Last week I had an argument as to whether or not Sherlock Holmes exists. Sherlock Holmes doesn't have mass. So he doesn't exist. But Sherlock Holmes smoked a pipe, solved cases, he did things. I argued that Sherlock Holmes exists. He exists in my mind (a phrase not to be taken literally) and, as a result is real.
The story of George Washington and the cherry tree is similarly real for many people, even though it never happened. The characters in stories I have written are real to me, as are the characters of stories I read. I can read a biography of Descartes, and he is (was?) real. I can read the autobiography of Tom Sawyer, and I have no reason to think he is any less real than Descartes. If someone told me Tom Sawyer really existed, I might very well believe them. Why not? I believe that Descartes existed.
If I read one of Descartes' Meditations, he seems real, even though I've never met him. Furthermore, he seems alive to me even though he hasn't been physically alive for years because his thoughts are still alive. If I read Alice in Wonderland, Alice seems alive to me.
Does Mark Twain exist? Is Lewis Carroll real? Not in the most literal sense. Both are pseudonyms for people who existed. Samuel Clements must have thought that Mark Twain existed in some sense when he ``invented'' him. Probably for most people Mark Twain is more real than Samuel Clements, George Elliot more real than Mary Ann Evans.
I might go so far as to say that anyone exists (for me) as long as I perceive of them as existing. (It is not, however, the case that if I close my eyes and believe that there is no tree in front of me, I won't bump into the tree if it is really there when I take a step forward.) I would argue that though people's bodies may die, they live on as long as they are remembered. Then perhaps people can only die when they are forgotten.
Was Emperor Norton (the first and only emperor of the United States) real? How about the present King of France? If I vividly remember something I did as a child, but I know rationally that it couldn't have happened when I think I did, is that memory any less real than one that I (think I) know is true?
Maybe I can't be certain that anything is real, that anyone really exists. But I can be certain that I think people exist, that they seem real.
What is knowledge? Throughout the semester we have been equating knowledge with justified true belief. Working backwards, something is knowledge only if it is a belief; it must also be a belief of something that is true; lastly, we must have a right to be sure (Ayer) that the belief is true. Our belief must be justified. Are those the only requirements for knowledge? Is justified true belief enough for knowledge? Not according to Edmund Gettier.
To illustrate his objection, Gettier provided the following famous example. (There are many other examples.) You have good evidence that Jones, a co-worker, owns a particular make of car (you see him driving it every day), and so you conclude that at least one of your co-workers owns such a car. (Call this proposition P.) You may say that you know P. It turns out, though, that in spite of all of the evidence, Jones doesn't really own that car. But, amazingly enough, another one of your co-workers does.
So, says Gettier, you believed P. You had evidence for believing P. And P was true. But is that really knowledge? It seems objectionable to me. You didn't know P; you merely thought P and happened to be correct. This is why Gettier wants to add an additional requirement to the definition of knowledge.
What could be added to fix the definition? Harman suggests justifying inferences cannot rely on false intermediate conclusions. The reason the car belief fails to be knowledge is because the belief that a co-worker owns that model of car was based on the false belief that Jones owns that model of car.
Considering why P fails to be knowledge leads to a number of proposals for requirements of knowledge. For example, P fails to be knowledge because it is only accidental that you are right about P. To say that in slightly different words, the ``evidence'' for P is not directly linked to P. Another possibility is that upon further examination you wouldn't find more evidence that would negate your reason for believing P.
A number of philosophers have looked other requirements, solutions to this so-called problem, but I don't see where there is a problem at all. Let's consider the JTB test of P again. You believed P. P was true. But was P really justified? Were you justified in believing it? If not, and I think not, then Gettier's example is not one of justified true belief.
In the example, the entire basis for the belief of P was false. Jones did not own the car. While you may have thought you had good evidence for the belief, you didn't. You leapt to the conclusion that Jones owned the car. You accepted this as fact without questioning it adequately. You might have thought you knew he owned the car, but you were wrong. ``Are you sure that one of your co-workers owns such a car?'' you might be asked on a witness stand. The answer, I believe, is no.
But, one might object, you had justification. It was simply wrong justification. Perhaps the definition of knowledge needs only the amendment correctly justified true belief. Perhaps. If an addition is needed, I believe this would satisfy me, but I do not believe that any addition is needed at all. A false justification isn't a justification, much as a flawed proof isn't a proof. And if justified implicitly means correctly justified, than P was clearly not knowledge, and there is no problem at all to be found in Gettier's Problem.