Knowledge Xuanzang & the Gettier Problem

Maya Koka journeys through the desert to seek knowledge about knowledge.

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The date is 632 AD. The location is Lanzhou, China. The time is precisely 10:00 am. A Buddhist monk named Xuanzang and his companion, a tiger, are journeying through the Gobi Desert. Their mission: to find water. Suddenly they see a valley resembling a blue expanse. Xuanzang turns to his feline friend and remarks, “Look, there is water!” Unfortunately, the glistening blue is a mirage. Yet, when they reach the valley, Xuanzang finds water, hidden beneath a large rock. Did the Buddhist monk know there was water ahead? In other words, is his initial belief that there was water in the valley to be considered knowledge?

This situation of Xuanzang’s represents what philosophers these days call a Gettier case. This is a philosophical problem made famous by Edmund Gettier (1927-2021) in an attempt to critique the traditional Socratic or Platonic theory of knowledge as being ‘justified true belief’. On that account, having a belief that is both justified and true is necessary and sufficient for knowledge. If one has a justified true belief, one has knowledge. However, while justified true belief is indeed a necessary conditions for knowledge, Gettier showed that it is not sufficient. He did this by giving various instances in which an agent has a belief both true and justified, yet which fails to be knowledge. I want to look at a novel formulation of the Gettier problem, and also consider a method to respond to Gettier cases through the instantiation of a fourth condition for knowledge.

First, how can we know that we have any knowledge at all? Let’s once again revisit 632 AD. According to the justified true belief model, Xuanzang has knowledge of there being water in the valley based on the following conditions: