The Gettier Problem, Buddhist Wisdom, and the Search for True Knowledge

What Do We Really Know? (thegentlelaw.wordpress.com)

What does it mean to know something? For centuries, philosophers believed that knowledge could be defined as Justified True Belief (JTB):

1. You believe something.

2. That belief is true.

3. You have justification for holding that belief.

This seemed like a solid definition—until 1963, when Edmund Gettier showed that you could have a justified true belief and still not have knowledge. His famous thought experiments revealed that what we take to be "knowledge" might be mere coincidence or illusion.

Interestingly, this challenge to the nature of knowledge has deep parallels in Buddhist philosophy. The Buddha repeatedly warned that our conventional understanding of truth is often distorted by impermanence, attachment, and conditioned perception. Could it be that what we think of as certainty is just a convenient illusion?

Let’s explore how the Gettier problem and Buddhist teachings both urge us to reconsider the limits of knowledge.