Irony and Gettier

The Gettier counter-examples depend upon someone's thinking that they have a justification for a belief when, unknown to them, they do not - even though the belief itself is true.

These depend upon an 'irony' in the sense that the audience for the counter-examples knows something that the subject in the counter-examples does not. Irony cannot survive audience participation, however - as demonstrated in pantomime.

The justification in a Gettier example cannot work in the context of a shared conversation between the subject and the audience - if I know that Farmer Franco has mistaken a large piece of black and white cardboard for his cow Daisy, then I cannot accept his justification that he has seen Daisy and so knows that Daisy is in the field. I can only accept that he believes it, and that his belief is true.

In any ('honest and competent') conversation with Franco, either what he saw, or what I saw, or (perhaps) what counts as justification, would have to be in play.

This is an exact parallel with the solution to Kripke's paradox, because it depends upon attribution of intentional states within a shared conversation.