Presentation: From Belief to Being: Rethinking Knowledge Beyond Justification

Presentation: From Belief to Being: Rethinking Knowledge Beyond Justification

Summary

This presentation compares Justified True Belief (JTB) and Methodical Realism (MR) as theories of knowledge. While JTB defines knowledge as belief that is both true and justified, it fails to account for Gettier-style cases where justified true beliefs arise by luck. Attempts to patch JTB, such as No False Lemmas and Reliabilism, are examined and found wanting. In contrast, MR defines knowledge as the mind’s judgment conforming to reality itself. Rather than emphasizing justification, MR prioritizes epistemic humility and receptivity to the disclosure of being. The presentation concludes that MR offers a more coherent and realistic account of knowing.

Annotated Bibliography

Gettier, Edmund L. “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Analysis 23, no. 6 (1963): 121–123. Gettier challenges the classical JTB account by presenting counterexamples where justified true beliefs fail to count as knowledge due to epistemic luck.

Gilson, Étienne. Methodical Realism: A Handbook for Beginning Realists. Translated by Philip Trower. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990. Gilson defends knowledge as a contact with being itself, emphasizing metaphysical realism and rejecting the modern focus on subjective justification.

Chisholm, Roderick. Theory of Knowledge. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989. Chisholm proposes the “no false lemmas” condition (though not named as such), arguing that beliefs leading to knowledge must not rest on falsehoods, providing one supplement to the JTB framework that I explore as a solution to Gettier.

Goldman, Alvin I. “What Is Justified Belief?” In Justification and Knowledge, edited by George S. Pappas, 1–23. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979. Goldman advances process reliabilism, arguing that knowledge stems from reliably true belief-forming processes, providing another supplement to the JTB framework that I explore as a solution to Gettier.

 Video Link

https://youtu.be/vi1scxcZ2dE?si=lpzq8RBRNjjAW06n

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