No Justification for Smith’s Incidentally True Beliefs

Abstract

Edmund Gettier (1963) argued that there can be justified true belief (JTB) that is not knowledge. The correctness of Gettier’s argument is questioned by showing that Smith of his famous examples does not earn justification for his incidentally true beliefs, while a doxastically more conscientious person S would come to hold justified but false beliefs. So, Gettier’s (and analogous) cases do not result in justified and true belief. This is due to a tension between deductive closure of justification and evidential support. For being justified, any believing, disbelieving, or withholding of deductively inferred propositions must be distributed proportionally to given evidential support. This proportionality principle has primacy over deductive closure in case of conflict. Although the author’s argument does not save the JTB-account, it explains why subjects in Gettier situations do not earn knowledge.