Farmer Moore Case

Words: 478
Pages: 2

Question: Farmer Moore wants to know where his cow is. He looks into his field and sees something that looks like his cow and concludes that his cow is in the field. However, what he saw wasn't his cow. But his cow is in the field. Does Farmer Moore know that his cow is in the field?
Antithesis: Yes, Farmer Moore knows that his cow in the field.
Objection 1: Although Farmer Moore incorrectly assumed that the large object (which in this case was a large brown bag) was his cow, he had no reason to believe that his cow was not in the field otherwise. He was justified in this belief because he and his son had recently built a sturdy barbed-wire fence enclosing his cow in the field so that it would be less likely to escape.
Objection 2: With the aid of the Justified True Belief Analysis, one can conclude that Farmer Moore indeed knew that his cow in the field because (1) he believed his cow was in his field, (2) had evidence — the plastic bag and the sturdy fence — to justify his belief, and (3) was correct in his belief.
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Farmer Moore’s belief that his cow was in the field, although understandable, was not justified because not only could he have not come to the same conclusion if the piece of plastic had not happened to be there, but also because he was basing his belief off of an object that was not his cow. Gettier’s counterexamples, which were designed to demonstrate the justified true beliefs of an individual's claim did not equate to knowledge because the belief’s premises were false, proves that Farmer Moore’s belief that his cow was in the field was not accurately justified. This is because his entire belief depended on the premise that the plastic bag was the cow when in fact it was