Dissolving the Gettier Problem

Book excerpt: This book argues that a complete dissolution of the Gettier problem is possible using Jaakko Hintikka’s Socratic Epistemology, with its emphasis on questioning as a knowledge-seeking procedure. The key to accomplishing this task is to treat Gettier’s counterexamples as a game of inquiry where epistemic agents deal with various pieces of information, employ different moves, and make different choices or strategies (such as bracketing or unbracketing an item of information) in determining for themselves what to believe in, or what they can claim to have knowledge of. This book will appeal to both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as post-graduate researchers, as it offers a novel perspective for understanding the Gettier problem and a cogent explanation for the failures of previously proposed solutions to it. All this is made possible by going beyond analysis and dealing with the experiences of epistemic agents in actual problem-solving scenarios.