The True-Justified-Belief Theory of Knowledge - Essay Example

There are three terms “truth”, “belief”, and “justification” which are very pronounced in the knowledge theory.  In epistemology, belief denotes faith. It is concerned with what we believe such as traditionally held beliefs. This includes the truth and everything we believe to be right from our cognitive point of view. What a personal belief of something as true or not is a necessity for a belief. One of my belief is something that is wrong but that will not disregard the belief from being true. The belief held by such a person was a mistaken belief but not that the belief was wrong. This brings the concept of truth. These conditions of truth, belief and justification must be taken together to be sufficient for JTB.

The justified True Belief was strongly held in the world of philosophy but not until Gettier came in and questioned the knowledge that was held for thousands of years. In his argument, Gettier claimed that the knowledge held by someone may be justified and true, yet fail to count as knowledge. This was known as the Gettier problem.

An example of Gettier Problem

Suppose I stumble on Mary, a classmate's driving license which is written that she comes from Chicago. Having seen that legal document, I’m justified to believe that Mary comes from Chicago. Suppose I infer from the above case and say that someone in my class comes from Chicago. Now, Mary's driving license turns to be a fake one. It seems that what I believed was wrong which even makes my second belief to be wrong. Unknown to me, I may have believed it right that Mary comes from Chicago and it turns out to be true. The knowledge I have just acquired has no justification at all. It is by luck. It is the same thing in the first case whereby the truth did require me to have a justification. It turns out that my Justified True belief is not true. According to Glitter, an item can be qualified as to knowledge, not because the truth is justified and true but the justification of the belief must call for its truth (BonJour pp 15).

It is therefore right to conclude that JTB cannot stand on its own unless the justification of the truth must be proved to be true. Until then, the knowledge theory may lack credibility.