Ömer Erce Beyaz

This thesis argues that the Gettier problem has been historically and methodologically misinterpreted. The widespread assumption treats it as a problem of conceptual analysis concerning the analysis of the concept of knowledge. This interpretation fails for three fundamental reasons. First, Gettier's 1963 paper does not problematise the concept of knowledge; it problematises the analysis of knowing—specifically, the attempt to clarify the meaning of 'S knows that p' in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Second, interpreting it through conceptual analysis is incompatible with analytic philosophy’s historical development. Conceptual analysis rests on an ideational theory of meaning inherited from early modern philosophers, particularly Locke, whereas analytic philosophy systematically abandoned this theory through the work of Frege, Russell, and Carnap. Third, the epistemological object of enquiry in Gettier's paper originates in the problem-context and methodology of ordinary language philosophy. Accordingly, the thesis first examines Gettier's challenge alongside the major post-Gettier responses—the no-false-grounds approach, defeasibility analyses, and the causal theory of knowing. Despite producing different solutions, these approaches share a common methodological framework centred on the clarification of the conditions of use of 'S knows that p' through necessary and sufficient conditions, revised by means of counterexamples. The thesis then reconstructs the historical and theoretical foundations of conceptual analysis within the ideational theory of meaning through Bacon and Locke, and shows through Frege, Russell, and Carnap how analytic philosophy progressively abandoned this framework, shifting its focus from ideas to words and propositions. The methodological origins of the Gettier problem are located instead in ordinary language philosophy. In the epistemological enquiries of Wittgenstein, Austin, and Ayer, the clarification of the conditions of use of epistemic expressions such as 'I know', 'I believe', and 'I perceive' becomes the central orientation—and the Gettier problem inherits precisely this structure of enquiry. Finally, drawing on Popper's conception of epistemology without a knowing subject, the thesis argues that this methodological inheritance has progressively Gettierised contemporary analytic epistemology, displacing its proper subject matter—the growth of scientific knowledge. De-Gettierisation is therefore not optional but necessary. This, however, is not merely negative. The dissolution of the Gettier problem reveals a genuine lacuna within the Popperian programme itself: Popper’s schema P₁ → TT → EE → P₂ captures the structure of scientific growth once a problem situation is operative, but leaves unexamined the question of how that problem situation arises in the first place. The thesis identifies this problem of problem-formation—the objective conditions under which an anomaly or tension within the third world becomes an epistemologically operative problem situation—as a positive research question for objectivist epistemology, one that Gettierised epistemology, by occupying the field for six decades, has prevented the discipline from pursuing.