We were talking about the Gettier problem, where a ‘double luck’ scenario might happen. Our professor illustrated a good scenario, and it looks like this (though this is not word for word his scenario, just his idea): Linda, a girlfriend of professor Cullison invited him to lunch at the East Side Grill, he showed up, and looked for her, while he did not find Linda, since Professor Cullison is a modern Don Juan it was no surprise when his gaze stumbled upon Lisa, another one of his girlfriends in the East Side Grill, since Linda was not around Professor Cullison was still able to have lunch with a girlfriend. (I must add that while Professor Cullison may not dissuade the masses as to how godlike he may be to the female race, he is happily married with less than a million children.) John Turri has written a paper detailing this problem, and others who have tried to solve this ‘lucky’ knowledge problem. I am submitting his view on the problem and a link to a PDF of his paper. The article is quite long, and I am not going to really post all of his article. This is a good start to look at the Gettier problem.
http://turri.org/john/research/manifest_failure.pdf
“6. My Solution
Consider these two cases.
(OJ) I sat at the table feeding baby Mario his breakfast.
I took a sip of orange juice and unwisely set the
glass down within Mario’s reach. His little hand darted
out to retrieve the glass and its colorful contents.
Spoon in one hand, baby in the other, I helplessly
watched the glass tumble down, down, down. It
broke.
(CARAFE) We just finished a delicious dinner. Maria
turned to say something but in the process carelessly
knocked a glass carafe, sending it careening from the
table in my direction. Glass is fragile, so I reached out
and caught it before it hit the ceramic tile floor. It remained intact.
In each case the outcome obtains because the glass is fragile. Yet we
all recognize an important difference: the outcomes are not due in
the same way to fragility. In OJ the glass breaks because it is fragile,
and its breaking manifests its fragility. In CARAFE the glass remains
intact because it is fragile, but its remaining intact does not
manifest its fragility. Neither outcome obtains only because of fragility—
in OJ Mario and the floor help out, in CARAFE my dexterity
—but that doesn’t spoil the point.
The examples highlight a general distinction between (a) an
outcome manifesting a disposition and (b) an outcome happening
merely because of a disposition. A glass may remain intact because
it is fragile, or it may break because it is fragile, but only the latter
outcome manifests its fragility. Outcomes include conditions,
events, and processes. Dispositions include powers and susceptibilities.
No metaphysical theory teaches us this distinction.
We excel at applying this distinction in a wide range of cases. Albert
Pujols crushes home runs regularly because of his power; he
also receives intentional walks regularly because of his power; his
power manifests itself in the former case, but not the latter. Roger
Federer regularly smashes wicked forehands because of his skill; he
is also lauded regularly because of his skill; his skill manifests itself
in the former case, but not the latter.
Sosa identified a triple-A structure for performances. I suggest
they have a quadruple-A structure.38 To Sosa’s three I add adeptness.
A performance is adept just in case its succeeding manifests
the agent’s competence. For beliefs, adeptness is truth manifesting
competence.
I further propose that knowledge is adept belief. More fully
spelled out, you know Q just in case your truly believing Q manifests
your cognitive competence. (‘Truly believing’ means ‘having a
true belief that’, not ‘strongly believing that’.) I use ‘cognitive competence’
inclusively to cover any reliable cognitive disposition, ability,
power, skill or virtue.39 I treat ‘manifests’ as primitive, relying
on our robust pretheoretical understanding of it.
My solution to the Gettier problem is that knowledge is adept
belief, but Gettier subjects don’t believe adeptly, so they don’t know.
Gettier subjects believe the truth, so they succeed in a sense, but
this success (i.e. their believing the truth) does not manifest their
competence. In a word, the Gettier subject is a manifest failure.”
36 Sosa 2007: 36, 31. He also speaks of performances succeeding “out of”
competence (1991: 288), and “deriving from the proper exercise” of a competence
(1991: 292), and “deriving sufficiently from a competence (2003:
172; comp. 1991: 144–5).
37 Zagzebski 1996: 297; 1999: 107.
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38 They actually have more than just a quadruple-A structure, but I set aside
the presently irrelevant details. See section 7 for more details.
39 Zagzebski, Sosa and Greco (and others in the virtue epistemology camp)
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