Category: Uncategorized

I’ve started preparing to teach PHIL 4300 (Epistemology) in the spring, and while doing so I’ve been kicking around the Gettier problem in my mind. What? Haven’t heard of it? Allow me to explain.

A standard account of knowledge in philosophy (since Plato) is this. I know something (call it “x”) when (1) x is in fact true, (2) I believe x, and (3) I have some good reasons for believing x. This seems to fit a great many cases of knowledge. It’s hard to come up with counterexamples. But then along came Edmund Gettier in the 1960s who provided cases like this one:

Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition:

1. Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.

Smith’s evidence for (1) might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would in the end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Jones’s pocket ten minutes ago. Proposition (1) entails:

2. The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.

Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (1) to (2), and accepts (2) on the grounds of (1), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (2) is true.
But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket. Proposition (2) is then true, though proposition (1), from which Smith inferred (2), is false.

OK, sort of lame. But it is a counterexample.

My own temptation is to say that Smith was not justified in believing Jones was going to get the job, and so wasn’t justified in believing that the person who would get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Yes, he had some evidence for thinking Jones would get the job, and so maybe he was justified in believing that his belief was justified, but in fact it wasn’t justified. Does that make sense?

There is an interesting website called “reddit.com”, which hosts discussions on a wide variety of topics. People post a link to some interesting webpage, and readers then make comments about it and one another’s comments. You can add or subtract “points” from postings and comments, depending on how good you think they are. They have a philosophy sub-unit, which you can see here.It is definitely worth checking out from time to time.

I hasten to advise you, though, to visit several times just as a lurker, to get a feel for the general atmosphere and the way things are done, before actively contributing. Many of the regular users are really quite sharp, and they do not suffer fools gladly! (And there are sometimes some irksome trolls wandering about.)

Perhaps I am treating the philosophy blog too loosely in this post, but I don’t think so.  If Strauss is right, philosophy is by nature political (it concerns the discernment of the good, and the vexed relationship between high-minded principle and dirty human affairs).  Besides, this post is not religious per se (since the Catholic Church teaches that her moral principles are knowable by natural reason).

Here is an article from the NY Times today on the role of Catholic voters in the coming election.  

You can link here for a 2007 statement from the US Conference of Bishops on voting, though this provides a more manageable summary (it does lack the nuance of the original though).  For students in my Social Ethics class and for others, it is a nice outline of moral principles Catholics see as binding and a look at how these principles relate to various political and social issues. Even if you are not Catholic or if you reject the moral principles that are outlined, it still provides a nice model of what thoughtful and principled application of moral principles looks like (and that is far too rare).

The ‘guide’ does not attempt to tell Catholics exactly how to vote, and it is not a partisan document (one will find that Catholics do not fit neatly on one side of the conservative/liberal divide). Political decisions are prudential judgments, and each person must make prudential judgments for themselves. (A prudential judgment is a judgment where a general principle is applied to a particular situation).

Part of me hesitates to even post this, because I don’t care too much about this debate.  Mormons want to call themselves Christian, and I don’t really care.  There is no doubt that Jesus Christ plays a central role in their religion, so it makes sense for Mormons to self-identify as ‘Christian’.  Of course, the whole debate hinges on the definition of Christianity, and there are other competing definitions of Christianity.  On those more robust definitions (if we accept them), then Mormons are not Christians, though I think it is probably better to just say they are not ‘creedal Christians’.  But, as I say, I don’t really care too much about quibbling over who has claim to the name ‘Christian’.

That said, I have very little doubt (and most of the LDS folk I know agree) that Mormonism is very different – essentially and fundamentally different – than every other brand of Christianity we usually think of.  Quite simply, Mormon Christians and Creedal Christians disagree about the nature of God (Trinity, Jesus) and the nature of man (whether man is of the same species as God, whether man can become a god).  Which is to say they disagree about the most important things.  

My only complaint is when some Mormons diminish those differences, acting as if Mormonism was just ‘another denomination’ (as if the differences between a Mormon and a Lutheran are not any more extreme than the differences between a Lutheran and a Methodist).  To my mind this is, not to put too fine a point on it, just plain dishonest.  (Let me stress, not all Mormons intentionally diminish these differences, but just that some do).

Anyway, First Things has an article on the matter here.  Bruce Porter (a member of the Quorum of the Seventy) writes on one side, Gerald McDermott on the other.  I think it is pretty fair on both sides (though I am sure my Mormon friends will disagree with some of McDermott’s arguments).  You can also listen to interviews with the two authors here.