The traditional defintion of knowledge as Justified True Belief (JTB) met its refutation at the hands of Edmund Gettier in 1963. Today there are multiple cases that classify as Gettier; over time the Gettier Problem has come to stand for a particular brand of arguments that expose weaknesses in the JTB definition of Knowledge. However, Gettier himself proposed a single two-part case, part I of which will be outlined here.
Smith and Jones are both applying for the same job. Smith has been informed by the management that Jones will be hired. He also has empirical evidence that Jones has exactly ten coins in his pocket. Therefore, he believes that the person with ten coins in his pocket will be hired. The justification for Smith's belief seems reasonable too. According to the JTB definition of knowledge, the only element left to examine is the truth.
In reality, the person with ten coins in his pocket does get hired. So the belief itself concurs with what eventually happens; it is a true belief. But, it turns out that while waiting for the result, one coin fell out of Jones' pocket. Unbeknownst to Smith, he himself had ten coins in his pocket to begin with too, and just so happens that none of them fell out. Smith got the job. Smith was the guy with ten coins in his pocket who got the job.
Smith's belief undoubtedly classifies as JTB. However, Jones was the one who was to be hired in Smith's mind concurrently. With that in mind, it can't really be said that Smith "knew" who was going to get the job, can it? Therefore, we see that every justified true belief is not knowledge. A question - is all knowledge justfied true belief though?
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