True belief and epistemic luck › Case I: the successful applicant's coins

In Gettier's first case, Smith and Jones have applied for the same job. Smith has strong evidence that Jones will get it and that Jones has ten coins in his pocket. Gettier suggests evidence for these beliefs: the company president has indicated Jones will be selected, and Smith has recently counted Jones's coins.

Smith reasons from that conjunction to a less specific claim: whoever gets the job has ten coins in his pocket. The inference is valid. If Jones gets the job and Jones has ten coins, then the successful applicant has ten coins. Smith recognizes the entailment and accepts the conclusion on that basis.

Now change the facts while leaving Smith's evidence and reasoning as described. Smith will get the job, and, unknown to him, Smith also has ten coins in his own pocket. His starting conjunction is false because Jones will not get the job. His conclusion about the successful applicant's coins is true because Smith will get it and has the specified number. Gettier, pp.121–122, Case I.

The proposition we evaluate must remain fixed. We are not asking whether Smith knows that Jones will get the job. That proposition is false. Nor are we asking whether Smith knows how many coins Jones has. The target is his more general belief about the person who will be hired. That belief is the one which combines truth, belief, and the justification inherited from his inference.

Gettier judges that Smith does not know the target proposition. Smith's grounds concern Jones, while the truth of the conclusion depends on Smith's own circumstances, of which he is unaware. The successful deduction has removed the name that would have made the error obvious without repairing the connection between Smith's evidence and the actual successful applicant.

This last point explains why counting the three conditions does not settle the question. The analysis was supposed to identify the circumstances under which a justified belief reaches the truth as knowledge. In this case the conditions coexist, yet the evidence concerns the wrong candidate. Accepting Gettier's knowledge judgment therefore gives a counterexample to the proposed sufficiency claim.