When and under whose influence did the JTB conception of knowledge become standard in contemporary philosophy ( i.e. after Kant)?

Question

My question is on the history of the Justified True Belief conception of knowledge.

It is well known that this conception is considered in Plato's Meno, but dismissed.

I think Hobbes comes close to it in the Elements of Law ( saying that knowledge requires belief and evidence).

Kant says that knowledge requires true judgment plus an objective ground. But acccording to him a true judgment with justfication is not ipso facto knowledge, for faith is also grounded, though on a subjectively valid reason.

But I think that generally, since Descartes, epistemology has been more interested in knowledge by acquaintance than in propositional knowledge. I mean: in modern philosophy ( from Descartes to Hegel) the standard epistemological problem has been " how can our representations correspond to knowable objects ?" , that is " how is cognition possible? " rather than " how can my mind be related in the proper epistemological way to a true proposition?".

Hence my quetion: which contemporary philosopher ( or school of thought) came back to the JTB conception of knowledge; and which classical philosophers have been invoked as authoritative ancestors of this conception?

At what moment, in contemporary philosophy, did the JTB definition of knowledge become standard?

Answer 1

This is discussed at length in "The Legend of the Justified True Belief Analysis" by Julien Dutant (Philosophical Perspectives 26(1)). He writes at one point (bolded mine):

In 1960, Gilbert Ryle still ascribes the infallible mental state view to the tradition in his “Epistemology” entry for Urmson’s Concise Encyclopedia. Seven years later, in the “Knowledge” entry for Edwards’s Encyclopaedia, Anthony Quinton (1967) writes that the Justified True Belief analysis was the traditional one and that it has been refuted by Gettier. What happened? Woozley (1949, 181-184), Malcolm (1952, 179–80) and Ayer (1956, 21) all took the infallible mental state view to have sceptical consequences. That was deemed unacceptable and prompted Malcolm, Ayer and Chisholm to defend the idea that fallible justification and truth were sufficient for knowledge. Gettier (1963, 121n) was perhaps the first to note that a formally similar account appeared in Plato. Soon some called the Justified True Belief analysis “traditional” and by 1967 the Legend coalesced.

This suggests that Gettier sparked the idea that JTB was classical and Quinton nailed that stipulation. Dutant also mentions that Malcolm, Chisholm, and Ayer, trying to counter scepticism with foundationalism, modified the actual traditional analysis to essentially become JTB, creating the position Gettier attacks with his cases.

Long story short: Even though there are people invoked as ancestors, the position of knowledge as JTB is one developed in the second half of the 20th century. Probably Malcolm, Ayer, and Chisholm (in that chronological order) are the ones to be 'blamed' for JTB, with Gettier and Quinton being the ones responsible for the rise of The Legend, ie.

Edmund Gettier’s landmark paper successfully refuted the traditional analysis of knowledge. (Sosa et al., 2009, 189, cited in Dutant 2015)