Of course, this puts them exactly where Harry justifiably believed they would be, on a plane to Buenos Aires after the ransom money was delivered. (This was way before 9/11, back when plane tickets were as interchangeable as bus passes). Unbeknownst to her, however, Vince follows her to the airport, spoils Elliot’s plans, and boards the plane with Helen to Buenos Aires. So, once he has the money, he calls Helen, tells her he has the money, and that he wants to whisk her away to Buenos Aries. Watching this scene gives Elliot (who actually is the kidnapper) the idea to convince Helen to run away with him to Buenos Aires after he secures the ransom money. Now, for less lucky private eyes, this would be bad-it would lead them astray.
#Harry crumb full movie movie#
In the movie that happens to be on, the main characters are plotting to get away to Buenos Aires-and that is what Harry is hearing. Elliot Draisen (head of Harry’s detective agency, Crumb and Crumb), in an attempt to sexually blackmail Helen, has snuck into the apartment while she is off in another room getting ready for an unenthusiastic sexual performance, he turns on the TV. Of course, Vince and Helen aren’t the kidnappers in fact, neither of them is even in the room. He hears what he assumes is Vince and Helen planning to take a trip to Buenos Aires after they get the ransom money, and so he forms the belief that he will find them on a plane to Buenos Aires after the money is delivered. He’s a Crumb!”) Take the scene where Harry has snuck into the air-conditioning vent to spy on Vince Barnes and Helen Downing, who he thinks are the kidnappers. Harry is a private detective who succeeds despite his idiocy-he just keeps stumbling onto the right answer by accident, often in virtue of the fact that he is an idiot.
That is, in fact, the “gag” that makes the whole movie work. Harry is the most epistemically lucky guy on the planet. Why? Because of something that has come to be known as “epistemic luck.” What is epistemic luck? Enter, Harry Crumb. In other words, it seems possible for one to possess everything that traditionally was thought to be sufficient for knowledge, and yet still not have it. Again, while certainly having a justified true belief is necessary for knowledge, it may not be sufficient. Gettier pointed out, however, that this is not the case. If you justifiably believe X then you know X.
Indeed, all three criteria are necessary for knowledge.īut if this definition is right, all three criteria are also sufficient for knowledge. To count as knowledge, a true belief has to be justified-you have to think it is true for good reasons. Simply having a true belief isn’t enough either you can’t just be guessing. And, although you can be confident that something is true (and you might even be so confident that you say that you “know” that it is true), unless it actually is true, you don’t actually know it’s true. Most certainly, you can’t know something unless you believe it.
The traditional definition of knowledge is simply “justified true belief.” This means that if one knows X then (a) one believes X, (b) X is true and (c) one has good reason to believe X is true. Yet Gettier showed that what we thought knowledge was, for 2500 years, was wrong. And philosophy is the mother of all disciplines most of what we know, in some way, traces back to philosophy. Think about that: what all of philosophy is about is the acquisition of knowledge, and so a fundamental underpinning of all of philosophy is what philosophers believe knowledge to be. It showed that the traditional definition of knowledge, which had been assumed by everyone since Plato, was false. The Gettier problem, first identified in 1963 by Edmund Gettier, is one of the most important developments in epistemology-perhaps in all of philosophy.
And it occurred to me that I had stumbled upon a fun philosophical lesson-or, at least, a fun example of a philosophical problem: The Gettier Problem. John Candy and Philosophy Harry Crumb Meets Edmund Gettier David Kyle JohnsonĪ friend of mine on Facebook (Chris Heimsoth) posted a request for his friends’ “favorite John Candy movie.” I immediately suggested Who’s Harry Crumb?, one of Candy’s lesser known comedies that I grew up on (because it happened to be on the same VHS tape as some other lesser known classics of late comedians, like John Ritter’s Real Men).
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