Robert Nozick

Urgh This is Robert Nozick. Is this really what a philosopher looks like these days? What happened to the big shaggy beards and knowledge-laden frowns of ages past? Just looking at his face makes me want to punch him over and over again.

He tried to solve the problem which Gettier found with the 'justified true belief' theory of knowledge. Justified-true-belief was the accepted theory of knowledge for thousands of years. Basically, for something to count as knowledge it had to be true, you had to believe that it was true and you had to be justified in believing that it was true. Nobody ever thought to argue with it until one day (pretty recently) a man called Edmund Gettier wrote a slim little paper which ruined everything. Basically his counter example was along these lines:

On Wedneday, my watch stops at 3pm. On Thursday at 3 pm, I wonder what time it is, I look at my watch and it says 3pm, so I conclude that I know that it is 3pm. It is true that it's 3pm, I believe that it is, and I am justified in believing so (because I looked at my watch and it told me the right time). Of course I don't really know that it is 3pm, because I received my information from a stopped watch.

It's quite an interesting little counter example, and quite a good example of how you can get pretty famous within philosophy for finding something that we are definitely certain about and then fucking it up for everyone.

Honestly, I could tell you what Robert Nozick thinks about the whole thing, but I refuse to humour him until he removes that ridiculous tan and grows a big bushy beard.