Beginning with Zagzebski (The Philosophical Quarterly 44:65–73, 1994), some philosophers have argued that there can be no solution to the Gettier counterexamples within the framework of a fallibilist theory of knowledge. If true, this would be devastating, since it is believed on good grounds that infallibilism leads to scepticism. But I argue here that these purported proofs are mistaken and that the truthmaker solution to the Gettier problems is both cogent and fallibilist in nature. To show this I develop the (...) notion of evidence of a state of affairs, a crucial concept in the truthmaker theory. I also argue that a common principle of the transmission of evidence through entailment is false, and the cause of much of the trouble. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show that the truthmaker solution to the Gettier counter-examples can solve the Russell case of the stopped clock (other standard cases have already been analysed). The solution amounts to this: the truthmaker for the claim that it is, say, 2.00 pm, is a combination of natural and non-natural determinants. The latter are created by stipulation, but having been so made make it is a perfectly objective matter as to whether it is 2.00 o'clock. (...) To know that it is 2.00 pm is to have the evidence for one's belief evidence of the very state of affairs that make the belief true. Thus, in the Russell case one does not have knowledge, in accord with intuition. (shrink)

A truthmaker solution to the Gettier problems is based on the idea that knowledge can be defined as justified true belief provided that the source of one’s justification is suitably connected with what makes the believed proposition true. Different developments of this basic intuition have been recently criticized on the basis of a series of arguments aiming at showing that no truthmaker theory can allow us to solve Gettier problems, since the very idea underlying such solution is ineffective. In this (...) paper, I discuss the criticism to the truthmaker solution I consider most promising and show how it can be successfully addressed. (shrink)

Adrian Heathcote has proposed a truth-making account of knowledge that combines traditional conditions of justified true belief with the truth-making condition, which would jointly provide us with the sufficient condition of knowledge, and this truth-maker account of knowledge in turn explains why a gettiered justified true belief fails to be regarded as a genuine instance of knowledge. In this paper, by the comparison of two different casual models that are illustrated by the thermometer and the clock respectively, however, it will (...) be argued that Heathcote’s truth-making account of knowledge fails to cope with the Gettier case of the stopped clock and therefore is called for some further remedy. (shrink)