reflects our practice better than the platonic view. Are you sure that you are not criticizing a straw concept of knowledge?

Quoting Ludwig V

You are right to think that the T clause is not doing any work if you are asking yourself whether you know that p, given that you believe it.

Not just about your own beliefs, about anybody else's too.

If someone else believes something, and they call that belief 'knowledge', you're going to judge that statement by the same criteria as your own so-called "knowledge", which is to say, you're going to judge the justifications for it being true. You don't have access to the T, you can only access the J.

Quoting Ludwig V

“The sun will rise tomorrow” is contingent, dependent on temporal and physical conditions. In contrast, real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths. — DasGegenmittel

So are you endorsing Plato's definition of knowledge?

And, as per my first post in this thread, perhaps so affirming that "real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths" is of itself a gross misattribution of what of what Plato, an Ancient Skeptic, in fact described. Here granting that epistemic truths - prone to the possibility of being wrong as they all ultimately are - nevertheless do occur in the world. From the last paragraph of the SEP entry (boldface and underlining mine):

Quoting https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-theaetetus/#Con

The official conclusion of the Theaetetus is that we still do not know how to define knowledge. Even on the most sceptical reading, this is not to say that we have not learned anything about what knowledge is like. As Theaetetus says (210b6), he has given birth to far more than he had in him. And as many interpreters have seen, there may be much more to the ending than that. It may even be that, in the last two pages of the Theaetetus, we have seen hints of Plato’s own answer to the puzzle. Perhaps understanding has emerged from the last discussion, as wisdom did from 145d–e, as the key ingredient without which no true beliefs alone can even begin to look like they might count as knowledge. Perhaps it is only when we, the readers, understand this point—that epistemological success in the last resort depends on having epistemological virtue—that we begin not only to have true beliefs about what knowledge is, but to understand knowledge. [...] Perhaps this is the somewhat positive conclusion Plato reaches in the Theaetetus, suggesting that absolute knowledge requires a metaphysical framework that even the best and truest logoi can only approximate. [...]

... here, with "absolute knowledge" being synonymous to the more modern expression of "infallible knowledge" ... this rather than to knowledge which is real. And with the second of the two boldface portions of the quote only reemphasizing the first.

Going by at the very least this one SEP entry, Plato then in fact did not describe real knowledge as based on eternal, immutable truths. (See, for example, the first of the two boldfaced portions of the quote in which Plato's conclusion is quite blatantly expressed as: "we still do not know how to define knowledge".) Nor to the best of my knowledge did he at any point specify absolute knowledge to be real knowledge such that all non-absolute forms of knowledge then equate to non-real knowledge. The latter formulation, instead, being a rather Cartesian interpretation of Ancient Skeptic perspectives ... the latter of which philosophers such as Cicero very much exemplify.

Reply to DasGegenmittel

As you may have noticed I talk about something that works rather than something being true and false. In any example you give we can make the conversion: For example when you speak of a placebo pill, it does not act objectively like a non-placebo pill, they are simply different ways of working. Here the pill is a sign that is introduced in a certain context that gives it all its significance, this is transcription, in the cases that you would believe that there is a falsehood of the placebo pill what there is in reality a different functioning. Like the psychological which is a different context of transcription than the physiological.

Encoding something is but one step in transcription. As I say this requires a use of signs where the space and time assigned to the sign takes place. But of representation there is nothing, since there is no sense or meaning that travels with the physical signs, and to the extent of that is that we cannot speak of representation but of the effects that produces an encoded message in another person, moreover the very notion of message is problematic, since there is no message until there is decoding. But decoding is nothing more than introducing a system of signs in a context, another system of signs, which gives it a meaning.

Correctness? No, it works. Once we abandon the idea of representation something can work well or it can work badly according to our expectations. Like a broken clock; the clock is a system of signs that produces a meaning, but we transcribe it into our language with which we have expectations no longer that the time is correct but that it works according to different contexts, such as world time. Is there representation between a clock and world time? No, each one is a different context and what we believe to be representation is tuning, a matter of time, which we associate with expectations such as the arrival of a train.

Theory of knowledge? This approach denies epistemology, since epistemology is from end to end based on the idea of representation. But in reality it gives us an idea of how the world works without this idea. Above all it gives us the idea that the world doesn't really change much for practical purposes. The only thing that really changes is the work of philosophers who believe in the idea of representation as true and talk about things like right and wrong.

Quoting flannel jesus

If someone else believes something, and they call that belief 'knowledge', you're going to judge that statement by the same criteria as your own so-called "knowledge", which is to say, you're going to judge the justifications for it being true. You don't have access to the T, you can only access the J.

Well, at worst, you're going to get two evaluations of the same justification or of two different justifcations. Two evaluations of the same by the same person is not very convincing. ("Marking your own homework")
A justification that can't get us to truth or at least towards the truth is no justification at all.
But sometimes, there is no gap - as in conclusive justification.
I include in "justification" here includes questions about the skills and competences of the knower, not to mention their good faith.

Reply to javra
Quoting javra

perhaps so affirming that "real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths" is of itself a gross misattribution of what of what Plato, an Ancient Skeptic, in fact described. Here granting that epistemic truths - prone to the possibility of being wrong as they all ultimately are - nevertheless do occur in the world.

That's putting it a bit strong. But the Theaetetus is indeed striking in that it does seem to include truths about the world we live in as not mere illusions. It is also striking that the dialogue is aporetic; people don't often recognize that.

Quoting https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-theaetetus/#Con

Perhaps this is the somewhat positive conclusion Plato reaches in the Theaetetus, suggesting that absolute knowledge requires a metaphysical framework that even the best and truest logoi can only approximate.

That paragraph is a brave attempt to extract something positive from the aporia and the suggestions are quite plausible. But I don't find them in the text and it's really not necessary to find a positive conclusion in an aporetic dialogue. Socrates was, in a sense, quite happy to end with aporia.

Quoting Ludwig V

Socrates was, in a sense, quite happy to end with aporia.

While I'm not certain in how you intend the term "aporia" in this context (example: resulting in insoluble contradiction?), I do fully agree in terms of Plato's description of knowledge in effect being that "we still do not know how to define knowledge". This then being the gist of my previous post.

Which, then, is in no way an affirmation or else description of what "real knowledge" is.

Reply to DasGegenmittel

The burden here is yours, not mine. The assumption you're working from is misguided. You're assuming that Gettier showed a problem for the J in JTB. You're not alone. Most convention agrees. I've mentioned the problem. I've shown otherwise. If justification is not the problem with Gettier cases, and it's not, then the Gettier 'problem' dissolves completely, and it does. I roughly sketched this case, to which you seemed to agree with the heart of it. Now follow it through. In both Gettier cases, S's belief is not true, and Gettier's account/report of/on that belief was inaccurate(as already argued in my first post).

It's justified false belief.

If it is the case that both Gettier examples are cases of JFB, then the Gettier problem dissolves completely. Barn facades, sheets blowing in the wind, and broken clocks all suffer much the same fate. They dissolve when S's belief is more accurately put and then reexamined.

@creativesoul
I can readily accept that we don’t share the same conviction. I don’t find your argument convincing, and it’s perfectly fine with me if you don’t share my position. So far, I haven’t had the impression that you’ve taken the underlying dualism seriously (or at least contingency); instead, you seem to stick to your line of thinking, which is inevitably paradoxical. I don’t have the time right now to go into detail, and I don’t believe you’ve thoroughly examined the arguments I’ve presented. For further questions read the introduction piece, my comments or the essay with which I made my case and lost any burden whatsoever.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

I don’t find your argument convincing

What argument? Set it out.

Reply to Ludwig V

Hey Ludwig! Hope you are well in this unsettled world.

@creativesoul One example is the claim that "change is irrelevant for JTB," while arguing for a monistic definition of knowledge and disregarding the role of (epistemic) time in Gettier cases; see contingency.

Good night sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite.

Quoting Ludwig V

I don't think that's a solution - especially as I'm not clear what the problem is. We have two different ways of describing the world. End of story.

Not "end of story". The two different ways correspond with two distinct aspects of the world. If it was simply a matter of two different ways of describing the same thing, we'd choose the best for the purpose at hand. But the two different ways correspond with two different aspects, that which stays the same as time passes, and that which does not stay the same as time passes.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

that which stays the same as time passes

Can this even be, given time passes? What could stay the same?

Reply to AmadeusD
Lot's of things stay the same as time passes. Look around you. Don't you notice a lot of aspects which are not changing as the time passes. But if that doesn't convince you, we could look at some simple arithmetic. Do you believe that the truth of "2+2=4" could change as time passes?

Quoting AmadeusD

Are you suggesting there is some other type of knowledge that approximates truth? Or is the breadth of 'scientific knowledge' peculiarly narrow here?

I got a little behind here.

I think most of what we know is not specifically justified. In my personal experience, most of what I know I know by what I would call "intuition." It has no specific source, although it is based on my general understanding of the world and how it works. As I understand it, that general understanding is something we build for ourselves over a lifetime of experience in the world.

Here, now I'll give you an example. Judging by what I've read of your posts, I think, believe I guess, you are someone who does not hold much truck with intuition. Under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn't bother justifying that. That's consistent with my way of seeing knowledge, since the consequences of being wrong are probably minor. The important thing here in the context of this discussion is that my belief is not based on any specifical evidence or reasoning.

Another related way of knowing - trial and error. "Screw it, let's just do it and see what happens." In engineering we pretty that up and call it the "observational method." Justification and action are an iterative, circular, process.

Quoting AmadeusD

Can this even be, given time passes? What could stay the same?

Changeability is a spectrum.
Some things—like 2 + 2 = 4 or the concept of “1”—are unchanging. Others transform so quickly that we barely notice them: electrons or quarks in the cup of coffee you’re looking at right now, for instance. And then there is everything in between—changes that unfold over seconds, minutes, hours, days, or years.

This spectrum applies to knowledge in correspondence as well. Some knowledge is immutable; other knowledge evolves over time. While all forms of knowledge share the same demand to truth, they must be approached differently. Justified True Belief (JTB) may suffice for static knowledge, but dynamic knowledge—knowledge of change—requires a different framework. The very recognition of change is a kind of knowledge in itself, much like your knowledge of yourself as a changing being.

The underlying question, then, is: How can change be grasped as knowledge at all?
This is precisely what Justified True Crisis (JTC) seeks to address.

Incidentally, this is also where the Ship of Theseus paradox becomes relevant—something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same. In that sense, this is not just a side topic, but a foundational philosophical theme.

Quoting javra

While I'm not certain in how you intend the term "aporia" in this context

I would include insoluble contradiction (normally) as one kind of aporia. I would also include a simple case of ignorance (of the facts in a particular debate). So I understand it as "not knowing how to go on".

Quoting creativesoul

If it is the case that both Gettier examples are cases of JFB, then the Gettier problem dissolves completely. Barn facades, sheets blowing in the wind, and broken clocks all suffer much the same fate. They dissolve when S's belief is more accurately put and then reexamined.

I would agree that they are cases of false belief, but a rather specialized kind, because they depend on the ambiguity of a proposition. That why I prefer not to count the clock as a Gettier problem. I do so, because those kinds of case turn on an assumption which is generally reasonable, but which is false in the particular circumstances of each case. (Harman-Vogel paradox). They are much less spectacular than Getter cases, but much more difficult. (Rusell didn't find the clock case difficult - with his usual decisiveness, he is clear that S does not know the time.)
Thanks for asking. I am as settled as one can expect in this unsettled world. But, as they say, one mustn't grumble - even though that is one of the most popular pastimes in the world.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The two different ways correspond with two distinct aspects of the world. If it was simply a matter of two different ways of describing the same thing, we'd choose the best for the purpose at hand. But the two different ways correspond with two different aspects, that which stays the same as time passes, and that which does not stay the same as time passes.

Oh, I see - aspects. That makes a difference. I think of Wittgenstein on "seeing as.." and the puzzle pictures. I can buy that - with some qualifications in this particular case. (See below)

Quoting T Clark

The important thing here in the context of this discussion is that my belief is not based on any specifical evidence or reasoning.

I agree. The philosophers paint a particular picture of knowledge to suit their project(s). They think of people discovering things - the origins of knowledge in an ideal world.
Quoting T Clark

I think most of what we know is not specifically justified.

Quite so.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Incidentally, this is also where the Ship of Theseus paradox becomes relevant—something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same. In that sense, this is not just a side topic, but a foundational philosophical theme.

You are right that it is an important philosophical theme. I don't think that you describe Theseus' ship correctly. Theseus' ship is not something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same, because that implies that the ship does not stay the same. Theseus' ship really changes and remains the same. It remains Theseus' ship throughout - until it is dismantled or sold - neither of which are the kinds of change envisaged in the example. We pay attention to the change or the stasis as suits our project at the time. You are adopting what you probebly call a strict sense of "same". But it applies to almost nothing in that sense. Most things change in some respects while remaining the same in other respects. They are a "mixture".

@Ludwig V
My wording was chosen deliberately and corresponds precisely to the intended meaning. Had I meant to say “identical,” “equivalent,” or intended another specific distinction, I would have expressed it explicitly.

There are multiple versions of the Ship of Theseus – the classical one from Plutarch and a more developed version by Thomas Hobbes. Plutarch poses the question of whether an object that has all its parts replaced over time can still be considered the same. Hobbes intensifies the thought experiment by suggesting that the original, removed parts are reassembled into a second ship – resulting in two ships, each of which could claim to be the original.

Against this backdrop, your statement – “Theseus’ ship really changes and remains the same” – lacks precision. The ship does not remain the same; rather, it appears to remain the same. And this is precisely where the philosophical challenge lies: how can identity persist despite complete material transformation? The question is not whether change occurs – it clearly does – but how it is possible that such change does not disrupt the impression of continuity or sameness. Hobbes’ version highlights this issue even more sharply by introducing not just transformation, but the problem of competing claims to identity.

Reply to DasGegenmittel Nice work! I basically agree with you. I think the two issues are, as you say, timestamping and justification. I would not want to discard truth—we know many truths. I know it is raining as a I sit at my desk writing this. I can see the creek from my window—I know it is flooded and up about two metres from its average level.

Of course, this knowledge and the truth of it applies to what for me is the present moment—the truth of the situation and the knowledge of it may be quite different in a couple days. But I can say that it is and will remain true that on 28/03/2025 at 12.42 EST at my then location it was raining.

The problem I have always seen with the Gettier examples is that there is no objective measure of just what counts as justification. Taking the fake barn example, I might have no reason to doubt when looking at the facade that I am looking at a real barn, so in the context of the everyday I might say that belief was justified. But if I didn't walk around the back then it might be said that I didn't investigate the situation adequately. Same with the cut-out sheep example.

Thank you, @“Janus”. :)

The thing is that JTB is still necessary; but with variations. The modern discourse is misled. What needs to be addressed is the changeability of objects and time. This is something that has not been seriously examined so far—and that’s why, as I’ve argued, the Gettier problem remains unresolved.

The Gettier problem cannot be solved because, as humans, we cannot attain absolute knowledge, and therefore our assertions might always be false, no matter what we do. Knowledge is not something necessary or certain—it is only an expectation. Our (sensory) experience is a factor influenced by this uncertainty. We can be wrong: we can be deceived by illusions, trapped in a simulation, or misled in countless other ways. This is not what we want, but it is what we are thrown into. And that’s okay—but unsatisfying.

Even the rain could be an illusion, but we can still reasonably claim that it is not: see reliabilism as a tool. There may be no defeater, but if one appears, we must adjust. That is the best we can do. What is needed is an epistemological humility that is aware of this human condition.

It might be the case that the barn façade is an illusion, but we have no compelling evidence that it is. This is the best we can do. And that’s why, in my opinion, Socrates says, “I know that I know nothing” (with regard to the real world of shadows), despite Plato’s reliance on eternal ideas. But my skeptical argument goes further: we can’t even claim absolute knowledge of the present or the past—let alone the future, which is marked by contingency.

As I argue, there are not one but three distinct induction problems:
Retrospective Induction Problem (Past):
• Smith believes Jones will get the job because Jones has ten coins. Later, Smith himself unexpectedly gets the job and realizes his original assumption was incorrect—he must now retrospectively reevaluate his initial belief.

Present Induction Problem (Identification; Present):
• In the context of Gettiers application scenario.. a security guard is told: “Let in only the sole person who has exactly ten coins.” Two individuals arrive, each carrying exactly ten coins. The guard faces a problem of faulty identification due to limited criteria. There is as this variation of the situation reveals a hidden Leibniz law violation within the Gettier cases. All such cases have insofar a problem with their the truth-makers.

Prospective Induction Problem (Future):
• Every morning, the sun rises, so one assumes it will rise tomorrow as well. However, despite consistent past experiences, there is no absolute guarantee this prediction will always hold true.

Accordingly, there is always the chance of being right and the risk of being wrong based on available information—but there is never a necessity that our belief is correct in dynamic scenarios. Every assertion we make involves a fork in the road—a crisis.

The objective measure, insofar as we can achieve one, lies in having the most information and processing it adequately. This is what we often see in Gettier cases: the observer knows more than the individual making the assertion.

Moreover, there might be concurrent JTBs (Justified True Beliefs) that cannot be reliably judged—this is what the Rashomon effect illustrates.

JTC responds to this with its dualism, crisis-awareness, and the concept of conceptual knowledge—which, in my opinion, represents the best we are capable of: to show epistemic humility and cast the most reliable net we can over experience, through reflection and dialogue with others.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Do you believe that the truth of "2+2=4" could change as time passes?

No, but that's not something in the world. It's something about things in the world. All the things that could represent that equation wont stay the same.

Quoting T Clark

you are someone who does not hold much truck

More or less understand and agree with your comment, other than this. I do give intuition a lot of weight, but I don't think its much more than preconscious statistical analysis (or something similar.. that's probably not quite right).

Quoting AmadeusD

No, but that's not something in the world. It's something about things in the world. All the things that could represent that equation wont stay the same.

Yes, but it's more than just "something about things in the world", it's a belief about things in the world. And the belief is that it is true, therefore something such as correspondence with reality must support that truth, as justification.

Now, the belief is that this "something" is something which does not change. You appear to be saying that if we exclude this "something" from "the world", then we can truthfully say that we believe there is nothing in the world which stays the same. But all you have done here is relegate this "something" which you believe in, to somewhere other than "the world". So unless you adopt some form of dualism, to give this "something" a place of being, then to avoid self-deception you need to accept that this belief is really nothing instead of "something".

In principle, that's the route which atheism takes with "God". God has no place in "the world", so we exclude God from our monist reality, which is allowed only to consist of things of "the world". Then, to be consistent, and avoid self-deception, we must deny belief in God. You have not taken this step, to maintain consistency, and avoid self-deception. You want to believe in "2+2=4", assert that it actually signifies "something", but you want to exclude that "something" from your world, so it would actually be nothing. That would be self-deception, insisting that "2+2=4" actually signifies, represents, or corresponds with nothing.

Quoting AmadeusD

I do give intuition a lot of weight, but I don't think its much more than preconscious statistical analysis (or something similar.. that's probably not quite right).

You just validated my understanding of intuition. I drew a conclusion based on a "preconscious statistical analysis (or something similar." but, since I didn't go to the trouble of examining it more closely, it was poorly justified, but that's ok because the consequences of being wrong were not significant.

In DK Intuition is a important component for evaluating credences as the lottery Problem demonstrates.

@AmadeusD @T clark

Within the framework of DK, intuition functions as a tool for navigating epistemic uncertainty. It enables the recognition of subtle tensions when justified beliefs—such as in the Lottery Problem—appear rational yet still elicit doubt. This doubt is not merely psychological; rather, it signals a conceptual crisis. Intuition reveals that the categories under which we assess beliefs may no longer be adequate.

In such moments—when beliefs seem formally coherent but intuitively “off”—intuition plays a guiding role. It detects the atopon, the sense of strangeness or misfit within what initially seems self-evident. Often, this creates an epistemic circle: the perception of uncertainty leads to a doubt that cannot be fully articulated, yet still demands conceptual revision. DK takes such intuitively perceived crises seriously, as they indicate that knowledge must be not only justified and true, but also contextually coherent. In this way, intuition contributes meaningfully to the dynamic adjustment of concepts under conditions of uncertainty.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Every morning, the sun rises, so one assumes it will rise tomorrow as well. However, despite consistent past experiences, there is no absolute guarantee this prediction will always hold true.

Yes there is no absolute knowledge. But we do know many things beyond reasonable doubt. That the Sun will rise tomorrow is one of them because for it to fail to rise would, according to all our experience and scientific understanding, require conditions which we understand to verge on the impossible. So, this I agree mostly with

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Even the rain could be an illusion, but we can still reasonably claim that it is not:

...but...I would state it more forcefully; when I look out the window and see it raining (it is still raining here, and the creek is still in flood) I have absolutely no reason to think it is an illusion. Many, if not most things in our lives are like this. The mere logical possibility of error does not justify doubt in these kinds of cases. And even in cases where we do not, or even cannot, know the truth we have no reason to doubt there is a truth and that it is worth seeking.

Quoting Janus

And even in cases where we do not, or even cannot, know the truth we have no reason to doubt there is a truth and that it is worth seeking.

Absolutely.. ad astra per aspera..

or as a gang of philosophers once said... "step by step uhh baby": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay6GjmiJTPM

"“[…] it is the struggle itself that is most important.
We must strive to be more than we are, Lal. It does
not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal.
The effort yields its own rewards.“

Lt. Cmdr. Data to his daughter Lal
Star Trek: The Next Generation"

Reply to DasGegenmittel :up:

Quoting DasGegenmittel

My wording was chosen deliberately and corresponds precisely to the intended meaning. Had I meant to say “identical,” “equivalent,” or intended another specific distinction, I would have expressed it explicitly.

Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way. I was telling you that that I had a different view.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

The objective measure, insofar as we can achieve one, lies in having the most information and processing it adequately. This is what we often see in Gettier cases: the observer knows more than the individual making the assertion.
Moreover, there might be concurrent JTBs (Justified True Beliefs) that cannot be reliably judged—this is what the Rashomon effect illustrates.

You are right about the Gettier cases, though I suggest they need more than that. They need an ambiguous proposition that can seem to justify two cases at the same time. But they are not difficult to sort out when we discover what is going on. The problem here is the insistence that we be always able to tell, once and for all, and at any given time, which propositions are true and well-established and which are not. Sometimes it takes time for the truth to be discovered. Sometimes we have to withdraw claims that we thought were true. That isn't a crisis, it's normal business.
Don't forget that when it is possible that a given proposition is not true, it is also possible that it is true and that we can usually tell which possibility is actual, even if it takes some time to do so.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

"2+2=4" actually signifies, represents, or corresponds with nothing.

Yes, but representing and corresponding are not the only ways to mean something. If we can calculate and apply our equations to the world, we know what they mean even if the signify nothing.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Hobbes intensifies the thought experiment by suggesting that the original, removed parts are reassembled into a second ship – resulting in two ships, each of which could claim to be the original.

Yes. Hobbes' variant is interesting and very ingenious. But I would argue that neither ship has a good claim to "be" the original. I would say that the ship in the original puzzle is a reconstruction of the old ship and the ship in Hobbes ship is a replica. The original puzzle is a sorites puzzle, based on the vague border between maintenance and renewal. Our common sense has not developed in a context in which these puzzles were a problem and is not well adapted to deal with them. We just need to make up our minds about how to apply them. Once we are agreed, there will be no problem.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

I can readily accept that we don’t share the same conviction.

Presupposes you know mine.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

I don’t find your argument convincing

Presupposed you know the argument and it's logical consequences.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

it’s perfectly fine with me if you don’t share my position.

DasGegenmittel;978825: So far, I haven’t had the impression that you’ve taken the underlying dualism seriously (or at least contingency); instead, you seem to stick to your line of thinking which is inevitably paradoxical.

Please, set this line of thinking out, along with it's consequences.

[quote]I don’t have the time right now to go into detail, and I don’t believe you’ve thoroughly examined the arguments I’ve presented. For further questions read the introduction piece, my comments or the essay with which I made my case and lost any burden whatsoever.

You clearly do not understand the charge being levied against your entire endeavor/project.

Reply to Ludwig V

The ship never stops being the ship.

If a change in physical constituency demands different identity, then it would be impossible to name things fast enough.

That's where I'm at regarding everchanging ships and rivers.

@creativesoul Quoting creativesoul

You clearly do not understand the charge being levied against your entire endeavor/project.

I see a shattered ego, but no stable argument.
It’s a pity you lack the integrity to present counterarguments rigorously.
If you were serious, you would’ve brought something to the table.

I’m well aware of the matter at hand, and I’ve made that abundantly clear.
Unlike you, at least I don’t need to put others down to make a point.

If you’re really that sharp, show me your work on the topic.
What have you ever truly thought through—start to finish?
What have you articulated so precisely that it’s not just a jumble of associations in your head,
but actual, criticizable propositions?

Show me what a „devine man“ you are that your ego rises so high in the sky. What grand revelations await me? Please, do enlighten me with your professorship and boundless creativity… oh, my soul trembles in anticipation..!

Quoting DasGegenmittel

I see a shattered ego, but no stable argument.
It’s a pity you lack the integrity to present counterarguments rigorously.
If you were serious, you would’ve brought something to the table.

I’m well aware of the matter at hand, and I’ve made that abundantly clear.
Unlike you, at least I don’t need to put others down to make a point.

Nice example of an ad hom argument charging others of the same. Goes nicely with the earlier ad hom you offered in response to the very simple criticism of Gettier 'problems'. I was hoping for something better than a rhetorical flourish of personal attacks. I was hoping for something a bit more relevant, I suppose.

What we have are competing explanations for the Gettier problem. One grants that Gettier has showed a problem with the justification aspect of JTB. That is the basis of the project. Another argues that both Gettier cases are examples of justified false belief, and thus pose no problem for JTB; case closed. You're arguing in the vein of the former, and I, the latter.

Do we find agreement in this general description of our situation?

That's a start.

Quoting creativesoul

If a change in physical constituency demands different identity, then it would be impossible to name things fast enough.

That's likely true. As it is, we can name a process, such as a river, and it persists for long enough for our purposes - over generations. Mind you, I don't even accept the physical components are the same thing as the ship. This is demonstrated by the fact that the collection of all the pieces of Theseus' ship in Hobbes' problem need to be assembled before they constitute a ship. I expect you know all about that.

Quoting Ludwig V

Yes, but representing and corresponding are not the only ways to mean something. If we can calculate and apply our equations to the world, we know what they mean even if the signify nothing.

I do not think that the equations signify nothing, that was my argument against AmadeusD, who wanted to reject a dualism of aspects in the world which are changing, and those which stay the same. Amadeus wanted to say that everything in the world is changing. But since the truth of "2+2=4" is something not changing, then it cannot be something in the world so it ends up being nothing.

We can say that there is something called "meaning", and assume that this accounts for the aspects of the world which are not changing, such as truth. But that does not do very much to help us understand this dualism. Now we have the questions of what type of existence does meaning have, and how does it manage to stay the same as time passes, to support the reality of "truth".

Reply to Ludwig V

Good morning Ludwig! :smile:

I'm not well read on Hobbes' variation and its details/consequences, although what you say seems about right with respect to unassembled parts of ships not being equivalent to ships.

For me, and I may be missing something, the ship and the river both trade on the ambiguity of what counts as being the same thing. Things can be the same in multitudes of ways. I've not worked it out in a long time, but I suspect there's either an equivocation fallacy regarding what counts as being "the same", such that either it's used in two distinct senses in the same argument, or if all change results in a different thing, it's an untenable criterion for the reason mentioned heretofore; the impossibility of naming/talking about things.

The issue with this particular thread is that it grants too much to start with in granting that Gettier cases are examples of true belief. Issues with change/flux are irrelevant with respect to that.

Quoting creativesoul

What we have are competing explanations for the Gettier problem. One grants that Gettier has showed a problem with the justification aspect of JTB. That is the basis of the project. Another argues that both Gettier cases are examples of justified false belief, and thus pose no problem for JTB; case closed. You're arguing in the vein of the former, and I, the latter.

I accept your suggestion—if indeed there is a way back to actual arguments—and I welcome it.

Please take another careful look at what the Gettier problem entails according to my position, and what must be concluded from it.

In brief: in contingent scenarios—such as our dynamic reality—there is no fixed truth. We are subject to possible perceptual errors, and the concepts that underpin our assertions are therefore not absolute. Dynamic reality is an infinite game played with incomplete information.

This is precisely where the JTB concept fails: it assumes that truth is already determined, that it is static. But in dynamic contexts, truth can change unexpectedly—due to what we might call epistemic good or bad luck. JTB presumes one can reliably assert truths about the future based on current justification and belief. Crude as it may sound, this becomes evident in everyday application scenarios.

Moreover, there are at least two epistemically relevant time points: (1) the moment of justification and belief, and (2) the moment when the truth value of the proposition becomes (retrospectively) evident. The failure of JTB lies in its temporal indifference—it does not account for the possibility that a justified belief at t? might turn out to be false at t?, even though no irrationality occurred.

Any JTB that is currently accepted in a dynamic scenario may turn out to be false. This is epistemologically paradoxical: JTB is meant to define knowledge strictly—but definitions, by their nature, must offer consistent and temporally robust criteria. They should fix what something is once and for all. But that doesn’t happen here.

This implies: any dynamic scenario in which one makes a justified assertion according to JTB—and in which the circumstances then change—produces a counterexample: a “justified false belief,” such as in the broken bottle or the “fastest way to work” cases. These are not marginal exceptions; they are systematic results of a conceptual flaw.

The fatal weakness of JTB is its lack of temporal precision. If it were to incorporate temporal dimensions, it would have to make them explicit. It does not. Thus, at the very least, it is imprecise—and for a definition, this imprecision is fatal, because definitions are meant to offer definitive and stable characterizations of the concept they define.

I simply wanted to highlight these core issues once more.

Quoting creativesoul

The issue with this particular thread is that it grants too much to start with in granting that Gettier cases are examples of true belief. Issues with change/flux are irrelevant with respect to that.

The statement is a misinterpretation because it overlooks key concepts of the JTC model. While it concedes that Gettier cases may involve true belief, it misses the point that JTC focuses on their epistemic fragility. Change and flux are not irrelevant—they are essential to Dynamic Knowledge (DK). Crisis is not a side issue but the litmus test of genuine knowledge. Ignoring this reduces knowledge to the static, context-blind framework of classical epistemology.

Reply to DasGegenmittel On your view, are Gettier cases, in both the actual paper and the various cottage industry cases, examples of justified true belief?

@creativesoul

Formally, yes — Gettier cases do fulfill the traditional criteria of JTB, and this is precisely why they are epistemologically disruptive. However, under the JTC framework, they are not considered instances of genuine knowledge. The crux of the issue lies in their lack of a stable truthmaker and their failure to endure epistemic change over time.

In many Gettier cases, the truth of the belief is contingent, grounded not in a robust truthmaking relation but in accidental or disconnected facts. The belief aligns with reality, but not because of the justification provided. This disconnect violates the principle that knowledge must not only be true and justified, but true in virtue of what justifies it — a requirement that a coherent truthmaker theory would impose.

Furthermore, JTC introduces time and contextual dynamics as epistemic dimensions. In Gettier scenarios, the belief does not remain justified over time as information shifts. Once the background conditions change or are made fully explicit the justification collapses. This indicates that the belief was never epistemically resilient to begin with. The knowledge claim fails under what we might call a diachronic stress test.

In contrast, DK entails that beliefs are not only justified and true at a moment, but that their justification is revisable, context-sensitive, and survives temporal and conceptual change. Gettier cases fail on this front. Thus, while they may satisfy static JTB conditions, they lack a sustaining truthmaker and cannot persist through epistemic re-evaluation — and for that reason, they do not constitute knowledge in the, dynamic sense that JTC defends.

Quoting creativesoul

On your view, are Gettier cases, in both the actual paper and the various cottage industry cases, examples of justified true belief?

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Formally, yes — Gettier cases do fulfill the traditional criteria of JTB...

Okay. Good.

How would it affect/effect your view/explanation if both cases are examples of justified false belief, rather than justified true belief?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

But since the truth of "2+2=4" is something not changing, then it cannot be something in the world so it ends up being nothing.

Well, what you say is not wrong, of course. But I would have put it differently. That I prefer to say that "2+2=4" is a statement in what grammarians call the timeless present just shows that I'm uncomfortable with metaphysics. So let that pass. When I said it signified nothing, I was taking advantage of an ambiguity in the meaning of "signified". The traditional structure of signifier and signified articulates the two terms as inherently relational - two objects in a relationship. I don't think it necessarily is. For example, does a road sign saying "Road closed" stand in any necessary relation to anything that you would want to call an object, in the sense that the sign itself is an object. I don't think so. But the sign has a clear meaning, nonetheless.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

We can say that there is something called "meaning",

We can say that, but we do well to pause for a moment and work out the meaning of what we just said. If we post the meaning (significance) of a term as an object and think things through, we may realize that no object could possibly do the things that we require meaning to do. So we have to park that idea and think more carefully about what we actually mean by meaning.

Quoting creativesoul

The issue with this particular thread is that it grants too much to start with in granting that Gettier cases are examples of true belief. Issues with change/flux are irrelevant with respect to that.

Yes. I don't usually think of the Gettier cases as all alike. Most of the later ones avoid the (rather obvious) mistakes that the actual Gettier cases make. But it is not unfair to say that they turn on a proposition (belief) which is ambigous and is interpreted (applied) differently in two different contexts - the subject's belief/knowledge and the context of what we might call objectivity.
Most people make a further mistake when they accept his conventional and orthodox view that a proper definition will always return a final answer with the information available at any given time (in a any given context). When this turns out not to be true, this is regarded as a fatal flaw in the definition. But it is not. Somtimes we make mistakes because of our inevitable limitations. When we do, the world does not fall apart, we just withdraw our claim adopt the correct view and carry on. There's no need to fuss about it.

Good afternoon! :smile:

@creativesoul

If Gettier cases are interpreted as justified false beliefs rather than justified true beliefs, this supports — rather than undermines — the Justified True Crisis (JTC) framework. JTC does not rely on whether a belief is ultimately true or false in a static sense. Instead, it focuses on the epistemic instability that arises when a belief’s justification collapses under contextual or temporal revision.

Consider the classic Gettier case: Smith believes “the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket,” based on strong evidence that Jones will get the job and that Jones has ten coins. Unbeknownst to Smith, he will get the job — and he, too, has ten coins. The belief is accidentally true but justified on false premises.

If we treat Smith’s belief as a justified false belief (because at the point of justification, the actual truthmaker is not in view), JTC interprets this as a prime example of epistemic fragility. The justification is disconnected from the actual truth conditions — and once the fuller context is revealed (i.e., the crisis occurs), the belief’s epistemic validity collapses.

JTC argues that robust knowledge must withstand such crises. This requires Dynamic Knowledge — justification that can adapt and remain coherent as contexts shift. So, if Gettier cases are better classified as justified false beliefs, this does not affect the explanatory power of JTC; rather, it confirms its claim that knowledge must be crisis-resilient through conceptual knowledge and adaptation, not merely statically correct.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Consider the classic Gettier case: Smith believes “the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket,” based on strong evidence that Jones will get the job and that Jones has ten coins. Unbeknownst to Smith, he will get the job — and he, too, has ten coins. The belief is accidentally true but justified on false premises.

If we treat Smith’s belief as a justified false belief...

Is Smith's belief accidentally true or is it false? It cannot be both. It is a problem for JTB, only if it's true.

If it is justified false belief, then it is not JTB and the problem dissolves completely.

Quoting creativesoul

Is Smith's belief accidentally true or is it false? It cannot be both. It is a problem for JTB, only if it's true.

If it is justified false belief, then it is not JTB and the problem dissolves completely.

The Problem is not only present "if it's true". The biggest problem is the "if" itself: contingency.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Is Smith's belief accidentally true or is it false? It cannot be both. It is a problem for JTB, only if it's true.

If it is justified false belief, then it is not JTB and the problem dissolves completely.
— creativesoul

The Problem is not only present "if it's true".

Sure it is.

Gettier offered two cases which purportedly qualified as JTB yet were not knowledge. If Gettier offered two cases of justified false belief, there would be no problem at all.

@creativesoul

It is not a rhetorical or semantic problem.

If your reliable boss says to you that a person with brown hairs, in this room will get a higher salary tomorrow. Are you justified in believing so that a person in this room with brown hair, you, will get a higher salary tomorrows? Would you "know" that you will get the higher salary?

Reply to DasGegenmittel

Irrelevant to the point being made. Gettier's claim to fame is/was that his examples undermine/undermined two widely accepted formulations of JTB by virtue of purportedly showing how they could be satisfied, resulting in examples that are clearly not cases of knowledge, but rather were cases of epistemic luck/coincidence.

If his cases are examples of justified false belief, then his challenge to those formulations fails to hit the target. <-------Can we agree on that much, for now?

Reply to DasGegenmittel

Since you mentioned/used it, the first case aims at Chisholm's formulation directly below.
 
S knows that P IFF, (i) S accepts P, (ii) S has adequate evidence for P, and (iii) P is true.

As the key meaningful part of Smith's own belief articulation, "The man with ten coins in his pocket" picks out one and only one individual. Jones is the ONLY man that Smith believes will get the job, regardless of pocket content. Thus, Smith's belief, as Gettier articulated, is true if and only if, Jones gets the job and has ten coins in his pocket.

On the contrary, when P is examined as a proposition that is completely divorced from Smith's inference, "The man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job", is true if/when any man with ten coins in his pocket gets the job. This reasoning shows that there are very different sets of truth conditions regarding P, depending on whether P is considered in isolation from the believer(Smith) or examined with consideration of that.

Hence, the first case rests on judging Smith's belief using truth conditions of what is not(as does the second case). It is only as a result of not noticing and highlighting that conflation, that it seemed/seems okay to say that Smith's belief was/is true. When the inference of Smith is rightly taken into consideration "The man with ten coins in his pocket" means Jones and only Jones. Jones does not get the job. Hence, Smith's belief is justified and false.

Gettier missed/misses the mark.

Quoting Ludwig V

Yes. I don't usually think of the Gettier cases as all alike. Most of the later ones avoid the (rather obvious) mistakes that the actual Gettier cases make. But it is not unfair to say that they turn on a proposition (belief) which is ambigous and is interpreted (applied) differently in two different contexts - the subject's belief/knowledge and the context of what we might call objectivity.

Yep. Detached from the believer, "P" can mean very different things as is clearly shown by the difference in truth conditions between Smith's belief and the same marks examined as a proposition completely divorced from Smith. Attributing different meaning to P is to misinterpret P. I'm not fond of the notion of "objective", although I find Searle's notion/use more acceptable than others.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

If your reliable boss says to you that a person with brown hairs, in this room will get a higher salary tomorrow. Are you justified in believing so that a person in this room with brown hair, you, will get a higher salary tomorrows? Would you "know" that you will get the higher salary?

On my view, predictions of future events(belief about what will happen later) are capable of neither being true or false at the time they're made.

Quoting Ludwig V

I don't usually think of the Gettier cases as all alike.

Yes, generally speaking.

I would further say that there are significant differences between some and others. However, all of them, I think, directly involve and/or work from the idea/notion of epistemic luck, which is usually taken as a problem with the justification aspect of JTB. However, as you may remember from our past conversation(s), I think that that grants too much to begin with by asserting that they are indeed cases of justified true belief, or assenting to such claims/conclusions. I find them to be cases of misattributing belief to S, including Russell's clock.

Many of the objections to my account of that case involve the idea/claim that S cannot believe that a broken clock is working. Yet, my account lends itself very well to experiment in which S will admit to believing exactly that after becoming aware of it. By my lights, that supersedes any and all objections based upon past conventional belief attribution practices. In addition, the experiment supports the idea that we cannot knowingly believe a falsehood and/or contradiction. It also supports the idea that we do not always know what we believe at the time we believe it, and hence when it comes to a difference between an 'objective' account of another's belief and a believer's own account, the believer's account does not always warrant deference/preference regarding which account is more accurate just because it's their own account. This, in turn, supports the idea that we cannot recognize our own mistakes and/or false belief at the time. It highlights the need for another to point them out to us, as well as underscores the need to be able to trust others enough to do so. Such is one way to manage the recognition of our own fallibility.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

If we treat Smith’s belief as a justified false belief (because at the point of justification, the actual truthmaker is not in view), JTC interprets this as a prime example of epistemic fragility. The justification is disconnected from the actual truth conditions — and once the fuller context is revealed (i.e., the crisis occurs), the belief’s epistemic validity collapses.

This presupposes that the belief had epistemic validity to begin with. "It is three o'clock" does not follow from believing that a broken clock is working. "There is a barn" does not follow from mistaking a barn facade for a barn(believing that a fake barn is a real one). "There is a sheep in the field" does not follow from believing that a sheet is a sheep.

Reply to DasGegenmittel

Anyway, I'm okay with our views being different. I wasn't okay with being invited to criticize and then being given the response that was given to what was/is valid critique. I've said enough to support that criticism.

I'll leave you to it now. Pardon the interruption.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

What we have are competing explanations for the Gettier problem. One grants that Gettier has showed a problem with the justification aspect of JTB. That is the basis of the project. Another argues that both Gettier cases are examples of justified false belief, and thus pose no problem for JTB; case closed. You're arguing in the vein of the former, and I, the latter.
— creativesoul

I accept your suggestion—if indeed there is a way back to actual arguments—and I welcome it.

Please take another careful look at what the Gettier problem entails according to my position, and what must be concluded from it.

In brief: in contingent scenarios—such as our dynamic reality—there is no fixed truth. We are subject to possible perceptual errors, and the concepts that underpin our assertions are therefore not absolute. Dynamic reality is an infinite game played with incomplete information.

This is precisely where the JTB concept fails: it assumes that truth is already determined, that it is static. But in dynamic contexts, truth can change unexpectedly—due to what we might call epistemic good or bad luck. JTB presumes one can reliably assert truths about the future based on current justification and belief. Crude as it may sound, this becomes evident in everyday application scenarios.

Moreover, there are at least two epistemically relevant time points: (1) the moment of justification and belief, and (2) the moment when the truth value of the proposition becomes (retrospectively) evident. The failure of JTB lies in its temporal indifference—it does not account for the possibility that a justified belief at t? might turn out to be false at t?, even though no irrationality occurred.

Any JTB that is currently accepted in a dynamic scenario may turn out to be false. This is epistemologically paradoxical: JTB is meant to define knowledge strictly—but definitions, by their nature, must offer consistent and temporally robust criteria. They should fix what something is once and for all. But that doesn’t happen here.

This implies: any dynamic scenario in which one makes a justified assertion according to JTB—and in which the circumstances then change—produces a counterexample: a “justified false belief,” such as in the broken bottle or the “fastest way to work” cases. These are not marginal exceptions; they are systematic results of a conceptual flaw.

The fatal weakness of JTB is its lack of temporal precision. If it were to incorporate temporal dimensions, it would have to make them explicit. It does not. Thus, at the very least, it is imprecise—and for a definition, this imprecision is fatal, because definitions are meant to offer definitive and stable characterizations of the concept they define.

I simply wanted to highlight these core issues once more.

I may be inclined, if you like, to offer candidates of JTB that are not Gettier cases. We could then apply your concepts/reasoning to them and see what that looks like, and/or how well the criticism you levy fits a case of JTB. That could be interesting. I'm much less interested in applying criticism of JTB to cases that are not.

Quoting Ludwig V

Well, what you say is not wrong, of course. But I would have put it differently. That I prefer to say that "2+2=4" is a statement in what grammarians call the timeless present just shows that I'm uncomfortable with metaphysics. So let that pass. When I said it signified nothing, I was taking advantage of an ambiguity in the meaning of "signified". The traditional structure of signifier and signified articulates the two terms as inherently relational - two objects in a relationship. I don't think it necessarily is. For example, does a road sign saying "Road closed" stand in any necessary relation to anything that you would want to call an object, in the sense that the sign itself is an object. I don't think so. But the sign has a clear meaning, nonetheless.

I agree with this in principle, but I would not fuss over the meaning of "signified" like that. There is no reason to think that "the signified" must be an object. In fact, we should think the opposite, what is signified is meaning, not an object. To "signify" only means to be a sign of something, or to mean something. If a person takes a name to represent a particular thing, then that is the meaning the person associates with that sign. So we are not talking about a relationship between two objects, we are talking about a relationship between an object (the sign), and what the sign means (what is signified).

Quoting Ludwig V

We can say that, but we do well to pause for a moment and work out the meaning of what we just said. If we post the meaning (significance) of a term as an object and think things through, we may realize that no object could possibly do the things that we require meaning to do. So we have to park that idea and think more carefully about what we actually mean by meaning.

Yes, this would be the problem with standard Platonism. Platonism assumes objects of meaning, ideas. These objects are supposed to be eternal unchanging objects. So, for example, in Platonism the sign we know as the numeral 2, signifies an eternal and unchanging idea commonly called "the number two". The number two is supposed to be an eternal unchanging object of meaning, an idea.

The difficulty with this proposal of Platonism, is that when we consider most instances of meaning, it is easy to recognize that the meaning signified by a word, is not very often fixed and unchanging. So Plato looked at the ideas signified by many different words, love, just, good, for example, and found that especially in words related to ethical ideas, the meaning is far from fixed, but varies from person to person, and therefore is free to evolve over time.

Now, I've read a good portion of the essay linked by @DasGegenmittel in the op, and I think the intention is to divide knowledge into two distinct types, the eternal, unchanging type (static knowledge), and the evolving type (dynamic knowledge). I would not make a division in this way. I would say that all knowledge, just like all meaning is evolving, but there are differences of degree in the rate of change. Some might propose "ideals", which would be eternal unchanging objects of meaning, but these are imaginary, fictional, because we do not have any such unchanging ideas. So "ideals" are self-defeating, as fictions which are supposed to be eternal truths. And even ideas like that signified by "2", are changing, having come into existence at some time. And we see that there are a number of different numbering systems, like natural, rational, real, etc., and the sign has a different meaning depending on the conceptual structure of the system which provides the context of usage.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So we are not talking about a relationship between two objects, we are talking about a relationship between an object (the sign), and what the sign means (what is signified).

OK. Then I want to say that when we know what the sign means, what we know is how to use it. That means not only understanding the conceptual structure that gives is meaning, but what it requires us to do (and not to do).

Quoting creativesoul

Many of the objections to my account of that case involve the idea/claim that S cannot believe that a broken clock is working. Yet, my account lends itself very well to experiment in which S will admit to believing exactly that after becoming aware of it.

Well, the idea that S cannot believe that a broken clock is working is a play on the intentionality of belief. "Broken clock" is an inappropriate description to use to articulate what S believes.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

If we treat Smith’s belief as a justified false belief (because at the point of justification, the actual truthmaker is not in view), JTC interprets this as a prime example of epistemic fragility. The justification is disconnected from the actual truth conditions

But surely, if Smith's belief is a justified false belief, it is not going to count as knowledge. So what is fragile is not Smith's knowledge, but his belief. That's not a problem.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

To say, “S cannot believe that a broken clock is working,” misrepresents the belief. “Broken clock” is an external diagnosis, not necessarily part of S’s belief content.

I think it is important to say more about this. My view is a trifle unorthodox. It comes down to what description works for different characters in the story. Smith is thinking ot the clock, as a (working) clock. Who wouldn't? But we readers who are in the know, are thinking of it as a broken clock. Of course we are - the author of the story has told us so and authors are never wrong about what is happening in their own stories. Smith obviously cannot possibly be describing (thinking of) the clock as broken and it makes nonsense of the story to attribute such a belief to them. In order to understand the story, we have to be capable of grasping the difference and its significance. There is, so far as I can see, there is no way round that.

It follows that the context of belief is not fully intentional. I've never seen such a concept elsewhere in philosophy, but the facts are clear. In some circumstances, we must respect the believer's description of their own belief. In others, we need to understand (and use) another description - the truth (as we see it, of course).

@“creativesoul” I’ll respond in more depth later—time is a bit scarce right now, but I will get back to you.

@“Metaphysician Undercover” @“Ludwig V”
Do we really need a full representational theory to make sense of 2 + 2 = 4?

I don’t think so. “2 + 2 = 4” isn’t a statement about reality as such, but about a perceptual pattern abstracted by the mind. Numbers aren’t part of the world in the same way as, say, rocks or trees. They’re tools—mental instruments that help us structure and process sensory input. They emerge after perception, not before it.

Perception introduces difference. Without difference, there’s no concept of “two.” Numbers are thus not touchable objects, but operational categories—modalities of cognition.

A more precise example than the sorites might be this:
Imagine a smartphone you bought five years ago. Over time, it receives software updates, loses battery life, perhaps even gets scratches. It’s clearly changed. Yet, at which point does it become “not the same phone”? The numerical identity depends on perceptual thresholds. If the changes are too subtle to be noticed, the “one phone” remains “one phone” in perception, even though materially, it may be quite different. The number “one” here is not describing reality per se, but summarizing a perceptual judgment.

?

As for the broken clock case:

To say, “S cannot believe that a broken clock is working,” misrepresents the belief. “Broken clock” is an external diagnosis, not necessarily part of S’s belief content.

If S looks at the clock at 2:00 p.m., and the clock (stuck at 2:00) shows 2:00, S forms the belief “It’s 2:00.” That belief is justified (the clock appears fine), true (it is 2:00), and believed. The Gettier problem arises here.

What this reveals: knowledge isn’t just about outcome (is the belief true?), but also about the context of assertion—the epistemic status at the moment the subject forms the belief.

This suggests: all worldly assertions are contingent—their truth may not be fully accessible even in the present. The broken clock case illustrates this: an event that matches reality (truth) intersects with a defective process of knowing. Thus, the contrast between specific event and general epistemic practice is key.

Quoting Ludwig V

we must respect the believer's description of their own belief.

After they become aware that they believed a broken clock was working or before?

:wink:

Reply to DasGegenmittel

Broken clocks are not reliable time tellers.

That's about the J part.

The content of belief is not equivalent to a report of it.

That's about the B part.

Quoting Ludwig V

Then I want to say that when we know what the sign means, what we know is how to use it. That means not only understanding the conceptual structure that gives is meaning, but what it requires us to do (and not to do).

This is obviously incorrect. Use is fundamentally subjective. I can use a sign in a way which serves my purpose, and you might use the same sign in a completely different way to serve your purpose. To say that knowing the meaning is knowing how to use the sign is a very one sided way of looking at a multifaceted thing. This completely ignores the intersubjective (communicative) aspect of meaning. To include this supposedly "objective" aspect into your definition of meaning, we would need to consider "correct" usage.

And this exposes the real problem. What constitutes "correct" usage? Therefore referring to knowing how to use a sign, as an indication of knowing the meaning of a sign does nothing for us toward defining meaning, because "correctly" is implied by "knowing how to use", and this provides no guidelines for how to judge one's usage as "correct". So we really do not even approach the true nature of meaning in this way, because it is hidden by not including "correctly" within "knowing how to use". This is the issue exposed by Plato in The Republic, when he asked different individuals to describe how each would use the word "just". Each person had a different way of using the word, and debate was required to demonstrate that any individual's way was incorrect. This argumentation proved that the person really did not know how to use the sign "correctly", even though they could actually use it the way that they did. This indicates that "knowing how to use" implies some form of justification as implicit.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

I don’t think so. “2 + 2 = 4” isn’t a statement about reality as such, but about a perceptual pattern abstracted by the mind. Numbers aren’t part of the world in the same way as, say, rocks or trees. They’re tools—mental instruments that help us structure and process sensory input. They emerge after perception, not before it.

This is very doubtful, and that's the point of Kant's "a priori". Some form of abstractive power, or capacity, is necessary for, therefore prior to, sensory perception. And, since the difference between the thing-in-itself, and the perception of the thing (as a type of abstraction in the mind), is fundamental to the nature of knowledge, especially the fallibility of knowledge, we need to pay close attention to the nature of this difference in any epistemology.

This is the point of Aristotle's law of identity, "a thing is the same as itself". This law locates the identity of the thing directly within the thing itself rather than what we say about the thing, or how we symbolize the thing, thus creating a separation between the thing and the abstraction. When we adhere to this principle of separation, we notice that the so-called abstraction which corresponds with the symbol does not necessarily have any identity at all, as a thing. This allows for the reality of the fictive, imaginative, creative capacity of the mind. Therefore the real meaning of mathematical symbols such as "2" may be entirely imaginary, creations of the mind which are not at all based in perceptual patterns. And I really think that this is the true nature of what is known as "pure mathematics". The mind creates categories which are not based in abstractions produced from sensory perception, but based in its own intentions. The "empty set" for example.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Perception introduces difference. Without difference, there’s no concept of “two.” Numbers are thus not touchable objects, but operational categories—modalities of cognition.

The problem with this approach is that we must allow that there is a means by which perception apprehends difference. This fundamental "mechanism" if we can call it that, determines which types of differences will be perceived. And, we need to take account of this mechanism, the a priori, to have a true understanding of the way that living beings come to know things. If we include this mechanism, then we see that the living being creates freely, through imagination, its own operational categories through the influence of forces such as intentions. Then through some trial and error process, experimentation etc., the successful, useful ones are maintained through time. If we do not include this fundamental principle, we wrongly presume that "correctness" is forced onto the living being by its environment, rather than something chosen by the being through its activities of application.

In other words, if we assume that difference is forced upon us by perception, as you propose, rather than something created by us for the purpose of judgement, we avoid having to understand the true nature of justification. We simply take justification for granted, as something given by the differences within perception. But this is fundamentally incorrect, as Plato demonstrates, justification is actually the means by which we get beyond the deceptions which the senses serve us. (Take the clock example for instance.) True justification requires that we establish a priori principles, real principles of difference, not just the apparent differences which the senses show us. Notice that we have five different senses. Within each sense there are differences which we notice, but we also need principles to account for the differences between one sense and another, which is a much deeper type of difference.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

As for the broken clock case:

To say, “S cannot believe that a broken clock is working,” misrepresents the belief. “Broken clock” is an external diagnosis, not necessarily part of S’s belief content.

If S looks at the clock at 2:00 p.m., and the clock (stuck at 2:00) shows 2:00, S forms the belief “It’s 2:00.” That belief is justified (the clock appears fine), true (it is 2:00), and believed. The Gettier problem arises here.

This is Plato's point with justification. The senses deceive us, and cannot be the source for true justification. The idea that sense evidence is what justifies, is itself misleading, guiding us toward faulty justifications. We must establish principles of comparison derived from the creative, imaginative mind, which form the real basis for justification. These principle are derived from concepts of sameness rather than concepts of difference. This is why it is very important to have a very rigorous definition of "same", to start from, as that provided by the law of identity.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

The fatal weakness of JTB is its lack of temporal precision.

Quoting Ludwig V

Smith obviously cannot possibly be describing (thinking of) the clock as broken and it makes nonsense of the story to attribute such a belief to them.

Seems to me that that's a tad too strongly put. Conventional belief attribution practices may end that way, but that's a flaw born of conflating propositions and belief in addition to not keeping in mind that our knowledge base evolves over time, knowledge about our own past belief notwithstanding.

What if the individual under our consideration while pointing towards the broken clock said something like, "Hey guys! Yesterday, at exactly 2 o'clock, do you know that I believed that that broken clock was working. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? I just looked at it like I normally do and then went on about my business as usual. :lol: I even made it home on time!"

I don't see the nonsense in this, or my account of it. If it's there, could you set it out and show it to me?

Quoting Ludwig V

But it is not unfair to say that they turn on a proposition (belief) which is ambiguous and is interpreted (applied) differently in two different contexts - the subject's belief/knowledge and the context of what we might call objectivity.

At time t1(the duration of trusting the broken clock) S cannot admit of believing that a broken clock is working. They don't know they do. At time t2(after becoming aware of the clock's working condition), then and only then, can they readily admit/acknowledge/realize that at time t1 they believed a broken clock was working.

Which account warrants/garners deference/preference here, before or after becoming aware?

Quoting DasGegenmittel

This is precisely where the JTB concept fails: it assumes that truth is already determined, that it is static.

I argue in favor of JTB. The account differs tremendously from historical convention though, in that I do not treat belief and propositions as equivalent. Nor do I treat belief and reports thereof as equivalent, self-reporting notwithstanding. Perhaps it may be a result of those differences that I can say that the characterization above fails. It's also odd for me to see another treat JTB as though it has agency.

Quoting creativesoul

If his cases are examples of justified false belief, then his challenge to those formulations fails to hit the target. <-------Can we agree on that much, for now?

Since these are statements about future events, they do not constitute knowledge but rather speculation (credence), and the result is not knowledge either, as it does not necessarily and sufficiently follow from the premises. Luck is a temporal phenomenon; the outcome could have been different: good luck (JTB) & bad luck (JFB).

Quoting creativesoul

As the key meaningful part of Smith's own belief articulation, "The man with ten coins in his pocket" picks out one and only one individual. Jones is the ONLY man that Smith believes will get the job, regardless of pocket content. Thus, Smith's belief, as Gettier articulated, is true if and only if, Jones gets the job and has ten coins in his pocket.
On the contrary, when P is examined as a proposition that is completely divorced from Smith's inference, "The man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job", is true if/when any man with ten coins in his pocket gets the job. This reasoning shows that there are very different sets of truth conditions regarding P, depending on whether P is considered in isolation from the believer(Smith) or examined with consideration of that.
Hence, the first case rests on judging Smith's belief using truth conditions of what is not(as does the second case). It is only as a result of not noticing and highlighting that conflation, that it seemed/seems okay to say that Smith's belief was/is true. When the inference of Smith is rightly taken into consideration "The man with ten coins in his pocket" means Jones and only Jones. Jones does not get the job. Hence, Smith's belief is justified and false.

At this point, deductive reasoning is conflated with inductive reasoning, as if temporality didn’t exist. However, there are two distinct moments in time: the scenario of the original assumption (t1), and the new information that Smith also (unknowingly) has ten coins in his pocket (t2; quasi-empirical). This thematic complex refers to what I call conceptual coincidence and further break down with reference to truth-makers. But there’s a lot more going on in this example: e.g., the non-parallel construction of definiendum and definiens & the Leibniz Law violation.

Quoting creativesoul

On my view, predictions of future events (belief about what will happen later) are capable of neither being true or false at the time they're made.

Exactly. And what does that mean? There can be no such thing as knowledge in cases involving temporality and change, unless we adopt a different perspective. Gettier, and all those seeking a monastic definition of knowledge, are doomed to fail. It’s an attempt to achieve the impossible with outdated tools. We must think fundamentally differently.

Quoting creativesoul

This presupposes that the belief had epistemic validity to begin with. "It is three o'clock" does not follow from believing that a broken clock is working. "There is a barn" does not follow from mistaking a barn facade for a barn (believing that a fake barn is a real one). "There is a sheep in the field" does not follow from believing that a sheet is a sheep.

And in that sense, this must also be considered. There is no absolute certainty in the perception of the world. The person who sees the clock and draws an assertion from it doesn’t know at first that the clock is broken, but relies on their previously reliable everyday experience. Yet that, too, can be unreliable—comparable to the fake barn cases. Perception of reality is always only an approximation, never an absolute.

Quoting creativesoul

I may be inclined, if you like, to offer candidates of JTB that are not Gettier cases. We could then apply your concepts/reasoning to them and see what that looks like, and/or how well the criticism you levy fits a case of JTB. That could be interesting. I'm much less interested in applying criticism of JTB to cases that are not.

Sure, gladly—but I’m not criticizing JTB itself, but rather the use of JTB in modern contexts. My paper rehabilitates JTB for static scenarios and demonstrates why JTB must fail in dynamic ones.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Now, I've read a good portion of the essay linked by DasGegenmittel in the op, and I think the intention is to divide knowledge into two distinct types, the eternal, unchanging type (static knowledge), and the evolving type (dynamic knowledge). I would not make a division in this way. I would say that all knowledge, just like all meaning is evolving, but there are differences of degree in the rate of change. Some might propose "ideals", which would be eternal unchanging objects of meaning, but these are imaginary, fictional, because we do not have any such unchanging ideas. So "ideals" are self-defeating, as fictions which are supposed to be eternal truths. And even ideas like that signified by "2", are changing, having come into existence at some time. And we see that there are a number of different numbering systems, like natural, rational, real, etc., and the sign has a different meaning depending on the conceptual structure of the system which provides the context of usage.

That’s very close to how I think about it. However, I also point out that the two types of knowledge are not independent from each other, but have points of integration and application: for example, rounding rules & epistemic standards and stakes.

Quoting Ludwig V

But surely, if Smith's belief is a justified false belief, it is not going to count as knowledge. So what is fragile is not Smith's knowledge, but his belief. That's not a problem.

The problem here is that JTB is normally conceived as static, but in this case, it is procedural. The expectation is not fulfilled, even though a JTB can initially be assumed, which then, due to its contingency, becomes a JFB, yet may still be labeled JTB due to conceptual coincidence within the framework of the truth-maker: Leibniz-law violation.

Quoting Ludwig V

I think it is important to say more about this. My view is a trifle unorthodox. It comes down to what description works for different characters in the story. Smith is thinking of the clock, as a (working) clock. Who wouldn't? But we readers who are in the know, are thinking of it as a broken clock. Of course we are - the author of the story has told us so and authors are never wrong about what is happening in their own stories. Smith obviously cannot possibly be describing (thinking of) the clock as broken and it makes nonsense of the story to attribute such a belief to them. In order to understand the story, we have to be capable of grasping the difference and its significance. There is, so far as I can see, no way around that.
It follows that the context of belief is not fully intentional. I've never seen such a concept elsewhere in philosophy, but the facts are clear. In some circumstances, we must respect the believer's description of their own belief. In others, we need to understand (and use) another description - the truth (as we see it, of course).

Correct—JTB is already refuted by the mere existence of competing JTBs as counterexamples, which I illustrate more clearly using the Rashomon effect.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This is very doubtful, and that's the point of Kant's "a priori". Some form of abstractive power, or capacity, is necessary for, therefore prior to, sensory perception. And, since the difference between the thing-in-itself, and the perception of the thing (as a type of abstraction in the mind), is fundamental to the nature of knowledge, especially the fallibility of knowledge, we need to pay close attention to the nature of this difference in any epistemology.

My point was not about the truthful perception of a thing, but about differences in general. A thing can never be perceived absolutely; there are no 1:1 real-time representations.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Therefore the real meaning of mathematical symbols such as "2" may be entirely imaginary, creations of the mind which are not at all based in perceptual patterns. And I really think that this is the true nature of what is known as "pure mathematics". The mind creates categories which are not based in abstractions produced from sensory perception, but based in its own intentions. The "empty set" for example.

I suspect we think quite similarly here, though we start from different positions. I understand perception not only as a worldly, but also as a mental process—the recognition of a boundary between two things or numbers as a set (of numbers).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This is Plato's point with justification. The senses deceive us, and cannot be the source for true justification. The idea that sense evidence is what justifies, is itself misleading, guiding us toward faulty justifications. We must establish principles of comparison derived from the creative, imaginative mind, which form the real basis for justification. These principles are derived from concepts of sameness rather than concepts of difference. This is why it is very important to have a very rigorous definition of "same", to start from, as that provided by the law of identity.

Correct, but I would add that both sameness and difference are equally important to emphasize the definitional core of the matter. There is no delimitation without differentiation.

Quoting creativesoul

What if the individual under our consideration while pointing towards the broken clock said something like, "Hey guys! Yesterday, at exactly 2 o'clock, do you know that I believed that that broken clock was working. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? I just looked at it like I normally do and then went on about my business as usual. :lol: I even made it home on time!"
I don't see the nonsense in this, or my account of it. If it's there, could you set it out and show it to me?

He didn’t know it, but if we assume that, then he would be surprised—and according to the currently prevailing view of JTB, would have had knowledge by accident. And that’s exactly what you're describing.

Quoting creativesoul

I argue in favor of JTB. The account differs tremendously from historical convention though, in that I do not treat belief and propositions as equivalent. Nor do I treat belief and reports thereof as equivalent, self-reporting notwithstanding. Perhaps it may be a result of those differences that I can say that the characterization above fails. It's also odd for me to see another treat JTB as though it has agency.

That would indeed be strange. In the end, knowledge is—among other things and essentially—an attribution, meant to express certainty/trust so that one can act with little or no risk. JTB, in my view—as I’ve said—is rehabilitated for static scenarios within a dualistic conception of knowledge.

How do you handle this in your view of JTB as monistic, without running into problems with contingency? After all, you yourself say that no knowledge about the future is possible.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

If his cases are examples of justified false belief, then his challenge to those formulations fails to hit the target. <-------Can we agree on that much, for now?
— creativesoul
Since these are statements about future events, they do not constitute knowledge but rather speculation (credence), and the result is not knowledge either, as it does not necessarily and sufficiently follow from the premises. Luck is a temporal phenomenon; the outcome could have been different: good luck (JTB) & bad luck (JFB)

On my view, as it pertains to the temporal aspect, the first case is quite different from the second in that he former is the sort of claim that cannot be either true or false at the time the statement is made, while the latter is the sort of claim that can.

You seem to want to say that the first case cannot be knowledge because it cannot be true or false at the time it's made. However, we do find out that his belief turns out to be false, because Jones does not get the job. Hence, on my view, at the time S made the claim, it was well grounded and unknowable. It ended up being justified false belief. That just follows from my own framework regarding what kinds of things can be true/false(in the sense relevant to the paper) and how they become so.

I suspect we're in at least some agreement on that.

The second case is another matter altogether when it comes to the temporal aspect. It's false when made because "Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona" was true at the time because Brown was in Barcelona. Whereas S believed it was true because Jones owned a Ford.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

On my view, predictions of future events (belief about what will happen later) are capable of neither being true or false at the time they're made.
— creativesoul
Exactly. And what does that mean?

It means that belief about what's happened and/or is happening can be true/false, whereas belief about what will happen later can only be capable of becoming true/false later.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

There can be no such thing as knowledge in cases involving temporality and change

It does not follow from the fact that predictions are incapable of being true/false at the time they're made, that there can be no such thing as knowledge in cases involving temporality and change. Assuming they're justified and believed, predictions can become true despite being incapable of being so at the time they're articulated/made. They become JTB by virtue of turning out to be true. If they turn out to be false, then they cannot be knowledge, because knowledge cannot be false.

Time in the Car Case:
T1: At the moment Smith forms his belief, he is justified in thinking that “Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona” is true because he believes that Jones owns a Ford. His evidence and reasoning at this time are entirely centered on the assumption regarding Jones, which forms the basis of his justification.

T2: However, when we consider the truth of the proposition at a later point, it turns out that the disjunction is actually true solely because Brown is in Barcelona—a fact completely independent of Smith’s initial evidence. Thus, while at T1 Smith’s belief was justified by his reasoning about Jones, at T2 the truth of the statement is secured by an unrelated, coincidental circumstance.

Quoting creativesoul

It does not follow from the fact that predictions are incapable of being true/false at the time they're made, that there can be no such thing as knowledge in cases involving temporality and change. Assuming they're justified and believed, predictions can become true despite being incapable of being so at the time they're articulated/made. They become JTB by virtue of turning out to be true. If they turn out to be false, then they cannot be knowledge, because knowledge cannot be false.

If it is not necessary and sufficient to be the assertion it defines then its not knowledge but (bad/good)luck; credence (speculation which might be virtues but even that does not guaranty knowledge but only a more reliable process).

Quoting DasGegenmittel

What if the individual under our consideration while pointing towards the broken clock said something like, "Hey guys! Yesterday, at exactly 2 o'clock, do you know that I believed that that broken clock was working. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? I just looked at it like I normally do and then went on about my business as usual. :lol: I even made it home on time!"
I don't see the nonsense in this, or my account of it. If it's there, could you set it out and show it to me?
— creativesoul
He didn’t know it, but if we assume that, then he would be surprised—and according to the currently prevailing view of JTB, would have had knowledge by accident. And that’s exactly what you're describing.

No, it's not. I don't think you understand. I'll elaborate a bit more.

That story shows how/that we can indeed believe a broken clock is working despite not being able to believe "a broken clock is working".

In addition, it forces those who show preference to the self-reporting of S at the time of belief to choose between contrary accounts both offered by S, one at a time when S did not know what they believed, and another at a time when they did.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Time in the Car Case:
T1: At the moment Smith forms his belief, he is justified in thinking that “Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona” is true because he believes that Jones owns a Ford. His evidence and reasoning at this time are entirely centered on the assumption regarding Jones, which forms the basis of his justification.

T2: However, when we consider the truth of the proposition at a later point, it turns out that the disjunction is actually true solely because Brown is in Barcelona—a fact completely independent of Smith’s initial evidence. Thus, while at T1 Smith’s belief was justified by his reasoning about Jones, at T2 the truth of the statement is secured by an unrelated, coincidental circumstance.

What was Smith's belief at the moment he formed it?

He believed "Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona" was true because Jones owned a Ford.

I will answer the question above tomorrow. I otherwise get less then 4 hours of sleep.

Quoting creativesoul

What is Smith's belief at the moment he forms it?

I know what you mean but the problem with JTB is time and change. The Definition doesnt hold over time as you show yourself. If the observer wouldnt be there it would be knowledge. So as you clarifie yourself whats a problem because it is possible to be false.

Gettier cases are conceptual councidences:

„ Gettier cases, as illustrated in my analysis, can be described as conceptual coincidence. This term captures the phenomenon of accidental knowledge within non-transitive frameworks like JTB that can arise in dynamic scenarios. They occur when an assertion is randomly confirmed by the alignment of relevant aspects, without the original conditions objectively enabling the assertion. This scenario unfolds over at least two points in (epistemic) time and relies on different but similar and not necessarily distinguishable concepts, with the aspect crucial for the confirmation of the assertion changing in such a way that it validates the assertion. In a metaphorical sense they are like a puzzle that can be completed with a piece from a different set. Although the final piece structurally fits, it is incongruous with the overall depicted image.“

Reply to DasGegenmittel

Cheers. Sleep. Until next time. Be well.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

If it is not necessary and sufficient to be the assertion it defines...

I have no clue what that's supposed to mean.

Quoting creativesoul

I have no clue what that's supposed to mean.

Despite popular opinion we do not need Gettier cases to demonstrate that JTB is insufficient for knowledge. Here a small explanation of what the terms mean.

Necessary and sufficient conditions:
- A necessary condition is something that must be true for something else to be true. (e.g., Having fuel is necessary for a car to run.)
- A sufficient condition is something that, if true, guarantees that something else is true. (e.g., Turning the key in a working car is sufficient to start it.)

Applying this to knowledge:
For a definition of knowledge to be valid, the conditions in the definition must be both necessary and sufficient. That is:
-You can’t have knowledge without those conditions (necessary).
- And if those conditions are met, then you do have knowledge (sufficient).

In other words, not every belief that seems reasonable or even true counts as knowledge, unless it fully satisfies all the required philosophical conditions.

Let’s consider a practical case:

Suppose Jane believes that the fastest way to work is via Elm Street. She’s driven that route many times, and it’s consistently been the quickest. She has justification: traffic data, past experience, and perhaps even GPS support. The route is indeed fast, and she believes it truly is the fastest.

Now, by the classical definition, she seems to know that “the fastest way to work is via Elm Street” — her belief is true, she believes it, and she has justification.

But let’s introduce a twist.

Unknown to Jane, a new road was opened yesterday — a bypass that cuts travel time by 15 minutes. As of this morning, that new road is now the fastest way to work. Jane is unaware of this change and continues to believe Elm Street is fastest.

So, what happens?

Her belief, though still justified based on past data, is no longer true. She continues to assert something that was true, but is no longer sufficient to define knowledge, because it doesn’t align with the current facts.

Now, here’s where the original sentence applies:

“If it is not necessary and sufficient to be the assertion it defines, then it’s not knowledge.”

Jane’s belief fails the test of necessity and sufficiency:
- Her justification is no longer sufficient — it doesn’t guarantee truth in the changed context.
- The truth condition is no longer met — the route is no longer fastest.
- So, her belief doesn’t meet the necessary and sufficient conditions to count as knowledge.

What she has, at best, is a reasonable assumption, not knowledge.

This example shows how knowledge is not static — the necessary and sufficient conditions must continue to align with the world. Once they diverge, the belief, no matter how well-justified or sincere, no longer counts as knowledge.

The example of the fastest route to work changing shows that knowledge is not static. The traditional JTB definition (Justified True Belief) assumes that if someone has a belief that is true and justified, they have knowledge.

But in real-life, dynamic situations — like when external facts change (e.g., a new faster route is built) — a belief that was once true and justified can stop being true or lose its justification, without the person realizing it.

Therefore:
The conditions of truth, belief, and justification are not always sufficient for knowledge.

The traditional definition of knowledge as justified true belief fails to account for cases where justification no longer tracks truth. This shows that knowledge is not static — it evolves with context and time.

If knowledge is not static, but context-sensitive, historically situated, and dynamically linked to changing conditions (like justification evolving with new information), then this challenges the very idea of a fixed, essentialist definition.

The core implication is this:
If the conditions for something to count as knowledge can change over time or across contexts, then any single, timeless definition is inherently limited — or even impossible.

In other words:
- A definition aims to capture the necessary and sufficient conditions of a concept.
- But if those conditions are not stable, then no definition can fully capture what knowledge is in all cases.
- This shifts the project from definition to modeling: from trying to define knowledge in a rigid sense to trying to map how it functions in different contexts.

This is why my JTC approach in relation to DK is relevant. Gettier cases are just one step more complicated but we do not need them to revise JTB for Dynamic scenarios. Every day life is a counterexample already.

Reply to DasGegenmittel Reply to creativesoul Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

I'm afraid that I have some pressing business to take care of. I won't be able to give this the attention it needs for a week or so. So I have to bow out. It's been a good discussion and I'm sorry to have to disappear.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

My point was not about the truthful perception of a thing, but about differences in general. A thing can never be perceived absolutely; there are no 1:1 real-time representations.

This can be a starting point. We can say that differences are presented to us through sense perception, and sameness is something designated based on conceptual principles. For example, look around you and notice that there is difference everywhere. Your sense of vision is providing these differences to you. And if you say that things are the same as they were last time you looked around, you are making a comparison in your mind, with the use of memory, and some principle which allows you to ignore tiny changes as insignificant.

From this perspective, we do not perceive "things". A thing is something created by the mind, with the use of sense perception, but not directly perceived as a thing. The mind, abstraction, conception, etc., produces "things" through principles of individuation, and sameness, and this provides the foundation for the conception of numbers and also identity. I believe it is important to recognize and uphold this distinction in order to properly understand the difference between a judgement of "true", and a judgement of "justified". When we judge that "this" is different from "that", through sensation, we have a judgement of truth. But if we judge that "this" is the same as "this", we judge according to some principles which dictate that it is the same word, despite appearing as two different instances, so this is a judgement which is justified.

Now the issue gets very complicated, because with conceptual principles we adopt opposing principles. So the opposite of "same" is "not same", and this is often known as "different". The problem here is that this results in a type of difference which is justified through principles of sameness, but it is not necessarily true by sense perception, it is a conceptual difference. These conceptual principles are applied back against the claimed truths of perception, through the law of noncontradiction, to justify those claims of truth. The point being that the differences of sense perception (supposed truths) may be overruled by principles of sameness (justification), and this is a fundamental aspect of knowledge. In other words justification overrules truth and we create sameness out of things which appear to be different. This is known as equality and equivalence.

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Correct, but I would add that both sameness and difference are equally important to emphasize the definitional core of the matter. There is no delimitation without differentiation.

The point now is that we have two types of "difference". One is supported by the truth of sense perception, and the other is supported by the justification of not same. These are very different meanings of the same word. Therefore to avoid equivocation we cannot simply class sameness and difference together as opposing principles, because this would include the "true difference" which is not justified, in with the "justified difference", as if they are both opposed to same. They are not both opposed to same, because the senses do not give us any "same", therefore "difference" by sense perception is completely distinct from "difference" by principles of "not same".

These principles of categorical separation within the use of the same word, are very complicated, and were explored by Plato in books like Parmenides. You may wonder about the importance of maintaining such separations, but it becomes very important to maintain some form of separation between true and justified, to avoid confusion when we consider terms like "possible" and "necessary".

Reply to Ludwig V

Not a problem. Real life pressing matters are more important than our discussions on this forum

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Her belief, though still justified based on past data, is no longer true.

Right. That's it. Her belief is no longer true. Hence, it no longer counts as knowledge even though it once did and was.

What's the problem?

:worry:

JTB has to evolve to a more flexible as definition as data can change which it doesnt account for. It has to account for time and change - we use it only implicitly that way but that doesnt work in the end because it is deterministic; but beliefs change with new information. Otherswise the truth value can change within an unreliable definition as it does as it does as you rightfully claim. It changes from a JTB with a seemingly Foreve correct future prediction to a justified false belief because These predictions are only contingent despite the expectation of a JTB - which is only likely but not necessary an therefore not certain. If knowledge shall be stable thats bad. JTC does account for that; with a stable Definition as JTB (static) and JTC as pragmatic adjustment of Dynamic knowledge as you use it implicitly. Life changes, data changes and knowledge should be able to do so too.

Reply to Philosophim

I’m curious… What do you think? I hope it’s not too bad to read. ;D

Quoting DasGegenmittel

Since these are statements about future events, they do not constitute knowledge but rather speculation (credence), and the result is not knowledge either, as it does not necessarily and sufficiently follow from the premises.

Well, let's take an easy case: what if I said I know that if A then B, A therefore B will still be valid tomorrow. 2+2 will still = 4 tomorrow. Water will still be wet (and H2O) tomorrow. Are you saying I don't have knowledge of these future events? Are future events, in principle, unknowable?

@RogueAI

Good question.

In my perspective, I distinguish between two forms of knowledge: static and dynamic. Static knowledge is timeless and unchanging; dynamic knowledge, on the other hand, is tied to time and subject to transformation.

Take mathematics: 2 + 2 necessarily equals 4—within the system of rules we’ve established. This is a form of static knowledge. With concepts like H?O, things become more complex. H?O is also a clearly defined concept, rooted in scientific laws and symbolic notation—axiomatic in structure, much like mathematical expressions. It offers us a way to establish clear boundaries in how we understand the world.

However, while these concepts connect us to reality, they don’t guarantee absolute certainty. Our perception of reality is not absolute—there’s no one-to-one mapping between what we think we know and what actually is. Unexpected influences—external radiation, atomic anomalies, minor variations—can alter outcomes in ways we didn’t account for. So while concepts like H?O help us form reliable predictions, those predictions are not necessities. They are probable, not guaranteed.

To illustrate this further: imagine you leave a bucket of water outside your house. Will it still be wet tomorrow? Not necessarily. A sudden cold front from the Arctic could freeze it overnight. Unlikely, perhaps—but not impossible. Likewise, the water might slowly evaporate. So even a seemingly stable property like “wetness” can fluctuate over time.

And what we perceive is only the surface. On a microscopic level, even in a group of ten H?O molecules, countless processes unfold: minor radiation, electron shifts, subtle energy exchanges—all beyond our direct perception. These processes are real, even if we aren’t aware of them.

Even objects we regard as extremely stable are not exempt from change. Take the International Prototype Kilogram: a precisely protected object, stored in a secure vault, isolated from external influences. And yet, over time, it has measurably lost mass. No matter how carefully we preserve something, the world continues to move around—and within—it.

This brings us to a deeper point: statements about the future are always contingent. Our concepts give us frameworks to imagine what might come, but the future itself is not bound by those frameworks. Our assumption that things are as we perceive them—that the world is stable and consistent—is an illusion. The world is in flux, and so are we. We recognize ourselves from moment to moment, yet in truth, we are always in a process of becoming.