Position
Justified True Belief
A person knows that a proposition is true exactly when the proposition is true, the person believes it, and the belief is justified.
Classification
- Position level
- specific
- Domains
- Epistemology
Overview
This tripartite analysis treats justification as the feature that separates knowledge from an accidentally true guess. Its three conditions are individually necessary and jointly sufficient: truth, belief, and adequate epistemic support.
Gettier cases challenge the sufficiency claim. In them, a person reaches a justified true belief through a mistake or coincidence, so the belief seems true by luck rather than known.
Position on
Incompatible positions
- No False Lemmas
Question scope: What Makes True Belief Knowledge?
References
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Analysis of Knowledge, §1
- Edmund L. Gettier, 'Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?', Analysis 23.6 (1963), pp. 121–123 (statement of the tripartite analysis)
- Michael Clark, 'Knowledge and Grounds: A Comment on Mr. Gettier's Paper', Analysis 24.2 (1963), pp. 46–48 (adding a no-false-ground condition to reject cases admitted by the tripartite analysis)