My Gettier Problem

On pregnant cows and parasitic pigs ...

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Although I did not take philosophy in college, my husband did — and some of his philosophical speak rubbed off on me. That’s the only reason why I know anything about Edmund Gettier. (I did take a history class from one of my husband’s philosophy professors, so there may have been some additional crossover comments there.) But lest you think I’m more cultured than I am, most of my information comes from conversations with my husband plus the internet to verify a few points.

So who the heck is Gettier, and what’s my problem with him?

According to the University of Massachusetts Amherst website, Edmund Gettier III was a philosophy professor there from the early 70’s who only published three pieces in his professional life. His best known piece is an ironically short paper which rocked the foundations of epistemology (the study of how we know stuff) back in 1963.

Till then, academics defined “knowledge” as “true justified belief.” But in three short pages, Gettier proposed there are some situations when one can have true justified belief without having actual knowledge. In other words, sometimes you can happen to be right without really knowing something. These paradoxical situations became known as Gettier problems, and mine started soon after we got our Kune Kune piglets.

To be honest, I hadn’t really considered getting pigs for our homestead. Other than the fact they liked mud, grew huge, and often appeared as victorious underdogs in children’s literature, I didn’t know much about pigs. I knew they could be temperamental, turned into bacon, and that some could even grow as large as my 700lb mini cow. That was about it. But I kept hearing two things which peaked my interest regarding the humble hog:

1. Raising pigs on any leftover milk from the cow was a great return on investment, and …

2. Kune Kune pigs were a great breed for homesteaders because they wouldn’t root up your yard, only got to about 300lbs, had sweet temperaments, ate grass and hay like my cow, and were super cute to boot.

With the impending birth of Lyric’s first calf only months away, and the prospect of getting up to three gallons of milk a day, adding a few piggies to drink the extra milk while adding diversity to the meat menu on our homestead seemed like a good idea. It’s fair to say I jumped into getting pigs waaaaaaay before I had enough knowledge of them, but that’s a story for another time (when I discuss the importance of having properly-working fences).

Also, my fourth-born felt keen to get pigs and volunteered to be primarily responsible for them. So what did we have to lose? With the blessing of my very-supportive husband, I drove 45 mins away with my porcine enthusiast son to pick up a pair of Kune Kune piglets. We named them Gilbert and Ernestine and later added Irene to the mix so we could say we had three little pigs. (And she was going for a great price, besides!)

We hadn’t had the pigs long before I noticed something peculiar. For some reason, they seemed to gravitate toward my cow. Even though they were only one tenth of her size, they showed no fear of her hooves and would often graze around her like fuzzy electrons around a giant nucleus.

“Look!” I said. “The pigs have adopted Lyric as their mom!” Little did I know how right I was until one of my kids came upon this scene:

No wonder Lyric’s udder had seemed smaller of late! The pigs had actually — LITERALLY — adopted my cow as their mother and would nurse from her every time the poor dear laid down. So while I had had true justified belief, I certainly did not know pigs did such things. I had a Gettier problem.

Unfortunately, this was not the only knowledge-problem I had with my cow.

Back in February, we’d purchased our first mini-jersey with the understanding she was bred. Cows can only produce milk if they are pregnant, and they can only produce a lot of milk if they give birth to a calf. So it’s very important to know the pregnancy status of your cow.

We’d gotten Beulah from a local breeder who ran his cows with a bull all the time. And since she’d birthed a calf last year, we didn’t question whether she was pregnant until the other cows in the herd started calving. Although Beulah ahd put on weight, she wasn’t showing any signs of labor. For weeks, I vacillated back and forth as to whether she would or wouldn’t have a calf until I couldn’t stand it any longer. So I ordered my first cow pregnancy test and … no cigar.

Beulah was pretty. Beulah was healthy. But Beulah was not pregnant. And there wouldn’t be any substantial milk supply until she had successfully delivered a calf.

Thankfully, the breeder kindly exchanged our non-expectant cow for a younger heifer who was showing signs of pregnancy. This worked out better for us in the end because Lyric is smaller and nicer than Beulah ever was. And this time, I knew we’d gotten it right. She’d surely calve in a few months, and we’d soon have milk, cream, butter, ice cream, and soft cheese filling the fridge. In fact, we’d probably need a second fridge!

But as the months ticked by with no calf, I started feeling less confident and started worrying Lyric might not be pregnant either. It seemed I had good reasons for drawing opposite conclusions.

In the pregnancy PRO column, she was producing some milk — at least enough to give my pigs a snack. And since she’d never had a calf before, it was reasonable to assume she was pregnant.

But in the pregnancy CON column, Lyric — like her predecessor — had failed a blood pregnancy test.

Was she pregnant or not? And if not, how could my pigs be nursing from her?

When I couldn’t stand not knowing for sure any longer, I called in the expert: my local vet. She, with the benefit of an ultrasound machine, concluded that Lyric was in fact …

… not pregnant.

“But how come she’s producing milk?” I asked. Surely that was a true phenomenon which justified my belief in her pregnancy. The vet explained it was possible Lyric had once been bred (thus kick-starting the milk-producing hormones) but had lost the calf early on.

I felt disappointed, of course. Now I’d have to arrange to get Lyric bred again and wait nine long months before filling a bucket with her creamy milk. But at least I had a verified answer and some direction regarding next steps.

If it’s one thing both Gettier and my cow have taught me, it’s knowledge is more fragile than I typically think. At base level, all knowledge involves an element of faith.

It took more than my desire and seemingly justified observations to get to the bottom of whether Lyric was pregnant or not. But thanks to my vet (and her confirming technology), we now have both knowledge and direction. It took an expert — someone with more knowledge in this area than I had — to verify the situation and provide solutions.

So what experts do you listen to? On what do you base your knowledge of the world?

Food for thought … as I await the arrival of both milk and bacon.