I like to make note of real life Gettier cases. Yesterday I was in one.
I was driving down my old neighborhood. I passed by a house that I seemed to remember was the house that Becky, a friend of mine from high school, lived in when we were growing up. There was a For Sale sign in the front yard.
I thought “Becky’s old house is for sale”. I drove a block and came across Becky’s actual old house. The first house was a duplicate, but I had forgotten about this duplicate house. Guess what? Becky’s actual old house also also had a For Sale sign in front.
So, it seems I had a justified true belief that Becky’s old house is for sale before I came to Becky’s real house, but it doesn’t seem like I knew it.
I like the case, but I’m having a hard time seeing what provided the justification. Your misremembering?
That’s what I was thinking. The evidence that I had – a seeming that this was my friend’s house – seems like good enough evidence to do the justifying.
Either you trust your seemings more than I trust mine, or we have a different view of the justification such seemings provide. Then again, perhaps you just think that such seemings give some minimal amount of justification; in that case, I’d agree.
Nice! It does seem like there might be a bit of a worry about the justification condition. I tend to think it would have to do with the circumstances more. I’d have to know whether you were being reasonable in taking that seeming at face value. And that probably hangs on how robust it was and whether you could have easily recalled the memory of the duplicate house if you put a little bit of thought into it. If it was fleeting and you put more weight on it than you should have or if you were too careless in moving on with that, I’d say you weren’t justified. But if it was pretty robust and you put the right weight on it, I’d say you were.
The memorial seeming was pretty robust, at least as robust as the other sorts of memorial seemings I rely on.
[…] cool happened in our methodology seminar last week. Some people like to remark on real-world Gettier cases they find themselves in. I found myself last week in the presence of a […]