My Life is Like SO Philosophical.

By the end of this class I want to be able to spell philosophical without using spellcheck. That was an inappropriate first sentence given that it has nothing to do with what I am about to start writing about. I wanted to write a pretty BS blog about how I define myself and attempt to answer the age old question “who am i?” and whatever, but being that I waited way too long to post this blog many people have already done that. I don’t want to be repetitive or uninteresting. So here we go.

I want to discuss a philosophical question that my friends and I always seem to argue about. The idea comes from an essay written by Edmund Gettier in 1963. His paper was entitled “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” If you are unfamiliar with this piece you can read about it here ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem


I find this piece to be interesting because of how applicable it is to my everyday life. Like, ACTUALLY applicable. I think about this all the time. Anyone who knows me knows that I have severe social anxiety and I always assume that everyone hates me and that there is no reason to live and blah blah blah. However, thinking about the Gettier problem often gets me out of my anxiety ridden ruts.
I am now going to write a typical Gettier problem with my “real life” situation. (this is a sort-of stretch, but it has all the same principles… all names have been changed for protection of those in this example)

So let’s say that
-I like a boy. (this is a true statement)
-My friend “Jane” likes the same boy (this is also a true statement)
-I know that the boy thinks that Jane is pretty.
-So I come to the logical conclusion that the boy will get with the girl that he thinks is pretty.
-What I do NOT know is that the boy also thinks that I am pretty.
-The boy ends up asking me out.

The reason that this is at all interesting/philosophical is that this type of problem proves that justified true belief is NOT in fact knowledge. So next time you think that you have EVERY REASON IN THE WORLD to assume the worst, you have to know that the probability that you’re wrong is probably higher than you think.

This problem also makes me wonder about the exact definition of the word “knowledge”. If I believe with all of my being that the sky is green, then I know that the sky is green… Obviously that is an incorrect statement, but it is something that I THINK I know, so is it knowledge? Can knowledge be wrong? This keeps me awake momentarily but i usually get over it.