Edmund Gettier

Edmund L. Gettier III (* 1927 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was known especially for a three-page essay from 1963 entitled " Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? ". In this paper he formulated the so-called Gettier problem.

Gettier was educated at Cornell University. His mentors were in addition to the "conventional" language philosopher Max Black and the Wittgensteinian Norman Malcolm. Gettier itself was originally attracted to the views of the late Ludwig Wittgenstein. He received his first teaching position at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan - among other things beside Keith teacher, RC Sleigh and Alvin Plantinga. Because he had little published his colleagues urged him to write at least as much that the administration was satisfied. The result was a three- page essay - one of the most famous in the history of modern philosophy.

In his essay Gettier challenges the traditional definition of knowledge that goes back to Plato's Theaetetus (201 c). Knowledge was there as a " true opinion connected with explanation " ( translator's O. Apelt ) explicates This was recognized by most philosophers. . Most prominently by the epistemologist Clarence Irving Lewis and his student, Roderick Chisholm Gettiers essay rejected this approach, with this classic definition was posed quite ( more generally ) in the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein in question. later found a similar argument also in the works of Bertrand Russell.