I called a friend yesterday looking for help on some logical problems cos i thought i could trust him to give me some suggestions being one of the best in that field but was surprised at the reply i got. He said the last time he opened a book was three months ago. I thought to myself, this was going to be the lot of many nigerian students who feels what should he or she be reading for, so i brought this thread up. At least if we cant read it, we can talk- i mean share the ones we used to have thereby gaining more. Although this thread is strictly going to discuss core philosophical issues, interested non-philosophy student can post reply. Please feel free to ask any question and you can expect prompt responses from me. Also if you dont feel satisfied wit my view, you can bring yours. That's why its philosophy. Core areas of attention will include the four main branches of philosophy- logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Logic especially is going to have more attention cos that's one of the greatest problems students of philosophy have. Looking forward to meeting the great thinkers. Those who think about thinking.

GETTIER'S PROBLEM (DEGETTIERISING KNOWLEDGE)
we start our long journey of discussing philosophy wit epistemology, one of the core areas of the course. Epistemology deals wit the nature, sources and limits of knowledge. It is primarily concerned wit propositional knowledge- that is knowledge that such (and such is true), rather than other forms of knowledge. Propositional knowledge has always been held as 'justified true belief' (JTB), our aim here is to look at the implication of maintaining this stance.
There is a vast array of views about propositional knowledge, but one virtually universal presupposition is that knowledge is true belief but not mere true belief. For example, lucky guesses or true belief resulting from wishful thinkin are not knowledge. Thus a central question in epistemology is what must be added to true belief to convert them into knowledge.
The historically dominant tradition in epistemology answers that question by claiming that it is the quality of the reasons of our beliefs that converts true belief to knowledge. When the reasons are sufficiently cogent, we have knowledge. This is the normative tradition in epistemology. Just as an action is justified when ethical principles or sanctions are holding it: in an analogy with the normative tradition in ethics.
The second tradition in epistemology, the naturalistic, does not focus on the quality of the reasons for beliefs but rather, requires that the conditioni in which the beliefs are acquired typically produce true beliefs.
Within the normative tradition, two views about the proper structure of reasons have been developed: foundationalism and coherentism. By far, the most commonly held view is foundationalism. It holds that reasons rest on a foundational structure comprised of basic beliefs. The foundational proposition have autonomous justification that does not depend upon any further justification which could be provided by inferential relations to other propositions.
These basic beliefs exhibit knowledge initially gained through the senses or introspection.
Since not all knowledge seems to be based on sense experience or rational intuition, some epistemologist claim that some knowledge is innate, still others argue that some propositions are basic in virtue of conversational features.
Foundationalist hold that epistemic principles of inference are available that allow an epistemic agent to reason from basic to non-basic propositions. They suggest, for example that if a set of basic propositions is explained by some hypothesis and additional confirming evidence for the hypothesis is discovered, then the hypothesis is justified. A notorious problem with this suggestion is that it is always possible to form more than one hypothesis that appear equally well confirmed by total available data, and consequently no one hypothesis seems favored over all its rivals. Some epistemologists have argued that this problem can be overcome by appealing to features of the rival hypothesis beyond their explanatory power: for example the relative simplicity of one hypothesis might be thought to provide a basis for prefering it to all its rivals.
In contrast to foundationalism, coherentism claims that every belief derives its justification from inferential relationship to other beliefs. Some however assign a special justificatory role to those propositions that are more difficult to dislodge from the web of belief. The set of these propositioni overlaps the set of basic propositions specified by foundationalism.

Need African Philosophy text books?, I am always available.

Oluschenco, getting african philosophy textbooks depends on your present location. There's a vast array of texts by both african and non-african scholars i can recommend for you. But if you're somewhere close to where i'm, i can get you some myself. Right now i'm in ado. You can also visit libraries to find books by bodunrin etal. You can also be on the look out for journals by philosophy departments of various universities, they're always rich.

if you however have any question on african philosophy buggling your mind, be assured you can get answers to them detailedly here.

I'm sorry i've not been able to continue wit the gettiers problem topic, been kinda busy. Just give me some few more hours and we'll have more posts. Still having the write-up scrutinized.

GETTIER'S PROBLEM CONT.
There are however some objections aimed specially at foundationalism and other coherentism, but there is one deep difficulty wit both traditional normative accounts. This problem is known as the 'gettier's problem', named after a famous three-page article by edmund gettier in 1963. The title of the paper simply asked 'is justified true belief knowledge?
For a quick understandin, let us discuss this problem in a succint manner before we look at it elaboratedly. Suppose that a false belief can be justified and suppose that its justificatory status can be transferred to another proposition through deduction or other principles of inference. Suppose further that the inferred proposition is true. If these suppositions can be true simultaneously, the inferred proposition would be true, justified and believed, but in many cases, it clearly is not knowledge, since it is a felicitous coincidence that the truth was obtained.

GETTIER'S PROBLEM CONT.
There are however some objections aimed specially at foundationalism and other coherentism, but there is one deep difficulty wit both traditional normative accounts. This problem is known as the 'gettier's problem', named after a famous three-page article by edmund gettier in 1963. The title of the paper simply asked 'is justified true belief knowledge?
For a quick understandin, let us discuss this problem in a succint manner before we look at it elaboratedly. Suppose that a false belief can be justified and suppose that its justificatory status can be transferred to another proposition through deduction or other principles of inference. Suppose further that the inferred proposition is true. If these suppositions can be true simultaneously, the inferred proposition would be true, justified and believed, but in many cases, it clearly is not knowledge, since it is a felicitous coincidence that the truth was obtained.