Abstract

Karl Popper’s ‘non-foundationalist’ critical rationalism had been established before Edmund Gettier came up with his analysis of knowledge. Popper’s critique of foundationalism shook the foundation of the hall mark of Western traditional epistemology as defended by Descartes, the logical empiricists and invariably Gettier. The position I am defending in this paper is that, Gettier is not correct to have presented the epistemic agent in his counterexamples as justified. I have arrived at this conclusion because it is uncritical of Smith to think that ‘Jones owns a Ford car’ can be inferred from the perception of ‘Jones drives a Ford car’, without a problem. In the same manner, Smith’s belief that the testimony of a company president is basic and not questionable is faulty. The first belief ignores the fact that every perception is theory laden while the second ignores the problem of trust in testimonial knowledge. Popper just like in Yoruba epistemology subscribed to the position that observation itself is theory laden, and that is why in Yoruba epistemology propositional knowledge falls within the scope of second-hand information, which requires further personal investigation or questioning.