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Week 5 · Readings & resources

Week 5 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Philosophy Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 5 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 63–76 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more depth, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–21 min total)

① Right by luck: justified true belief and the Gettier cases

Chapter 5, Section “Meet the Gettier cases” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Justified true belief and the Gettier cases” · Remember: a Gettier case is justified and true but true only by luck, so justified true belief may not be enough for knowledge.

  • The Meaning of Knowledge: Crash Course Philosophy #7 — CrashCourse — an episode that first sorts out the words philosophers use about belief: an assertion, the proposition it expresses, its truth value, and belief as an attitude toward a proposition. It then gives the traditional three-part definition, two kinds of justification (testimony and first-person observation), and a retelling of one of Gettier's own cases, about a job and ten coins, followed by a second lucky-belief case about a sheep hidden behind a hill, which the video credits to another philosopher; treat that credit as the video's own. It notes that the debate over what knowledge is still goes on. Its terms proposition and propositional attitude go beyond this week; the chapter speaks of a claim and of believing a claim to be true. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)
  • The Gettier Problem — Carneades.org — a short explainer that states the Gettier problem, the claim that justified true belief is not enough for knowledge, and walks through one of Gettier's own cases, two job applicants and ten coins in a pocket, in which a belief is justified and true but not for the reasons the believer has. Use it while working through the Week-5 module overview; the chapter's trail sign has the same shape. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)
  • Justified True Belief & The Gettier Problem (Epistemology) — Philosophy Vibe — a two-voice explainer that sets out the three conditions of justified true belief with a tree at the bottom of a road, shows what goes wrong when the belief is only a guess or turns out false, and then works through two scenarios from Gettier's 1963 paper, one about a job and ten coins and one about a car and a friend's whereabouts. It closes with one proposed repair, that a belief resting on false information is not justified, and an objection that the repair demands infallible evidence and opens the door to skepticism; treat both as moves in an open debate, not a settled fix. Its remark that the account goes back to Plato is the video's own, not the course's record. (video, 9 min) (captions: automatic)
  • Gettier problem, sections on the JTB account and the original counterexamples — Wikipedia — an encyclopedia's sections that state the justified true belief account as three conditions and then walk through the two cases from Gettier's 1963 paper. Read those two sections and skip the long survey of later responses, which goes beyond this week; its claim about who first proposed the account is the article's own, not the course's record. (reading, 5–8 min)
  • Gettier and Justified True Belief: 50 Years On — The Philosophers' Magazine — a magazine essay marking the paper's fiftieth anniversary, written by a working philosopher, that explains what Gettier's cases assume and then argues for one way to repair the definition. Treat its answer as one position in an open debate, not as a verdict the course endorses; the lottery and closure arguments in its second half go beyond this week. (reading, 10–14 min)

② Known by thinking or by looking: a priori and a posteriori

Chapter 5, Section “Sort knowledge by its source: a priori and a posteriori” · Session 1, Segment 2, “A priori and a posteriori knowledge” · Remember: a priori is about how a claim is known, without relying on experience, not about when you learned it.

  • A Priori & A Posteriori - Explained with examples — Philosophy Vibe — a short two-voice explainer: a priori knowledge is reached by reason alone, and a posteriori knowledge needs sense experience to check it. Its a posteriori examples are a building at the bottom of a road and the color of a friend's car; its a priori examples are simple arithmetic, the claim that all husbands are married, and an argument by modus ponens. This builds on Week 4's work with rationalism and empiricism; remember that a priori is about how a claim is known, not when you learned it. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Where reasons stop: the regress and three answers

Chapter 5, Section “State three answers to the regress” · Session 2, Segment 3, “The regress problem and three theories of justification” · Remember: foundationalism, coherentism, and reliabilism are rival answers, each with an objection and a reply.

  • Foundationalism (Ep.25) — Fleeting Philosophy — a very short narrated explainer of foundationalism: knowledge built on basic beliefs that need no further support, offered as an answer to the regress of reasons. It describes basic beliefs as self-evident and beyond all doubt, a stronger version than the chapter's; the chapter's defenders say only that basic beliefs need no other belief behind them. It closes by noting the critics' worry that such foundations are hard to find and by naming coherentism as a rival. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)
  • Foundationalism, sections 2.a and 3.a — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — a reference article's sections on the regress argument, which sets out the three ways a chain of reasons could go, and on the objection that basic beliefs are arbitrary. Read sections 2.a and 3.a only; the article also names a fourth option, infinitism, that this course does not cover. Stop here before the mind-body problem; next week takes that up. (reading, 9–12 min)
  • Reliable knowledge — Attic Philosophy — a short explainer of reliabilism, the view that a true belief counts as knowledge when it comes from a reliable process. It works through a laptop's battery meter: if the meter is in fact reliable, you know the charge will last the day, even though you have never tested the meter and so do not know that you know. It presents reliabilism as a theory of knowledge, where the chapter presents it as a theory of justification, and it ends by pointing viewers to contextualism, which goes beyond this week. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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