Analysis of Edmund Gettier's Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?

How do we know what knowledge is? In his 1963 article “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” American philosopher Edmund Gettier radically challenged the accepted definition of knowledge itself.Greek philosopher Plato, discussing knowledge well over 2000 years ago, defined it as “justified true belief.” To be considered knowledge a proposition had to fulfill three criteria: A) It is true. B) You believe it to be true. C) You are justified in believing it is true.But in two ingenious cases, Gettier demonstrates that somebody’s justified belief can be true because of nothing more than luck. This, he argued, means that justified true belief is not necessarily knowledge. In just 930 words, Gettier forced a total rethink of a key philosophical theory.Gettier’s article will fascinate anyone interested in the philosophy of knowledge, and the question it addresses is now known as The Gettier Problem. Having been cited thousands of times over the past 50 years his paper now boasts the highest “citation-per-word” ratio of any philosophical work ever published.
"How do we know what knowledge is? In his remarkable 1963 article, Gettier proves that Plato's 2000-year-old definition of knowledge is flawed-in just 930 words.
For 2,000 years, the standard philosophical model of knowledge was that it could be defined as a justified true belief. According to this way of thinking, we can know, for example, that we are human because (1] we believe ourselves to be human; (2] that belief is justified (others treat us as humans, not as dogs); and (3] the belief is true. This definition, which dates to Plato, was challenged by Edmund Gettier in one of the most influential works of philosophy published in the last century – a three page paper that produced two clear examples of justified true beliefs that could not, in fact, be considered knowledge. Gettier's achievement rests on solid foundations provided by his mastery of the critical thinking skill of analysis. By understanding the way in which Plato – and every other epistemologist – had built their arguments, he was able to identify the relationships between the parts, and the assumptions that underpinned then. That precise understanding was what Gettier required to mount a convincing challenge to the theory – one that was bolstered by a reasoning skill that put his counter case pithily, and in a form his colleagues found all but unchallengeable.