Maria sees a clock on the wall that reads 3:15. It has always been reliable, so she forms the belief 'It is 3:15.' It really is 3:15 — but the clock stopped exactly 12 hours ago. Does Maria know it is 3:15?
AYes — her belief is true and her justification (a normally reliable clock) is strong
BNo — she lacks a justified belief because the clock is broken
CNo — her belief is true only by coincidence, disconnected from the actual truth-maker
DYes — Gettier cases only apply to beliefs formed through multi-step inference, not direct perception
This is a Gettier case: Maria has a true belief (it is 3:15) and good justification (the clock has always been reliable), yet she lacks knowledge. The truth of her belief is accidentally connected to her justification — she happens to look at the stopped clock at the exact moment it is correct. The truth-maker (the actual current time) has no proper causal or counterfactual connection to her evidence. Option A would be the JTB verdict; the Gettier structure shows why JTB is insufficient.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
What does the 'No False Lemmas' condition add to JTB as a response to Gettier cases?
AIt requires that knowledge be based on infallible, incorrigible evidence
BIt requires that no false intermediate premise appear in the inference chain leading to the belief
CIt requires that the belief be formed through direct perception rather than inference
DIt requires that the believer be certain, not merely justified
The No False Lemmas condition targets the structure of the original Gettier case, where Smith infers through the false premise 'Jones will get the job.' The condition blocks such cases by requiring that knowledge not be inferred through any false step. However, this patch is too narrow: the barn facade case shows a Gettier structure with no false lemma — Henry correctly infers 'that's a barn' from direct perception, using no false premise, yet still lacks knowledge because the belief-forming environment is unreliable.
Question 3 True / False
Gettier cases show that justified true belief is not a necessary condition for knowledge — there are cases of genuine knowledge that fail to involve JTB.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Gettier cases show that JTB is not *sufficient* for knowledge — you can have all three (justification, truth, belief) and still lack knowledge. They do not show JTB is unnecessary. In fact, knowledge still seems to require all three JTB conditions plus something more. The problem Gettier identified is a gap in the analysis, not a demolition of it — knowledge is at least JTB, just not merely JTB.
Question 4 True / False
The barn facade case demonstrates a Gettier structure even though Henry's belief involves no false intermediate premise.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
In the barn facade case, Henry drives through a region filled with realistic barn facades. He happens to look at the one real barn and correctly forms the belief 'that's a barn.' He reasons from direct perception, using no false premise. Yet he lacks knowledge because in that environment, his perceptual process is unreliable — he would have formed the same belief about any of the facades. This shows that the No False Lemmas patch is insufficient: the general problem is epistemic luck (justification and truth coming apart), not false lemmas specifically.
Question 5 Short Answer
What is 'epistemic luck,' and why is it the structural feature that unifies all Gettier cases?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Epistemic luck is the condition where a belief is true, but not because of the justification that supports it — the truth-maker and the justifier are accidentally connected rather than properly linked. In every Gettier case, the agent's justification would have supported the belief even if the belief had been false, or the belief is true only through some coincidence that has nothing to do with the evidence. The belief is true and justified, but the justification doesn't track the truth. Knowledge seems to require that the belief be true because of the evidence, not merely coincidentally true alongside it.
Epistemic luck is the common thread: Smith's justified belief happens to be true because he has coins too; Maria's justified belief happens to be true because the clock is stopped at the right moment; Henry's justified belief happens to be true because he looks at the one real barn. In each case the agent is 'lucky' in a way that shouldn't count as knowledge — the right answer was arrived at for the wrong (or insufficiently robust) reasons.