CORRECTION: We talk about the work of Edmund Gettier in this video and the photo we use is not of Edmund Gettier! Somehow, the internet used a wrong picture once and now everywhere you look, the same picture of this false Edmund Gettier appears. You can see his real face here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Gettier
This can't be said enough, but what you guys are doing is absolutely amazing. You guys have a fantastic cast and I feel privileged that you all make these videos for us. :)
The most ironic but truly philosophical aspect of this series is coming into each episode with questions and leaving with twice as many different questions
I am really liking this educational series. Hank is one of my favorite RU-vid hosts, I enjoy and learn from any video I watch with him in it. this series is no exception, full of information that is enjoyable to learn from.
+Tara Mohammed Most human beings do not enjoy pondering the thought that everything they know could be wrong, down to even basic perception. Most human beings find it terrifying when they realize we can't even quantify what knowing stuff is. This kind of thinking makes people start questioning all their belief in what is real, kind of like descartes did, thus resulting in an existential crisis.
I think the definition of knowledge as true, justified belief holds up even with Gettier cases. Gettier cases are just examples of situations where one thinks a belief is justified but it isn't. If the "justification" is fallacious, that fallacious argument doesn't actually support the conclusion and it is therefore not actually "justified".
Here's a case: A boy, who grew up in france, had been given a piece of plum pudding once by an older gentleman. Later as a young adult, he had a second piece of plum pudding at a party, and the same older gentleman came in at the same exact moment, having followed a wrong address to the same party by chance. Much later in his life, and far from home, he saw plum pudding on the menu at a restaurant, and ordered a piece, telling his friends that all that was missing was the older gentlemen he had always eaten the dish with before. But he had no plum pudding that day. Because the now quite elderly man was in the same restaurant and had only just ordered the last piece. Jung called this simultaneity: beliefs we hold, which are justified by evidence, and by strange coincidence or cosmic conspiracy turn out to be true, but where there is no logical, causal connection between our justified beliefs and the true reality. But I believe he would still have considered this a form of knowledge, a knowledge beyond knowing. He explained the power of many religions and superstitions with this concept.
I used to have a teacher in high school who would say "oops I lied" when he has misspoken and produced false information. It used to really bother me because how could he lie without knowledge. This episode kind of reminds me of it, and also I think does relate to that issue.
Zaziuma (Patrick Jensen) I don't know why, I'm just asserting that we can't know whether those cats were the same or not. For all we know, they kept their promise.
My philosophy 101 students have an essay on gettier cases due tomorrow. This is super great and informative, and I would have loved to have used it to start our discussion, if only it had been published two weeks earlier! fun fact, Bertrand Russel actually came up with gettier cases before gettier, but his paper on the topic went mostly unnoticed.
You are phenomenally intelligent, and I absolutely adore and appreciate this philosophy series!! I'm 14, but hey, never too old or young to learn, right? ;) Most of the philosophical "questions and answers" mentioned in these videos so far are ones that I have already at some point attempted to subjectively analyze, and it is completely fascinating to see this done objectively as well. I cannot express to you the extent of my gratitude for your passion of sharing knowledge and wisdom! Well done, and thank you! :)
I learn more from this channel (regarding the topics at hand) than I have ever in all my time in school (I'm already an incoming 3rd year college student) and in FRACTIONS of the time (10 mins on CC > 1 entire sem--21+ hours of Philosophy 101 and many other courses). Furthermore, I am getting one free, and I am paying fortunes for the other... The big difference is a piece of paper I get at the end of 4 years or more of (mostly needless) grinding. I love this channel so much. I extend a personal thank you to the awesome team/s over at Crash Course.Kudos!
Bachelor's Degree in Art Humanities: "Do you want abstract fries with that?" Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy: "Why do you want fries with that?" Bachelor's Degree in Political Science: "Would you like your fries on the left or right?"
I had no interest in philosophy until I started watching these videos! So cool how one guy could disrupt the workings of so many philosophers before him.
assertion: Has truth value (Truth, false, indeterminate) proposition: Underlying meaning under assertion propositional attitude of belief : eg You are saying what you believe Types of justification Testimony: taking someone's word First person observation
Hank Green is a genius who helped me out a lot in expanding my mind and improved my grades in school on this channel. John Green wrote some books I couldn't stop hearing about for weeks at school. However, I still read The Fault In Our Stars for a book report. Funny how that turns out. Also, amazing episode as always. Can't wait for next one.
This was cool. I have just two problems: (1) Your assertion that claims about the future have indeterminate truth values is controversial (for example, it presupposes that Eternalism is false). And (2) your assertion that justification is basically just evidence is a very internalist view of justification - we externalists about justification think that justification can float free of the evidence the agent is aware of (for example, see Goldman's Reliablism).
I hate knowing something complicated but ended up studying Social Science/Studies Course in College and these things help me fuel my mind everytime , The urge to earn and learn more . Thanks a lot for this useful and remarkable videos
heavyweaponsgaming yes it was so many wholes in his counter I sense agenda in supporting it...For the justified truth to hold true for so long and a flimsy counter like this not to have been demolished..I would counter that the overall ability for humans to be able to reason has now devolved and the purpose of all humans is too support agendas....
Something cannot be "properly justified" and "not match the truth" at the same time. It can have "a justification" but when that justification doesn't match "the truth" it is simply a self-reliant justification, therefore a belief that thinks of itself as justified from itself. The justification part requires that it holds true in the context in which the belief is made, you can't have a justified belief(even if it happens to be true) if you change the context and do not reevaluate the justification from that new context. That's basically the difference between Newton's F=MA vs Enstein's relativity. We like things to be simple so we tend to see things in a Newtonian perspective, but when you look at more extreme cases you realize it only holds true in a specific context.
The problem that I see with this theory is the whole human assertive bias, where people unconsciously assign more credibility to someone or something that supports their own, already existing ideas or beliefs. This definition of a true belief, something that not only is believed by the person, but also has justification behind it, gets very complicated when one adds in what is happening today, known as the “era of misinformation”. The lack of fact-checking, along with the failings of scientific and academic integrity, has resulted in a confusing world where, by this definition of a truth, two conflicting truths could both be considered “true”. Look at, for instance, the anti-vaccine movement, something that is largely regarded as false and disproven, however the fact that there is one scientific paper that exists that supports it provides justification. Sure, there might be hundreds of studies arguing against it, but because of that self-confirmation bias, many anti-vaccine advocates place more credibility in a single, very flawed, thoroughly disproven study, instead of multiple, independent, rigorous and scientific studies. It really is worrying that if that is how the human mind decides truths and beliefs, how will the spread of so called “fake news” and misinformation affect humanity? A democracy relies on having a well-informed, fact-based population, and we can see the beginnings of what happened when that population is not well-informed. Even binary yes or no questions are considered “up for debate” by most of the populace. Many politicians are benefitting from this as well, using arguments that “there isn’t enough evidence” or “the research isn’t in” to justify inaction, even using the fact that most of science doesn’t deal in absolutes, it deals in 99.9% likelyhoods. Scientists can no longer “if X happens, there is a absolute certainty that Y will happen.” If you get shot in the head, there is a very high likelyhood you will die, but there is a slim chance you might live. Scientists say “almost certainly” because that is the nature of science. Take climate change for example. While scientists widely agree that yes, this is something that is happening, they say this scientifically, not generalizing things. They describe it as “almost certainly happening” or “there is overwhelming evidence supporting it”, but climate change deniers interpret that to mean that “we aren’t sure if it’s happening or not”. The world is complicated, it’s not written in certainties. If you flick a light switch, a light will probably come on, 99.99% of the time. But, every once in a while, the light might burn out, of the wire might be broken, or the power might be out. Therefor someone has to explain that the light will most likely come on. That doesn’t mean that it’s 50/50, they are saying that it is almost certainly going to come on, unless something completely unanticipated and unlikely happens. Asking scientists to speak in absolute yes or no answers is impossible to do truthfully, because next to nothing is certain 100% of the time. Asking of them to provide absolute certain agreements is an impossible statement, and next time you see someone using this argument that “the science isn’t all the way in”, apply the same standard to them. Claim that, say, they are an alien. Yes, they are almost certainly not, but it is not absolutely impossible, there is an incredibly small chance, so if they are going to use that incredibly small chance to try and discredit overwhelming evidence, you should be able to do the same to them. Yes, there might be a 0.000001% chance that climate change is not caused by humans/is not happening, but a 99.99999% chance that it is definitely should hold more weight. If you had a 99.9% chance of winning a million dollar lottery, you would enter that lottery! You wouldn’t not enter it because there is a 0.1% chance of losing it.
Matthew Smith those seek knowledge free themselves from all bias, so just like many go to church but are not truly Christians, many people learn things with bias attached but the truly rare and extreme seeker of accurate knowledge will evolve beyond the bias of the human experience.0
Alexander the Great used knowledge to achieve so much enabling to him to do what people thought was impossible. - We did a video on the same point you made
Whenever I seek for knowledge in a field now, I type in "crash course + [field name]" into RU-vid. Never learned so many things in such an appealing way. Thank you, crash course!
Hank, I just feel like I must say, I did NOT take my teacher's word for much. They kept saying you shouldn't believe everything on the internet or on television, but they were blind enough to forget that they too were just people who could make mistakes, an attitude that too many teachers have, especially towards their pupils.
Many people say Crash Course Philosophy causes existential crisis where nothing you can be confident about. But people of all smartness agree that this channel is complete,with 'a cat' and of that we are confidential.
How about Crash Course Music?From the history to the mathematics, forms (what a Symphony is or a sonata), about the artists, how music evolved and so onjust an idea
Hey Apoorva! Are you from India? Are you doing some degree in Philosophy? I am new to Philosophy and have much interest in it. I am also liking this crash course so far. Can you suggest more content to understand the philosophical aspects. Books, Series, or anything? Would be of much help. Thanks!
One of my philosopher lecturers told us a funny story about the Gettier Cases. Apparently Gettier was forced my his mentor to write and publish some of this work so that he could finish his studies. So Gettier sat down and wrote like 2 pages (seriously it's that long, that really is short) and then published it. This was basically the first thing he ever published and he didn't even feel like doing it. And in a couple of pages he destroyed the traditional definition of knowledge which had been fine for hundreds of years. So the next time you feel like half arsing an essay and are just doing something to get someone of your back, think of Gettier - you never know you may really be on to something!
6:20 Pretty often, actually, in any area that involves decision making under uncertainty. How many times my mom was certain a prediction was true even though it was unpredictable (like: it's gonna rain tomorow night) and when right she says "seeee!!!" But when wrong, she brushes to the side. This happens all the times with sports predictions.
Could we then say that the vast majority of us do not have real knowledge in most aspects of life, particularly with regard to science? For example, most of us can identify the force of gravity in our lives but we do not have a deeper understanding of physics, and so, perhaps we do not have proper justification. In this case, is our "knowledge" of natural laws merely a belief?
Not necessarily. Contextualism posits that "knowledge" in its use is contextual...that is, if I say I know that 2+2=4, then, if I am not in the proof-appropriate context, I don't need to justify my belief that 2+2=4 by doing the mathematical proof. Same kind of concept can, kind of, apply to the natural sciences
I love studying philosophy on my own. I hate it when teachers tell me to go write a paper on a specific philosophical topic, I suddenly lose all interest in the subject because I'm no longer going at my own pace instead I have to try and cram a lot of new ideas just to get a good grade. I end up learning very little and I lose interest :/
Three questions: 1) If we apply a healthy dose of skepticism and consider Berkeley's idealism, how do we define a value proposition if there isn't an external reality, just perception? 2) The idea that there is an external reality (outside perception/consciousness) is a belief (we could not know if there is an outside world, because everything we perceive is WITHIN our field of awareness). If this belief is taken for granted (like we do when we assume there are objective truth values), isn't that making ALL truth values to be syllogisms? 3) If Knowledge is justified true belief and we do not KNOW if there is a reality out there (just assume it is), this means we have no knowledge of an external reality. How can we then assume objective truth values to propositions we do now know (yet)?
nobody gonna attempt to rescue JTB? it was obvious that the 2 gettier cases presented in the video were merely cases of mis-applied "justification", i.e. justifications that were not truly "justificatory". smith's justification to believe jones was flawed in two ways: 1. the boss was a lying bastard, and 2. the person with 10 coins is not exclusive to jones (whom he had specifically believed to be the job-winner). in such a case, any "loosely defined" statement could equally lead to a false JTB. in short, the statement itself contained a lack of justification specific to the belief. this is similar for the sheep&dog in the field, but is more simple to disprove. clearly, the man in the field is thinking "that sheep-looking thing is the sheep which i believe is in the field" but he mistakenly over-stated the boundaries of the field to extend over the area obscured by the hill. if he had more precisely stated that "i believe there is a sheep within that stretch of field within my field of vision" then his justified belief would be false since that animal is actually a sheep-like dog. okay, just wanted to start a discussion but i ended up wordy af.
+Gregory Samuel Teo (alveolate) the real can of worms here is the word "justified". "true" and "belief" are easy enough, but how we know things is a whole realm of philosophy. maybe your JTB justifacation needs to be it's own JTB? for example, the justifaction for the 10 coins scenario was a boss who said that Jones would get the job. however, that means that smith had a belief that "the boss is a completely trustworthy scorce". this is of course false, no human is perfect, making this an unjustified false belief. this means that there was no justifacation for the "10 coins" assertion, making it an unjustified true belief, and therefore not knowledge
+the ocarina bard This is exactly what I'm thinking. There are no real "Gettier cases", just cases presented as JTB's that actually aren't either justified or true. I personally still hold on to JTB being the definition of knowledge, and the "Gettier cases" haven't disproven it, really. All they did in my eyes is call into question the definitions of "justified" and "true", without actually calling the definition of knowledge into question.
+TheMightyDozen (Does the following fit with your notions?) There is simply a difference between the appearance of X versus something actually being X. So, it is easy to make the mistake of claiming something as X when there are things Y that look like X. The mistake occurs when one claims that whatever is X when one only has sufficient knowledge to claim that it LOOKED like X.
+MyContext To be fair, I had to replace X and Y with more corporeal things, but yes, that does fit with my notions. Also, just so you know, I went with 'X' for "Mouse" and 'Y' for "Rat".
I guess this kind of just re-enforces the fact that we can't really "know" anything in the JTB sense. after all, you can only follow your justifacations so far back until you can't really justify them anymore. however, we can assess how solid we are in what we think we "know", by seeing how far back we can justify it. for example, someone who thinks an item is blue in a dark room is less solid in their knowledge than someone who sees the same object in bright light. someone who mesures the wavelength of the light coming off of the object to see if it is in the spectrum of "blue" is even more solid
This is really interesting because recently I have been philosophizing about the meanings of belief and knowledge and justification, but rather "feeling" not justification. My teacher said that she was going to get in some philosophy and I was really excited. Even through i'm only twelve God has gifted me with an amazing mind that has been philosophizing since an extremely young age before I even understood, se- no that's just a bias on which people who do understand taunt others who do not know what it is because it is the most martial want of a human of the appropriate age. But when they shared their definition of knowledge I accepted it, but it was not my own my definition, mine is that knowledge is; A commonly believed thing. or; something that you can argue through reasoning (preferably deductive) and cause belief of one such thing. And my definition of belief is; a certain thought which causes yourself to be able to think something without something giving less reasoning to disturb that thought so that you think against it. And my definition of know is; have strong reason to believe. And my definition of think is; Reason to believe. Comments appreciated I like myself a healthy argument. ;)
This is amazing. I lucked on stumbling across this video so I didn't have justified true knowledge until after my belief changed from indeterminate to truth. I found another Gettier case. (I know I mangled your whole video in this one comment, but I was really, really impressed with this. I will watch more. Thank you.)
I feel like the problem with the "Justified True Belief =/= Knowledge" thing is that you can make language vague enough for it to seem like something was a Justified True Belief, but it actually isn't. For instance, the phrase "the person who gets a promotion has 10 coins in his pocket" is both incredibly specific, but also extremely vague. The thing to ask is "Who did he think was getting the promotion, and why?" If he was he using the 10 coins as an indicator that a specific person would get the promotion, then his assertion wasn't a Justified True Belief because he got the promotion instead. Similarly, the phrase "There is a sheep in this field" is easily dismantled by asking the follow up, "where?" if he points out the dog, then that's not a True Belief because it's a dog, not a sheep. If he says "Oh, somewhere, I guess" it's not Justified because he can't point to evidence to back it up.
+Alan Gebhardt What you're saying here seems to be right. However, I think those analogies are only examples being used to demonstrate a point. You're just elaborating the analogies more to explore another point.
+Alan Gebhardt In any case, in agreement with you, this is why I frequently emphasise the importance of specifics in order to accurately communicate what one means. I usually go the extra mile to maintain it, much to the bother of some people some times I'm afraid. [Nonetheless, I also frequently use ambiguity and specifics as a very deliberate tool during discussion. Well everyone does. It's all a part of the art of conversing.]
It seems like we could solve the Gettier problems easily by redefining knowledge as truly justified true belief. I'll take that Nobel prize now, thank you.
Fun Fact: If you click the first link (cant be in a bracket or footnote) of any wikipedia page, then the first link of that page and so on, you will ALWAYS end up on the wikipedia page on philosophy.
"The fun of arguing is showing off what you know to other people." Not for me. I have much more fun when I view an argument as a mutual quest for truth.
Even if your justification was flawed, in a single case situation you're still correct - ie. you still knew the truth given the justification. It became knowledge when it became true no matter how flawed the justification.
6:24; A good example for that is Giordano Bruno, who thought and spoke out, in contrary of popular 16th century belief, that the earth was a tiny part of a great universe, but he didn't have evidence to back it up, he just happened to be right.
