An Exposition of Schmidt-Petri’s Critique on Gettier’s First Counterexample

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Abstract

By introducing two counterexamples, Gettier claims that it is possible that a person S has true justified belief that P but fails to know that proposition. The proposition P in Gettier’s first counterexample includes a “definite description”. We try, in this article, to refute Gettier’s first counterexample by means of what Russell, Strawson and Donnellan have said on the analysis of the propositions contained definite descriptions. More precisely, we will show that S doesn’t know that P because either he don’t believe that P or P is not true. It means that Gettier’s first counterexample cannot refute tripartite definition of knowledge

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