Aristotle's Virtue Ethics: A Common Misunderstanding

The first question of philosophy is "how should I live my life?"  Sometimes this is also presented as "what is the good life?" because the trivial answer to the first formulation is "the best way possible."  However you want to frame it, it eventually boils down to the same thing.  For the purposes of this article, I'll frame it as "what is the best possible way to live?".

For the ancient Greeks, in order to answer the motivating question you need to answer a prior question: what is the good?  The idea here is that before you can figure out what a good life is you need to figure out what "good" is, then you'll want to live the life that most partakes in the "good."

As it turns out, there are two types of "good": intrinsic and instrumental.  Let's begin with the latter by using an example.  Money is an instrumental good because we don't seek it for itself, rather we seek it for the goods we can trade it for.  We seek money because with it we can get the things we're really after like vacations, food, nights out, etc... If we were stranded on a deserted island and had a bunch of money, the money would have no value at all (except maybe as toilet paper).  This shows that money has no intrinsic value; that is, it has no value itself.  It only has instrumental value (i.e., it only has value in so far as it allows us to get other things that we really value).

To summarize, something has instrumental value if we value it only because it gets us things that we really want.  The things we really want have intrinsic value: we don't want them in order to get some other thing.  Common examples of things that have intrinsic value are love, friendship, happiness, and health.  We don't value these things because they get us some other thing; we value them simply for what they are.  They are intrinsically good.

Notice that some things have both intrinsic and instrumental value.  For example, love and friendship have intrinsic value (we value them for themselves) but they also have instrumental value: they bring us happiness which is a purely intrinsic good.  We don't pursue happiness for any other reasons. It's not valued as a means to some other end. Happiness is the reason why we pursue everything else and so we say it is a purely intrinsic good.

Incidentally, by happiness Aristotle did not mean pleasure or any other emotional states. He meant something very different from what we mean by it today, but let's set that aside for the moment and assume his position:  For now, all you need to know is that by "happiness" Aristotle means the process of developing and realizing human excellences. To put it another way, happiness isn't an emotional state but a way of being.  Assuming this is the case, then everything we do ought to be directed at this end if we want to live a good life.

To summarize up until now: We want to know how we ought to live a good life.  In order to answer that question we need to figure out what the chief good is; that thing for which all other things are pursued. Knowing this will allow us to direct our actions.  As Aristotle says:

Will not the knowledge of [the chief good] then have a great influence on life?  Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? 

That chief good is happiness.  So, if we want to live a good life we ought to pursue things that will lead us to happiness.

In a moment, we're going to come back to this instrumental-intrinsic distinction and Aristotle's definition of happiness but I want to discuss a question that motivates most of moral philosophy, why should I be moral? The answer to this question (for the ancient Greeks) is directly related to the first question of philosophy and its prior question regarding the nature of the good.

Depending on our conception of "the good" our answers to why we should be moral will differ.  For example, if I define the good as "whatever brings me pleasure" then there doesn't seem to be any strong reason for me to be moral and none at all where self-interest and morality diverge. The only reason I would have to be moral would be to avoid the consequences of people perceiving me as immoral.  Of course, there are many cases where our personal self-interest happily lines up with what is moral and so in these cases I'd derive instrumental goods from being moral (because it serves my own ends, gives me a good reputation, etc...). We want to know if I'd acquire some good from acting morally even in situations where I don't stand to benefit in any obvious way.

Let's break this down (wika-wika).  Plato, in a passage of The Republic called "Glaucon's Challenge," asks whether acting morality has any intrinsic value; that is, in addition to the times when acting morally serves our own interests (i.e., has instrumental value) does acting morally have any value above the instrumental goods it gets us; i.e., Is there any reason to value being moral even when there are no instrumental reasons for doing so? 

Two other ways of framing this issue make it clear:  If you could act immorally yet always be perceived as acting morally and never get caught (i.e., get all the instrumental benefits of acting morally without any personal costs) would you personally be missing out on any good?  Or if you acted morally but were perceived as acting immorally, would you gain anything of value? This is Glaucon's challenge to Socrates:  Does acting morally have any intrinsic good or is it purely an instrumental good.

In one of my favorite passages in all of philosophy, after giving his argument, Adeimantus (Glaucon's brother) says

For the things said indicate that there is no advantage in my being just, if I don't also seem to be, while the labors and penalties involved are evident.  But if I'm unjust, but have provided myself with a reputation for justice, a divine life is promised.  Therefore, since as the wise make plain to me, 'the seeming overpowers even the truth' and is the master of happiness, one must surely turn wholly to it. [my italics]

In other words, the instrumentalist position is pretty compelling.  If I want to give myself the best shot at achieving happiness, it's more important to appear to be moral than it is to actually be moral. The costs of acting morally are great, especially if one is going to be perceived as immoral while doing so, and the benefits of appearing moral (even if you aren't actually being moral) are great. What good does the "pretend" moral person miss out on that the real moral person gains? Or does he not miss out on anything?

Here's where we have to take another detour in order to answer the question.  It will seem round-about but bear with me (and Aristotle).

What is the function of a cup?  This may sound like a strange question but if we interpret this question the way the Greeks used the word "function", it won't sound so strange.  "Function" should be understood as "the attributes that make a thing the sort of thing that it is."  When I ask "what is the function of a cup?" I'm asking, what properties make a cup a cup, and not something else?  I'll add that even under this definition of function, E-40's lyrics "we out here trying to function" don't make much sense to me.

We might answer that what makes a cup a cup is that it is something that holds fluids and it something that is easy to drink from.  The degree to which a cup fulfills its function (i.e., has the properties that make it a cup), is the degree to which the cup is a good cup.  For example, a cup with a leak in it (i.e., doesn't hold fluids "excellently") isn't as good a cup as one that does doesn't leak at all. Similarly, a cup that's really awkward to drink from isn't as good a cup as one that is really easy to drink from.

Notice also that if something doesn't hold fluids or can't be drunk from, it isn't a cup! (You are welcome for the profound philosophical insight; it's what we do!).  The moral of the story here is that the more excellently something fulfills its essential functions (i.e., exhibits its defining properties), the more excellent that thing is as a such-and-such AND to the degree that something fails to exhibit excellence in its defining features, that thing is not a such-and-such.

So, why are we talking about cups? Wasn't this supposed to be about moral philosophy and Aristotle? Allow me to try to explain how this fits into the puzzle:  We want to know what it would require to live a maximally good life.  But, if we want to know what a maximally good life is, we need to know all the possible good things there are for humans.  This way, like the archer, we can "aim" our actions at them.  If it turns out that being moral is one of them and has intrinsic value (not merely instrumental) then we're not going to want to skip out on this good because that would mean excluding ourselves from the maximum good possible.  We'd be leaving a piece of the good out.

Before moving forward it's important revisit Aristotle's notion of happiness.  Happiness is the process of developing and realizing human excellences. To put it another way, happiness isn't an emotional state but a way of being/living.  Happiness, the highest good, is the process of actualizing the qualities that make us human and not something else.  To put it simply: happiness=the greatest good for humans=development and exercise of excellence in those features that make humans humans rather than something else.

In order to figure out whether moral virtue has intrinsic goodness we're going to have to figure out what the function of a human being is because we need to know what we need to be excellent at to achieve maximum human goodness/happiness.  (Remember by function we mean "the defining features of a human/that which makes a human a human, and not something else).

This brings us back to the humble cup. How did we distinguish between a good cup and a less good cup or not cup?  We said it was according to how much something possesses its essential features (i.e., fulfills its "function").  As with the cup, if we are to distinguish between a good human and a less good human, we're going to need to know what a human's essential properties are because maximum happiness will require maximum actualization of those essential properties.

Ah! At this point hopefully some light bulbs are turning on in regards to how everything is going to fit together.  Let's see if we can figure out how the intrinsic/instrumental good distinction, the "function" of a human, happiness, morality, and the good life all fit together. First let's ask what traits make a human a human.  For Aristotle this is the capacity to reason (and guide our actions according to reason) and live in large communities (i.e., we are "political animals").

The degree to which we are able to live in large communities will depend in large part on our moral virtues. If everyone just runs around acting only according to self-interest ("but I gots mah rights! don't tell me what to do!") without any consideration for others (i.e., not being morally virtuous), then that community will be dysfunctional and those people will not be able to fully develop and exercise important parts their essential human-ness.

Conversely, if everyone exercises moral virtue, the community will flourish along with the particular individuals that inhabit it and people will have a good shot at fully developing their essential features. Maximal development and exercise of the human virtues is the greatest good for humans and this is what happiness consists in.  People in a dysfunctional community don't and can't maximally develop the essential features of human beings.  Consequentially, they are cut off from full happiness.

Aside: It comes as no surprise to an Aristotlean that the rise of the tin-foil hat "individual-rights-trump-everything" dogma correlates strongly with the demise of community and with it human happiness.  Yeah, he called that 2300 years ago.

So, where does this instrumental/intrinsic stuff fit in because it seems like our reason to be moral, on this model, is instrumental.  I should be moral so I can be happy, right?   I initially thought this and it perplexed me.  How could Aristotle have made this obvious error?

(Another) Aside: Here's a rule of thumb for reading philosophy (and life generally).  When a thinker whose works have survived centuries and especially millennia seem to contain an obvious error, odds are you have misunderstood their position.  In philosophy we call this epistemic humility.

My mistake was to confuse the instrumental good for why we should be moral with the intrinsic good that comes from being moral.  Why should I be moral? So I have a shot a maximally good life (instrumental reasons).  How do I do that?  I have to "get" all the possible "goods".  If I don't develop moral virtue, there's no other way for me to acquiring the particular good that comes from being morally virtuous. This is the intrinsic good that comes from being moral.

I'll repeat this because it's a little tricky: We should exercise, develop and actualize our moral virtues so that we can get the full goodness necessary that makes up full human happiness. This is an instrumental reason to be good and it is an instrumental good that comes out of being virtuous, but the particular good that we get from being moral (development of our moral virtues) cannot be obtained any other way except by being morally virtuous (i.e., this is the intrinsic goodness that comes from being moral).

Let's return to the central questions: why should we be moral?  Because there is no other way to "get" the fullest human good (i.e., happiness) without actually being moral.  To repeat, we might have an instrumental reason for being virtuous (so we can be happy) but there's no way to achieve full human happiness without being morally virtuous because otherwise an important intrinsic good will be missing.  People who aren't virtuous are not exercising and developing maximum human excellence. They are not fully developed humans and therefore never have a shot at maximum human happiness. By not being virtuous they are cut off from a possible piece of full human excellence/happiness.

Just like a cup is a cup to the degree that it exhibits the properties that make it a cup and not something else, you are only human to the degree of excellence that you exhibit those attributes that make a human a human, and not something else.  The ultimate good for a cup is to possess its essential features in the most excellent way possible.  It follows that the ultimate good for a human is the same.  And since moral virtue is an essential feature of human beings, if we are to achieve ultimate human good (i.e., the fullest possible happiness) we must develop moral excellence (along with other kinds); otherwise we exclude ourselves from the fullest conception of human good/happiness.

Now, go be an excellent human being!

The Reliability of Blogs vs Conventional Media: A Response to David Coady

Response to David Coady's “An Epistemic Defence of the Blogosphere”

Preamble/vocab for non-philosophers:  
I wrote this for a class so, although I've tried to avoid it as much as possible, there are a few technical words which I'll explain here:

Epistemic reliability: A source is epistemically reliable if it produces/conveys more true beliefs than false beliefs.  Epistemic just means having to do with knowledge.

Knowledge that is vertistic: knowledge as true belief.

I think that's it!  

Intro

“. . . [W]henever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." (Padover, 1939, p. 88). The implication here is the widely shared belief that a well-functioning democracy isn't possible without the public knowing what's going on in their government. Of course, this assumes that the information the public receives is likely to be true, which in turn depends on the reliability of the sources from which it is acquired by the public.

In the internet age, the blogosphere has emerged as a popular source for political news and commentary. Given its rise in popularity it's worthwhile considering its epistemic benefits relative to those of the conventional media and whether the blogosphere positively contributes to our democratic practices. Goldman (2008) takes the negative view arguing that the blogosphere is a less reliable source of information than the conventional media and therefore does not benefit our democratic practices. In “An Epistemic Defence of the Blogosphere,” David Coady argues for the positive position and counters Goldman's three main lines of argument against the epistemic reliability of the blogosphere (relative to that of the conventional media). Coady argues contra Goldman that the blogosphere (a) doesn't undermine professional journalism, (b) doesn't lack balance in any detrimental way, and (c) isn't parasitic on the conventional media. Finally, Coady concludes that the blogosphere benefits our epistemic well-being and improves our democratic practices.

I will briefly outline Coady's main argument then I will argue that both Goldman and Coady are mistaken to focus their attention on evaluating the relative epistemic reliability of the blogosphere because (a) no meaningful distinction can be made in terms of reliability and (b) whatever current distinction there is will likely soon evaporate. I conclude that (c) even if we assume that one or the other class of media is more reliable this doesn't matter one fig given the wide range of reliability within each class; what matters is whether the citizenry is able to distinguish between good and bad arguments and good and bad sources. A citizenry with low cognitive abilities will easily be mislead by the sensational and find themselves sucked into epistemic black holes--despite the existence of some reliable sources, conventional or otherwise.

Outline of Coady's Argument:

(P1) Although the blogosphere might undermine professional journalism, it doesn't follow that it harms the “epistemic prospects” of the citizenry because political questions shouldn't be the exclusive domain of experts--we ought also appeal to 'the wisdom of the crowds' (i.e., bloggers).

(P2) The conventional media's ostensible virtue of balance actually excludes genuine balance because it omits points of view that aren't those of the dominant parties. The blogosphere, on the other hand, can accommodate every micro-perspective. This is an epistemic benefit to the citizenry.

(P3) Despite Goldman's argument that the blogosphere isn't independent from the conventional media, the dependance relation also runs the other way. The conventional media often turns to blogs as sources because blogs can do things the conventional media can't or doesn't do (like close examination of public documents, in depth analysis, etc...). These activities, which are most typical to the blogosphere, are an epistemic benefit to the citizenry.

(C) It follows from (P1), (P2), and (P3) that the blogosphere provides an epistemic benefit to the citizenry because it does things that the conventional media can't or doesn't do much of.

It Don't Mean Stink if You Don't Know How to Think
Instead of focusing on the central argument I will attempt to make the case that this debate over the relative epistemic benefits of the blogosphere and conventional media, while interesting, is of minimal importance. If our chief concern is epistemic well-being and good democratic decision-making, what really matters is the general level of critical thinking in the citizenry. An important part of the debate between Goldman and Coady hinges upon there being a meaningful distinction between journalists in the conventional media and bloggers. To begin making my case, I'll try to show that this distinction cannot be sustained.

Coady gives several criteria to mark the distinction:

(a) Journalists are paid while bloggers are not; (b) journalists are part an institution and therefore subject to institutional norms (for better or for worse) while bloggers are not; (c) journalists have access to “the halls of power” to collect information while bloggers' principle form of research consists in close examination of publicly available documents; (d) journalists have their information filtered in a way that bloggers don't.

With the exception of perhaps (d), I suggest that these criteria do not establish a strong demarkation between the two categories because there are many obvious counter-examples to each of the criteria. Regarding (a), many bloggers are well-paid and make a living off of sponsorships and ads. In fact, many bloggers aspire to this. Regarding (b), many academics and professionals have blogs. When they blog in their capacity as academic and professional, just like journalists they are also subject to strong professional and institutional truth-telling norms, in these cases do they suddenly cease to be bloggers? That's unlikely. Coady himself gives a counter-example to (c), and presumably as individual blogs grow their audience and opinion-making power, this distinction will be obliterated. Access to the halls of power is a poor demarkation criteria.

The last criteria is (d) is perhaps the most promising as a demarkation criterion. The concentration of corporate power and friendly ties to those in power suggest that the conventional media is subject to a type of filtering to which blogs are not. That said, as Coady himself indicates, there are examples of bloggers also gaining face-to-face access to politicians. It's not unreasonable to suspect this access is because of their favorable disposition or reluctance to criticize the particular politician; i.e., filtering similar to that in the conventional media. Of course, the bloggers are not subject to institutionally-imposed filtering norms, nevertheless it seems that anyone who's going to get face-to-face access—blogger and journalist--gets that access on the precondition of at least some filtering. One would presume that as individual blogs increase their audience and clout so too will their possibility of access increase, in turn further blurring the line between blogger and journalist. The point here is simply that in the long run this demarkation criteria probably going to grow increasingly porous and so isn't going to succeed in drawing a clear line.

Recall why we even care about marking a distinction between the two categories of media. We want to know if the blogosphere is a net benefit for a democracy in terms of its ability to reliably provide true information to the citizenry which will in turn cash out as a benefit to good democratic decision-making. Now, suppose one were to reject my above arguments against a meaningful demarkation, I believe I can still make my case against it: For each category the range of reliability is so wide as to make any meaningful distinction irrelevant in terms of the property we care about: reliability. In sum, the degree to which the two categories (if we presuppose some essential difference) overlap in terms of reliability renders them indistinguishable from each other in this respect.

Consider the conventional media. Who's in this category? Fox News, MSNBC, CBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Huffington Post, NYT, NPR, PRI, and PBS to name a few. In terms of reliability, anyone who's bothered to look at recent media studies literature will tell you that there's a huge gap between the reliability of say, Fox News and NPR. For example, in several polls testing knowledge of current events, Fox News viewers scored even lower those who don't follow the news (citation). Not surprisingly, the more ideological the news source (regardless of ideology), the worse the participants' knowledge of current events. The group who scored best were those who listened to NPR.

So what's my point besides the fact that everyone should donate and listen to NPR? The point is that in terms of reliability—the property with which are concerned—the range within the category “conventional media” is so wide such that ascribing a reliability score to the category is rendered meaningless. “Conventional Media” captures pretty much any reliability value you choose, depending on the case you're trying to make.

It should come as no surprise that the same argument can be made of the blogosphere. From Alex Jones' Info Wars and the rest of the wacky wonderworld of conspiracy-of-everything blogs to blogs run by elite Ivy League professors, the range of reliability within the blogosphere is vast. The distribution is so wide that to speak of “the reliability of the blogosphere” is essentially meaningless—even more so than for the conventional media. You can make the reliability score fit whatever position you wish to support depending on the cluster of blogs you select.

Essentially, you can pick and choose a conventional source and a blog to make whatever case you want about the relative reliability of each category. One reply might be to average the reliability over all prototypical members of the class but this would do no more than distort what we really want to know: If a citizen gets their news from blogs or conventional media, which one is more likely to reliably report true beliefs? It all depends on which particular source of conventional media we are talking about and which particular blogs she chooses. It'll return to this later.

There are further reasons to be skeptical of any attempt to meaningfully distinguish and make pronouncements about the conventional media and the blogosphere in terms of reliability. Consider a hypothetical situation where there's no blogosphere and only conventional media. Is the conventional media reliable? That is, does it announce more true information than false? It depends. Do we live in North Korea? Or do we live in a Western democracy with strong laws protecting freedom of the press and a low concentration of media ownership? Or do we live somewhere in between? The point here is that there's nothing intrinsically reliable about conventional media. It's reliability is contingent upon many variables many of which are political, legal, and economic. With this in mind, lets return to the central issue: Does the conventional media improve our democratic practices (via epistemic benefits)? The answer and reasons are same as for the reliability question: it depends.

How about if we consider a population where there is only a blogosphere and no conventional media. Is the blogosphere more reliable? Again, it depends. What blogs is a person reading? How are they choosing what blogs they read? Do they pick blogs that confirm their pre-existing ideological biases or do they actively seek out blogs that challenge their point of view? The empirical evidence suggests the former.

The wide and overlapping distributions of reliability within and between the blogosphere and the conventional media as well as the contingent nature of each categories' reliability score all suggest that the reliability issue is of only minimal significance. To true see why lets return to the issue that motivated the whole project to begin with: how can we best ensure that the public is well-informed such that our democratic practices are improved? Coady would have us believe that there mere fact that people have access to a range of positions where they will encounter mutually incompatible points of view implies that “as a result they are able to develop their critical faculties, which in turn helps them make better choices about what and whom to believe” (p. 291).

Unfortunately for Coady, there are journals replete with literature to the contrary. I wish I could share his optimism, but exposure to a plurality of views isn't sufficient if we don't take into account the various conditions under which these views are encountered. For example, consider level of education. The Dunning-Kruger effect shows that those least able to reason are most confident in their ability to do so and most recalcitrant to correction. Johnathan Haidt's research shows that we are recalcitrant to facts that undercut cherished beliefs. Kahan's research shows that our ideological biases determine who we consider to be an expert. The backfire-effect (Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler) shows that in the face of strong disconfirming evidence people will further entrench their beliefs rather than align them with new and better evidence. Even something as objective as doing basic math is distorted by our political biases (Kahan) and the effect is stronger with numeracy! There's also a growing body of literature on how people make media choices and it doesn't support Coady's hypothesis: the majority of the population chooses its media sources based on whether it confirms their existing views. Most people want confirmation and comfort rather than the discomfort of cognitive dissonance when their cherished beliefs and values are challenged.

There are too many studies to list here but the upshot is that (a) encountering disconfirming views on its own is unlikely to confer any epistemic benefit and, even if this weren't the case, (b) the vast majority seek out sources which confirm rather than challenge their views essentially sending them into an epistemic echo chamber. For example, the literature on conspiracy theorists is clear. Anyone who enters this epistemic black hole has little chance of ever escaping: any evidence against the conspiracy is counted as evidence for it.

“With the click of a mouse, you enter the world of conspiracism, and you never have to leave that world,” the University of Utah's Goldberg explained. “You get a situation where you are confirmed, and you don’t have any information that advises you to look in a different direction ... There’s an inner core of people who are committed.” And not only are these people stuck in a feedback loop of confirmation bias and groupthink, but they are actually being radicalized in the process as well, Goldberg maintained.¹

Given massive cuts to education, emphasis on rote learning for standardized tests and its consequences to the critical thinking skills of the general populous, its hard to see how the rise of the conspiratorial and sensational in the blogosphere should be counted as epistemic gain.

The obvious reply is that I am committing the fallacy of confirming instances for surely there are also blogs that are extremely vertistic. True, but there are several confounding factors. First of all, as I've mentioned already, given the human propensity to seek confirmation we should expect that these “good” blogs will be ignored by those who could most benefit from them. Second, I'd wager the conspiratorial, sensationalist, and ideological blogs as a whole have way more traffic than the reliable blogs and that there's little overlap between the audiences. Finally, for those that enter the blogosphere neutral, the gravitational force of the “bad” type of blog is much stronger than that of the “good” type.

So, what are we to make of this mess? Is there any way to draw a meaningful distinction between the blogosphere and the conventional media? I'm not sure but if there is any thing distinctive about the blogosphere it is that its possible range of epistemic reliability is wider than that of the conventional media. Conversely, at least in most Western democracies, there are institutional norms that prevent chronic outright fabrication in the conventional media. To be fair, Coady acknowledges as much when he marks the distinction between the epistemic virtues of avoiding false beliefs and acquiring true beliefs. The conventional media might win out over the blogosphere in achieving the former.

Lets return once again to the motivating issue. To the extent that we can even talk about the blogosphere and the conventional media as distinct categories and given the overlapping wide-ranges of reliability values between and within each class, can anything be said about the blogosphere in respect to its role in a democracy? To answer this, let me once again quote Padover: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." (1939, p. 89). In other words, the blogosphere is only a benefit from an epistemic point of view if people have the requisite critical thinking skills such that they can distinguish between good and bad sources and good and bad arguments.

Blogs, like many tools, are proverbial double-edged swords. Some are more epistemically reliable than the best “conventional” news source and some are so epistemically naughty it would make Fox News blush. For the citizen who has the cognitive tools to critically evaluate the quality of sources or luckily stumbles on a network of credible blogs, blogs are a net epistemic benefit. For someone who tumbles down the rabbit whole of conspiracy or strongly ideological blogs, they are not likely to again see the light of reason. The same sword that defends you from harm can also cut you. It depends on the skill of he who wields it.

1 Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theorist. March 15, 2013. http://www.ibtimes.com/anatomy-conspiracy-theorist-inside-new-wave-ancient-tradition-1127679

Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma (Video)

Hey guys,

Here's a video I made to help my students understand Divine Command theory and the Euthyphro dilemma:

https://plotagon.com/12834

Gettier Revisited

I've talked about Gettier before and much of what I say here will overlap with what I've already said.  It turns out I'm much more comfortable lecturing on something if I write about it the night before. Hopefully this won't always be the case 'cuz it takes up a lot of time...

Why Should You Care About Gettier?
You should care about Gettier because he showed that (so far) there is no coherent definition of knowledge.  Why should we care about defining knowledge anyway?  Well, because conceivably, there's a difference between simply believing something and knowing something.  What might the difference be?  What does it mean to "know"?  Since the ancient Greeks all the way up until 50 years ago to know something meant 3 conditions were met:

(1)  The subject believes p.
(2)  The subject is justified in believing p.
(3)  P is true.

These 3 conditions for knowledge are collectively known as the justified true belief theory of knowledge (JTB).  Sounds pretty plausible right?

Lets look at counter example to the JTB theory or, as they are now called, Gettier cases:

Gettier Case 1
Suppose Smith and Jones apply for the same job.  When he goes to the bathroom, Smith overhears the boss say that Jones is going to get the job.  Also, while in the waiting room Jones emptied his pockets and put all the contents on the table, counted them (there were ten coins) then put them back in his pocket.  From this information Smith infers the proposition: "the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket."  From the available evidence, the proposition seems like a valid inference.

What actually happens is that Smith ends up getting the job.  Now here's the crazy part: it turns out that, unbeknownst to himself, Smith also has exactly 10 coins in his pocket!  Given what's happened, can we say that Smith knew that "the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket?"

Lets see what the JTB theory says:
(1)  Did he believe that the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket?  Yup.
(2)  Was he justified in believing the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket?  Yup.
(3)  Is it true that the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket?  Yup.

So it seems that according to the JTB theory Smith knew that the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket but something isn't quite right!  Lets look at one more example before we figure out what's gone wrong:

Gettier Case 2
Bob has a friend, Jill, who has driven a Buick for years.  Bob therefore thinks that Jill drives an American car.  He is not aware, however, that her Buick has recently been stolen, and he is also not aware that Jill has replaced it with a Pontiac.  Does Bob really know that Jill drives an American car or does he only believe it?

Lets see how the JTB theory handles this:
(1)  Does Bob believe that Jill drives an American car?  Yup.
(2)  Is Bob justified in believing that Jill drives an American car?  Yup.
(3)  Is it true that Jill drives an American car?  Yup.

According to the JTB theory Bob knows that Jill drives an American car.  But something doesn't seem right about that.  It looks like he just happened to have gotten lucky.

Lets figure out what's going wrong in these cases.

Why Gettier Cases Happen:
Gettier cases happen because of our acceptance of two assumptions about justification.

Assumption 1: It's possible to have a justified belief that turns out to be false.  For example, when I'm at work I can assume that my car is where I left it because I remember parking it and I saw it in its spot as I walked to my building.  Of course it could happen that someone steals my car or that it gets towed. The fact that my belief about my car's location turns out to be false doesn't undermine the fact that I was justified in believing it was where I parked it.

Assumption 2: It's possible to make valid inferences from one justified belief to another.  For example, if I'm justified in believing it's raining then I can make the inference that there are clouds.  Since the initial belief (it's raining) is justified the inferred belief (there are clouds) is also justified.  In fancy talk: If I know that P entails Q and P is justified then I'm also justified in believing Q.

Rejecting (2) would make life really difficult and if logic is to have any value, we need to keep (2).

To see how the interaction of these 2 principles causes Gettier cases lets take a look at an example from Dretske.

Example 3:
Suppose you see a stack of your friend's (John) mail.  The address is in San Francisco.  You reasonably apply assumption 1 and form the belief that John lives in San Francisco.  It turns out however that he lives in LA.  The fact that your belief about where he lives is false doesn't mean you aren't justified in believing he lives in SF.  Based on your false belief that he lives in SF you make a valid inference and form a new belief:  John lives in California.  This is a perfectly valid inference.  Now, you have a justified (via assumption 2) true belief about where John lives.  However, you reached your belief that he lives in California through the false belief that he lives in SF so you don't really know he lives in California.  The inference from the false belief is what undercuts our ability to call the belief "knowledge".  The JTB fails to capture what we mean by "knowledge".

Attempted Rescue of the JTB Theory:
In example 3 what prevents us from calling the belief that John lives in California knowledge is the inference from a false belief (John lives in SF).  In example 1, the belief that "the man who has ten coins in his pocket will get the job" isn't knowledge because it is inferred from the false belief "Jones is going to get the job."  In example 2, the belief "Jill owns an American car" isn't knowledge because because it's inferred from the false belief that Jill owns a Buick.

Do you see the solution?  All we need to do is add a 4th condition to the JTB model.  Now, a person knows p when she:
(a) has the belief that p;
(b) is justified in believing p;
(c) p is true; and
(d) p isn't inferred from a false belief.

Ta da! So long as all four conditions are met, we can say that a person knows p.

Ut oh!  Party Time!
In my other life I'm a party planner.  Every month I plan a wonderful party.  The thing is I need to know which room to rent for the party.  My decision is based on how many attended the previous month's party.  If there are fewer than 40 people at this month's party I rent the standard room.  If there are 40 or more then I rent the large room.

I ask my assistant: how many people attended this month?  He says 78.  I then make the inference from the belief that 78 people attended to the belief that I will need to rent the large room.  This seems like a legitimate inference, right?  78 is definitely greater than 40.  But hold on a tick.  It turns out my assistant miscounted.  There were only 77 guests.  I've just made an inference from a false belief (i.e., violated condition (d)) yet it seems as though we can say that I know I will need to rent the large room.

Not So Fast!
Hold on to your horses.  There's something fishy going on here.  Yeah, OK, strictly speaking you made an inference from a false belief but there was an implied probability judgement.  You know that the margin of error of your assistant's counting is large enough not to matter for the inference; that is, the likelihood of him miscounting by a margin of 35% is very small.  In other words, if the counting is off by a bit it's not going to affect the truth of the inferred belief (in this case that I'll need a large room).  Lets add our 5th condition to the JTB theory:

(e) p has to have a sufficiently high probability of truth in order to count as knowledge.

Who's a Loser Now?
So it looks like we've got our theory of knowledge all figured out.  As long as p meets all 5 conditions then we can count it as knowledge.  Lets take a closer look at the 5th condition and see if it stands up to scrutiny:

The fifth condition is that in order for p to count as knowledge, in addition to the previous 4 conditions it also must have a sufficiently high probability of truth.  Might there be a counter-example?

Suppose there is a lottery with 1 billion tickets.  There's a 1/1 000 000 000 chance that ticket 0 000 000 000 will win.  There's the same chance that ticket 0 000 000 001 will win.  Of each ticket it's reasonable to say that you believe they won't win.  There is a very high probability that ticket 0 000 000 000 won't win but could you say that you know that it won't win?  It seems that no matter how great the odds that it won't win, you can't say that you know it won't win.  It appears as though we have constructed a counter-example to (e):  Even though there is a very high probability that "I won't win" is true I can't say that I know I won't win.

Ok, Lets Try A Different Approach
As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, the cause of the problem for the JTB theory is not that we need additional conditions rather that we have accepted assumptions 1 and 2.  So why don't we reject one or both of them?

Lets Reject the Idea that It's Possible to Have a Justified Belief that Turns out False
Well, first of all, we already saw what happens if we do this: We end up like Descartes rejecting everything except for the fact that we exist (without a body).  Basically, what happens is that the only types of justifications that count are one's where the p couldn't possibly turn out false. That's not going to work too well or at least make knowledge very difficult to come by.

Consider the John in California example.  If we reject assumption 1 then based on the fact that all John's mail is addressed to SF we can no longer say that we are justified in believing he lives in SF. This seems a bit counter-intuitive.  How much evidence would we need before it would be impossible for the belief to turn out false? Aside from the practicality issue, this course seems implausible.

Cultural Relativism Vs Moral Objectivism

So, I've been experimenting with a new way to explain major philosophical concepts and issues by video and dialogue (aka, Socratic method).  I think dialogue is a much more intuitive way of understanding things.

I'm not able to embed the video but here's the link.  Let me know what you think:
https://plotagon.com/12235