The positivists suggest that some truths may be immune from empirical refutation and yet lacking in rational justification. Quine holds that every proposition is in principle empirically refutable so there are no a priori truths. I’ll provide a working characterization of the idea of “rational revisability” and argue it’s impossible for us to take a chain of rational revision and end up revising everything which we now believe. Quine's position on revisability is also in tension with certain theses about epistemic (...) holism. Finally, I discuss a more general context in which rational argument is viewed as one mechanism among many for reliably modifying beliefs. This more biological perspective allows us to formulate Quine's claims about revisability in a new way and to raise some interesting questions about the potential impact of natural selection on our cognitive capacities. (shrink)

There is something puzzling about statistical evidence. One place this manifests is in the law, where courts are reluctant to base affirmative verdicts on evidence that is purely statistical, in spite of the fact that it is perfectly capable of meeting the standards of proof enshrined in legal doctrine. After surveying some proposed explanations for this, I shall outline a new approach – one that makes use of a notion of normalcy that is distinct from the idea of statistical frequency. (...) The puzzle is not, however, merely a legal one. Our unwillingness to base beliefs on statistical evidence is by no means limited to the courtroom, and is at odds with almost every general principle that epistemologists have proposed as to how we ought to manage our beliefs. (shrink)

In this paper I draw attention to a peculiar epistemic feature exhibited by certain deductively valid inferences. Certain deductively valid inferences are unable to enhance the reliability of one's belief that the conclusion is true—in a sense that will be fully explained. As I shall show, this feature is demonstrably present in certain philosophically significant inferences—such as GE Moore's notorious 'proof' of the existence of the external world. I suggest that this peculiar epistemic feature might be correlated with the much (...) discussed phenomenon that Crispin Wright and Martin Davies have called 'transmission failure'—the apparent failure, on the part of some deductively valid inferences to transmit one's justification for believing the premises. (shrink)

Say that two goals are normatively coincident just in case one cannot aim for one goal without automatically aiming for the other. While knowledge and justification are distinct epistemic goals, with distinct achievement conditions, this paper begins from the suggestion that they are nevertheless normatively coincident—aiming for knowledge and aiming for justification are one and the same activity. A number of surprising consequences follow from this—both specific consequences about how we can ascribe knowledge and justification in lottery cases and more (...) general consequences about the nature of justification and the relationship between justification and evidential probability. Many of these consequences turn out to be at variance with conventional, prevailing views. (shrink)

Ever since Moore revived the gospel of certainty, philosophers content with commonsense have tried to provide a perspicuous formulation of its merits. Neither Moore nor his ablest successors have completely fulfilled this task, and although few philosophers would take up Wittgenstein's challenge, “Just try ——in a real case ——to doubt someone else's fear or pain”, many would disagree that if one does he will “find these words becoming quite meaningless”. The psychological conviction that men have in many beliefs is philosophically (...) trivial, but the suggestion that sceptical claims are meaningless seems simply false. The problem for advocates of commonsense is that there is no evident room between psychological indubitability and logical necessity, uninteresting ‘subjective’ certainty and unattainable ‘objective’ certainty. Only by describing linguistic stringencies intermediate between psychological and logical ones can this problem be overcome.In Philosophical Papers Moore frequently claims to ‘know with certainty’ that many empirical propositions are true. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the views of Robert Kane on the one hand and John Fischer and Mark Ravizza on the other both lead to the following conclusion: we should have very low confidence in our ability to judge that someone is acting freely or in a way for which they can be held responsible. This in turn means, I claim, that these views, in practice, collapse into a sort of hard incompatibilist position, or the position of a (...) free will denier. That would at least be an unintended consequence, and it might be regarded as a virtual reductio. Versions of the objection could likely be made against a number of other accounts of free will, but I will limit my focus to Kane and Fischer. Along the way, by way of response to some possible objections to my argument, I make some comments about epistemic closure principles. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 2, pp 114 - 135 It is a commonly accepted assumption in contemporary epistemology that we need to find a solution to ‘closure-based’ sceptical arguments and, hence, to the ‘scepticism or closure’ dilemma. In the present paper I argue that this is mistaken, since the closure principle does not, in fact, do real sceptical work. Rather, the decisive, scepticism-friendly moves are made before the closure principle is even brought into play. If we cannot avoid the (...) sceptical conclusion, this is not due to closure’s holding it in place, but because we’ve already been persuaded to accept a certain conception of perceptual reasons, which both issues a standing invitation to radical scepticism and is endemic in the contemporary literature. Once the real villain of the piece is exposed, it will become clear that the closure principle has been cast in the role of scapegoat in this debate. (shrink)

1. In this exciting and ambitious book, Duncan Pritchard defends a novel conception of perceptual epistemic grounds, which can both be factive and reflectively available to the agent. Pritchard calls this position the ‘holy grail’ of epistemology for its power to undercut two of contemporary epistemology’s most central problems: the epistemic internalism/externalism controversy and radical scepticism. While Pritchard’s book manages to make a convincing case for why one should accept epistemological disjunctivism (ED), the ‘neo-Moorean’ anti-sceptical strategy that he derives from (...) it is less compelling. This is not because ED does not provide us with the materials for a plausible anti-sceptical strategy, however, but rather because Pritchard misidentifies where ED’s real power lies, namely, in its potential to prevent the radical sceptical problem from arising in the first place. If I am right, then there is no need to establish Moore-type anti-sceptical theses with the ground rules for doing so set by scepticism. For once (and as McDowell has maintained) the thought has been undermined that my perceptual epistemic grounds can only ever consist of the ‘highest common factor’ between the ‘good case’ and the ‘bad case’, the traditional route to radical scepticism is blocked. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and criticize a number of influential anti-skeptical strategies inspired by Wittgenstein’s remarks on ‘hinges’. Furthermore, I argue that, following Wittgen- stein’s analogy between ‘hinges’ and ‘rules of grammar’, we should be able to get rid of Cartesian skeptical scenarios as nonsensical, even if apparently intelligible, combinations of signs.

But it’s not the mere fact that the RA theorist needs an account of ‘ruling out’ and ‘relevance’ that has tended to lead people to regard the RA approach with suspicion. In itself, this simply means that the RA theorist has some further work to do; and what theorist doesn’t? No; the principal source of scepticism regarding the ability of the RA theorist to come up with a complete and satisfactory account of knowing stems, rather, from an unhappiness with the (...) specific elaborations of the core RA claim that various theorists have offered; for these elaborations have typically involved some rather controversial claims and/or assumptions, and it is against these claims/assumptions that the bulk of the criticism of the whole RA approach has been directed. (shrink)

It is received wisdom that the skeptic has a devastating line of argument in the following. You probably think, he says, that you know that you have hands. But if you knew that you had hands, then you would also know that you were not a brain in a vat, a brain suspended in fluid with electrodes feeding you perfectly coordinated impressions that are generated by a supercomputer, of a world that looks and moves just like this one. You would (...) know you weren’t in this state if you knew you had hands, since having hands implies you are no brain in a vat. You obviously don’t know you’re not a brain in a vat, though—you have no evidence that would distinguish that state from the normal one you think you’re in. Therefore, by modus tollens, you don’t know you have hands. At least, the skeptic has a devastating argument, it is thought, if we grant him closure of knowledge under known implication, which many of us are inclined to do: roughly, if you know p, and you know that p implies q, then you know q. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the current debate about radical scepticism and the structure of warrant. After a presentation of the standard version of the radical sceptic’s challenge, both in its barest and its more refined form, three anti-sceptical responses, and their respective commitments, are being identified: the Dogmatist response, the Conservativist response and the Dretskean response. It is then argued that both the Dretskean and the Conservativist are right that the anti-sceptical hypothesis cannot inherit any perceptual warrants from ordinary propositions (...) about the environment—and so the Dogmatist response founders. However, if this is so Epistemic Closure lacks any clear rationale. There is therefore good reason to agree with both the Dretskean and the Dogmatist that perceptual warrants for ordinary propositions about the environment are enough in order for those propositions to enjoy a positive epistemic status—and so the Conservativist response founders. However, the Conservativist is nonetheless right that a warrant for the anti-sceptical hypothesis is needed. For contrary to what much of the recent literature suggests, the radical sceptic need not appeal to Epistemic Closure in order to cast doubt on the legitimacy of our beliefs in ordinary propositions about the environment: there is a Pyrrhonian version of scepticism that, though equally radical, is consistent with failure of Epistemic Closure. For this reason, the Dretskean response is insufficient to answer scepticism. (shrink)

I argue that while admission of one's own fallibility rationally requires one's readiness to stand corrected in the light of future evidence, it need have no consequences for one's present degrees of belief. In particular, I argue that one's fallibility in a given area gives one no reason to forego assigning credence 1 to propositions belonging to that area. I can thus be seen to take issue with David Christensen's recent claim that our fallibility has far-reaching consequences for our account (...) of rational belief and epistemic rationality. My arguments inter alia rely on the idea that in basing one's beliefs on one's evidence, one trusts both that one's evidence has the right pedigree and that one gets its probative force right, where such trust can rationally be invested without the need of any further evidence. (shrink)

That believing truly as a matter of luck does not generally constitute knowing has become epistemic commonplace. Accounts of knowledge incorporating this anti-luck idea frequently rely on one or another of a safety or sensitivity condition. Sensitivity-based accounts of knowledge have a well-known problem with necessary truths, to wit, that any believed necessary truth trivially counts as knowledge on such accounts. In this paper, we argue that safety-based accounts similarly trivialize knowledge of necessary truths and that two ways of responding (...) to this problem for safety, issuing from work by Williamson and Pritchard, are of dubious success. (shrink)

Dretske is a “conciliatory skeptic” on self-knowledge. Take some subject S such that S thinks that P and S knows that she has thoughts. Dretske’s theory can be put as follows: S has a privileged way of knowing what she thinks, but she has no privileged way of knowing that she thinks it. There is much to be said on behalf of conciliatory skepticism and Dretske’s defense of it. We aim to show, however, that Dretske’s defense fails, in that if (...) his defense of CS’s skeptical half succeeds, then his defense of CS’s conciliatory half fails. We then suggest a potential way forward. We suggest in particular that the correct way of being a Dretskean conciliatory skeptic is to deny that S has a privileged way of knowing about her thoughts, but to grant that she is nonetheless an authority on her thoughts. (shrink)

Although recent epistemology has been marked by several prominent disagreements – e.g., between foundationalists and coherentists, internalists and externalists – there has been widespread agreement that some form of fallibilism must be correct. According to a rough formulation of this view, it is possible for a subject to have knowledge even in cases where the justification or grounding for the knowledge is compatible with the subject’s being mistaken. In this paper, I examine the motivation for fallibilism before providing a fully (...) general account of the view. I conclude by looking at the two major difficulties for fallibilism: the Gettier problem and the lottery paradox. (shrink)

Looking out the window, I see that it's raining outside. Do I know that it’s raining outside? According to proponents of the Entailment Thesis, I do. If I see that p, I know that p. In general, the Entailment Thesis is the thesis that if S perceives that p, S knows that p. But recently, some philosophers (McDowell 2002, Turri 2010, Pritchard 2011, 2012) have argued that the Entailment Thesis is false. On their view, we can see p and not (...) know that p. In this paper, I argue that their arguments are unsuccessful. (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] Fred Dretske motivates his denial of epistemic closure by way of the thought that the warrant for the premises of a valid argument need not transfer to the argument’s conclusion. The failure-of-transfer-of-warrant strategy has also been used by advocates of epistemic closure as a foil to Michael McKinsey’s argument against the compatibility of first person authority and semantic externalism, and also to illuminate, more generally, why certain valid arguments appear ill-suited for the (...) purpose of establishing their conclusions. This paper takes re-examines some of the central attempts to explain transmission-failure, and a central line of objection to the strategy from Begging-the-Question theorists. The ultimate goal of this paper is to promote a decidedly Dretskean explanation of the unpersuasiveness of the said arguments. (shrink)

The leading idea of this article is that one cannot acquire knowledge of any non-epistemic fact by virtue of knowing that one that knows something. The lines of reasoning involved in the surprise exam paradox and in Williamson’s _reductio_ of the KK-principle, which demand that one can, are thereby undermined, and new type of counter-example to epistemic closure emerges.

Tracking accounts of knowledge were originally motivated by putative counter-examples to epistemic closure. But, as is now well known, these early accounts have many highly counterintuitive consequences. In this note, I motivate a tracking-based account which respects closure but which resolves many of the familiar problems for earlier tracking account along the way.

Epistemologists have proposed various norms of assertion to explain when a speaker is in an epistemic position to assert a proposition. In this article I propose a distinct necessary condition on assertibility: that a speaker should assert only what she sensitively believes, where a subject's belief is sensitive just in case the subject would not hold it if it were false. I argue that the Sensitivity Rule underwrites simple explanations for three key features of assertibility that pose explanatory challenges to (...) other prominent proposals: the fact that assertibility is open under known entailment, the general impropriety of assertions that a lottery ticket has lost made purely on the basis of the speaker's knowledge of the odds, and the fact that assertibility varies widely with features of the conversational context. I close by considering three distinct roles the Sensitivity Rule might play in the overall theory of assertibility. (shrink)

In his final notebooks, published as On Certainty , Wittgenstein offers a distinctive conception of the nature of reasons. Central to this conception is the idea that at the heart of our rational practices are essentially arational commitments. This proposal marks a powerful challenge to the standard picture of the structure of reasons. In particular, it has been thought that this account might offer us a resolution of the traditional scepticism/anti-scepticism debate. It is argued, however, that some standard ways of (...) filling out the details of this proposal ultimately lead to an epistemology which is highly problematic. The goal here is to present a more compelling version of Wittgenstein’s account of the structure of reasons which can evade these difficulties. (shrink)

This essay offers a rearticulation and defence of the modal account of luck that the author developed in earlier work . In particular, the proposal is situated within a certain methodology, a component of which is paying due attention to the cognitive science literature on luck ascriptions. It is shown that with the modal account of luck properly articulated it can adequately deal with some of the problems that have recently been offered against it, and that the view has a (...) number of attractions over competing proposals, such as the lack of control account. (shrink)

A certain interpretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks in On Certaintyadvanced by such figures as Hilary Putnam, Peter Strawson, Avrum Stroll and Crispin Wrighthas become common currency in the recent literature. In particular, this reading focuses upon the supposed anti-sceptical import of the Wittgensteinian notion of a “hinge” proposition. In this paper it is argued that this interpretation is flawed both on the grounds that there is insufficient textual support for this reading and that, in any case, it leads to unpalatable philosophical (...) problems. Moreover, it is claimed that the popularity of this construal of On Certainty in the contemporary debate reflects an implicit commitment to the contentious doctrine of epistemological internalism. Nevertheless, it is argued that, suitably modified along the epistemologically externalist lines suggested by Michael Williams, one might be able to resurrect a viable anti-sceptical hinge proposition thesis. Furthermore, it is claimed that such a conception of the notion also receives some, albeit inconclusive, textual support from On Certainty. (shrink)

G. E. Moore famously offered a strikingly straightforward response to the radical sceptic which simply consisted of the claim that one could know, on the basis of one's knowledge that one has hands, that there exists an external world. In general, the Moorean response to scepticism maintains that we can know the denials of sceptical hypotheses on the basis of our knowledge of everyday propositions. In the recent literature two proposals have been put forward to try to accommodate, to varying (...) extents, this Moorean thesis. On the one hand, there are those who endorse an externalist version of contextualism, such as Keith DeRose, who have claimed that there must be some contexts in which Moore is right. More radically still, Ernest Sosa has expanded on this externalist thesis by arguing that, contra DeRose's contextualism, Moore may be right in all contexts. In this paper I evaluate these claims and argue that, suitably modified, one can resurrect the main elements of the Moorean anti-sceptical thesis. (shrink)

A great deal of discussion in the recent literature has been devoted to the so-called 'McKinsey' paradox which purports to show that semantic externalism is incompatible with the sort of authoritative knowledge that we take ourselves to have of our own thought contents. In this paper I examine one influential epistemological response to this paradox which is due to Crispin Wright and Martin Davies. I argue that it fails to meet the challenge posed by McKinsey but that, if it is (...) set within an externalist epistemology, it may have application to a related paradox that concerns the problem of radical scepticism. (shrink)

Perhaps the most dominant anti‐sceptical proposal in recent literature –advanced by such figures as Stewart Cohen, Keith DeRose and David Lewis –is the contextualist response to radical scepticism. Central to the contextualist thesis is the claim that, unlike other non‐contextualist anti‐sceptical theories, contextualism offers a dissolution of the sceptical paradox that respects our common sense epistemological intuitions. Taking DeRose's view as representative of the contextualist position, it is argued that instead of offering us an intuitive response to scepticism, contextualism is (...) actually committed to a revisionist stance as regards our everyday usage of epistemic terms. In particular, it is argued that the thesis fails to present a satisfactory explication of a notion –that of‘epistemic descent’– that is pivotal to the anti‐sceptical import of the account. On the positive side, however, it is claimed that although the contextualist response to scepticism is ultimately unsatisfying, DeRose's theory does contain within it the framework for a completely different ‐ and far more persuasive ‐ account of the‘phenomenology’of scepticism which runs along non‐contextualist lines. (shrink)

Perhaps the most dominant anti‐sceptical proposal in recent literature –advanced by such figures as Stewart Cohen, Keith DeRose and David Lewis –is the contextualist response to radical scepticism. Central to the contextualist thesis is the claim that, unlike other non‐contextualist anti‐sceptical theories, contextualism offers a dissolution of the sceptical paradox that respects our common sense epistemological intuitions. Taking DeRose's view as representative of the contextualist position, it is argued that instead of offering us an intuitive response to scepticism, contextualism is (...) actually committed to a revisionist stance as regards our everyday usage of epistemic terms. In particular, it is argued that the thesis fails to present a satisfactory explication of a notion –that of‘epistemic descent’– that is pivotal to the anti‐sceptical import of the account. On the positive side, however, it is claimed that although the contextualist response to scepticism is ultimately unsatisfying, DeRose's theory does contain within it the framework for a completely different ‐ and far more persuasive ‐ account of the‘phenomenology’of scepticism which runs along non‐contextualist lines. (shrink)

A certain construal of the Gettier problem is offered, according to which this problem concerns the task of identifying the anti-luck condition on knowledge. A methodology for approaching this construal of the Gettier problem—anti-luck epistemology—is set out, and the utility of such a methodology is demonstrated. It is argued that a range of superficially distinct cases which are meant to pose problems for anti-luck epistemology are in fact related in significant ways. It is claimed that with these cases properly understood, (...) anti-luck epistemology is able to offer a suitable diagnosis of them which doesn’t threaten the necessity of the anti-luck condition for knowledge. (shrink)

Support is canvassed for a new approach to epistemology called anti-risk epistemology. It is argued that this proposal is rooted in the motivations for an existing account, known as anti-luck epistemology, but is superior on a number of fronts. In particular, anti-risk epistemology is better placed than anti-luck epistemology to supply the motivation for certain theoretical moves with regard to safety-based approaches to knowledge. Moreover, anti-risk epistemology is more easily extendable to epistemological questions beyond that in play in the theory (...) of knowledge specifically. A key advantage of the view, however, is that anti-risk epistemology fares much better than anti-luck epistemology when it comes to accounting for the phenomenon of negative epistemic dependence. In particular, anti-risk epistemology is ideally placed to explain why such epistemic dependence is incompatible with knowledge, even when the negative epistemic dependence in play is of a purely modal variety. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 14 One common problem with anti-skepticism and skepticism alike is their failure to account for our sometimes conflicting epistemic intuitions. In order to address this problem and provide a new direction for solving the skeptical puzzle, I consider a modified version of the puzzle that is based on knowledge claims about appearances and does not result in a paradox. I conclude that combining the elements of both the original and modified puzzle can potentially guide us towards (...) solutions that can fully explain the conflict of epistemic intuitions. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 14 One common problem with anti-skepticism and skepticism alike is their failure to account for our sometimes conflicting epistemic intuitions. In order to address this problem and provide a new direction for solving the skeptical puzzle, I consider a modified version of the puzzle that is based on knowledge claims about appearances and does not result in a paradox. I conclude that combining the elements of both the original and modified puzzle can potentially guide us towards (...) solutions that can fully explain the conflict of epistemic intuitions. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose and defend a pair of necessary conditions on evidence-based knowledge which bear resemblance to the troubled sensitivity principles defended in the philosophical literature. We can think of the traditional principles as simple but inaccurate approximations of the new proposals. Insofar as the old principles are intuitive and used in scientific and philosophical contexts, but are plausibly false, there’s a real need to develop precise and correct formulations. These new renditions turned out to be more cautious, (...) so they won’t be able to do everything the old principled promised they could. For example, they respect closure for knowledge. But these sober formulations, or something like them, might be the best that we can do with respect to sensitivity. And there’s value in understanding the limits to these types of principles. (shrink)

The central question of this paper is: what has Kant’s Refutation of Idealism argument proven, if anything? What is the real scandal of philosophy and universal human reason? I argue that Kant’s Refutation argument can only be considered sound if we assume that his target is what I call ‘metaphysical external-world skepticism.’ What is in question is not the ‘existence’ of outside things but their very ‘nature,’ that is, the claim that the thing outside us, which appears to us as (...) a persistent body in space, exists in itself _as a substantia noumenon_. Assuming the indirect-realist view that we only immediately know ideas and that their putative objects are known by inference, the metaphysical external-world skeptic doubts that the nature of things outside oneself is mind-independent. (shrink)

With respect to the confirmation of mathematical propositions, proof possesses an epistemological authority unmatched by other means of confirmation. This paper is an investigation into why this is the case. I make use of an analysis drawn from an early reliability perspective on knowledge to help make sense of mathematical proofs singular epistemological status.

Kant’s Refutation targets what he calls the problematic idealist. This is understood by the mainstream of Kantian scholarship as the global skeptic that Descartes briefly adumbrated in his first Meditation. The widespread view in the literature is that the fate of the Refutation is tied to its success as an argument against this Cartesian global skepticism. This consensus is what I want to question in this paper. I argue that Kant’s opponent – the problematic idealist – is not the Cartesian (...) global skeptic, but rather what I prefer to call here the Cartesian problematic external-world idealist. According to Cartesian global skepticism we cannot know whether our commonsensical beliefs are true until we rule out the skeptical hypotheses are false. In contrast, the Cartesian external-world idealist sees as problematic the assumption that the underlying nature of outer things of which we have ideas is mind-independent rather than caused by our own thinking being. My aim here is to disentangle Cartesian global skepticism from Cartesian problematic external-word idealism and show that, if measured against global skepticism, Kant’s Refutation is doomed to fail; while against problematic idealism, it is at least a promising argument. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article defends the importance of epistemic safety for legal evidence. Drawing on discussions of sensitivity and safety in epistemology, the article explores how similar considerations apply to legal proof. In the legal context, sensitivity concerns whether a factual finding would be made if it were false, and safety concerns how easily a factual finding could be false. The article critiques recent claims about the importance of sensitivity for the law of evidence. In particular, this critique argues that sensitivity does (...) not have much of an effect on the value of legal evidence and that it fails to explain legal doctrine. By contrast, safety affects the quality of legal evidence, and safety better explains central features of the law of evidence, including probative value, admissibility rules, and standards of proof. (shrink)

Epistemologists often remark that knowledge precludes luck. A true belief based on a guess or hunch is not knowledge because it seems merely fortuitous, too much of an accident, and, well, lucky that one happened to get things right. Of course, true beliefs based on guesses and hunches are not justified. However, Gettier cases have persuasively shown that even justified true beliefs can admit knowledge‐precluding kinds of luck. So in what sense are justified true beliefs that don’t amount knowledge lucky (...) or ‘true only by chance’? I will address three different approaches to epistemic luck that have received significant attention in the recent literature: reliability approaches to epistemic luck, credit approaches to epistemic luck, and responsibilist or control approaches to epistemic luck. I will then turn my attention to the implications that epistemic luck has for other epistemic states. I will focus particularly on state of understanding and examine whether, and to what extent, understanding is vulnerable to epistemic luck. (shrink)

I challenge a cornerstone of the Gettier debate: that a proposed analysis of the concept of knowledge is inadequate unless it entails that people don’t know in Gettier cases. I do so from the perspective of Carnap’s methodology of explication. It turns out that the Gettier problem per se is not a fatal problem for any account of knowledge, thus understood. It all depends on how the account fares regarding other putative counter examples and the further Carnapian desiderata of exactness, (...) fruitfulness and simplicity. Carnap proposed his methodology more than a decade before Gettier’s seminal paper appeared, making the present solution to the problem a candidate for being the least ad hoc proposal on the market, one whose independent standing cannot be questioned, among solutions that depart from the usual method of revising a theory of knowledge in the light of counterexamples. As an illustration of the method at work, I reconstruct reliabilism as an attempt to provide an explication of the concept of knowledge. (shrink)

This paper evaluates whether and to what extent modal constraints on knowledge or the semantics of ‘knows’, which make essential reference to what goes on in other possible worlds, can be considered non-epistemic factors with epistemic significance. This is best understood as the question whether modal factors are non-truth-relevant factors that make the difference between true belief and knowledge, or to whether a true belief falls under the extension of ‘knowledge’ in a context, where a factor is truth-relevant with respect (...) to S’s belief that P iff it bears on the probability that P is true. To the extent that these factors are non-epistemic, epistemologies that endorse them—modal epistemologies—stand in conflict with intellectualism. I focus on three modal epistemologies: safety, sensitivity, and David Lewis’s epistemic contextualism. I argue that prima facie, safety and sensitivity allow that non-epistemic changes in a context can shift the closeness ordering on worlds, and in so doing make a difference to whether S knows P, while Lewis’s contextualism allows that non-epistemic changes in a context can shift the relevant domain of not-P possibilities that must be eliminated for ‘S knows P’ to be true in that context. Then to make her theory compatible with intellectualism, the modal epistemologist must say much more about the notion of probability at play in the definition of ‘truth-relevant’. I suggest that either accepting or rejecting that modal epistemologies are intellectualist has significance consequences for debates between pragmatists and purists, which radiate into wider contemporary epistemology. (shrink)