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Was the Gettier Problem Inevitable? Language Models as Instruments for Complementary Inquiry

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Academic Adjunct Faculty Event Faculty Event In-person Staff Event Student Event

Sat, Apr 25, 2026

11 AM – 1 PM MDT (GMT-6)

Interactive Learning Center (ILC) 404

2133 Cesar Chavez Lane, Boise, ID 83725, United States

Details

The Boise State Department of Philosophy is hosting Dr. Bert Baumgaertner (Computational Philosophy, University of Idaho) for his talk: "Was the Gettier Problem Inevitable? Language Models as Instruments for Complementary Inquiry".

Newton and Leibniz both invented the calculus; Darwin and Wallace independently formulated natural selection. Which intellectual developments are inevitable, and which are genuine creative leaps? Complementary Inquiry makes the question empirical: train a language model on everything written up to a moment, with a known development excluded, and measure how much help it needs to reconstruct what was left out. I present two completed cases (Pluto's reclassification, Hindu-Arabic numerals) and a third in progress: Gettier's 1963 counterexample to justified true belief.

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Department of Philosophy

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