Online research in philosophy

The standard contextualist solution to the skeptical paradox is intended to provide a way to retain epistemic closure while avoiding the excessive modesty of radical skepticism and the immodesty of Moorean dogmatism. However, contextualism’s opponents charge that its solution suffers from epistemic immodesty comparable to Moorean dogmatism. According to the standard contextualist solution, all contexts where an agent knows some ordinary proposition to be true are contexts where she also knows that the skeptical hypotheses are false. It has been hoped that contrastivist theories of knowledge can mirror the contextualist solution while avoiding this epistemic immodesty. I review the main problems for contrastive closure and argue that none of the arguments currently in the literature pose an insurmountable problem for the contrastivist solution. However, I argue that contrastivist theories of knowledge, like their contextualist rivals, are indeed committed to epistemic immodesty.

JUSTIFICATION and knowledge are thought to be closed under known implication..1 This widely shared assumption is embodied in the following principles of epistemic closure.

Many people, such as Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Irving Fisher, and William Sharpe, assume that free markets full of rational people automatically lead to ethical actions and outcomes. After all, at its equilibrium point, a perfectly competitive free market maximizes utility, respects autonomy, and fulfills justice’s dictates. Unfortunately, in some technology markets, there are a significant number of people who have undergone epistemic closure. Epistemic closure entails that all reliable evidence that would challenge deeply held beliefs is dismissed as corrupted, whereas all supporting evidence, no matter how unreliable, is accepted as incontrovertible. Those who have the condition act irrationally within that domain. As a result, business decisions become much more difficult than they would be in a rational market. In this article, epistemic closure’s ethical issues are developed. First, although they are acting irrationally within the closure’s domain, those with epistemic closure can still be held accountable for their actions. Second, to deal ethically with epistemic closure and its consequences, then it is vital to know what it is and its root causes, as well as to have a practical principle that can assist in making pragmatic decisions. Because some new technologies face epistemic closure, then focusing on a particular representative case of it will help to illustrate the issue’s ethical dimensions.

It is nowadays taken for granted that the core radical sceptical arguments all pivot upon the principle that the epistemic operator in question is 'closed' under known entailments. Accordingly, the standard anti-sceptical project now involves either denying closure or retaining closure by amending how one understands other elements of the sceptical argument. However, there are epistemic principles available to the sceptic which are logically weaker than closure but achieve the same result. Accordingly the contemporary debate fails to engage with the sceptical problem in its strongest form.

It is nowadays taken for granted that the core radical sceptical arguments all pivot upon the principle that the epistemic operator in question is 'closed' under known entailments. Accordingly, the standard anti-sceptical project now involves either denying closure or retaining closure by amending how one understands other elements of the sceptical argument. However, there are epistemic principles available to the sceptic which are logically weaker than closure but achieve the same result. Accordingly the contemporary debate fails to engage with the sceptical problem in its strongest form.

It is nowadays taken for granted that the core radical sceptical arguments all pivot upon the principle that the epistemic operator in question is ‘closed’ under known entailments. Accordingly, the standard anti-sceptical project now involves either denying closure or retaining closure by amending how one understands other elements of the sceptical argument. However, there are epistemic principles avail- able to the sceptic which are logically weaker than closure but achieve the same result. Accordingly the contemporary debate fails to engage with the sceptical problem in its strongest form.

Epistemic closure, the idea that knowledge is closed under known implication, plays a central role in current discussions of skepticism and the semantics of knowledge reports. Contextualists in particular rely heavily on the truth of epistemic closure in staking out their distinctive response to the so-called "skeptical paradox." I argue that contextualists should re-think their commitment to closure. Closure principles strong enough to force the skeptical paradox on us are too strong, and closure principles weak enough to express unobjectionable epistemic principles are too weak to generate the skeptical paradox. I briefly consider how the contextualist might live without (strong) closure.

In this essay I present a new version of the Paradox of the Knower and show that this new paradox vitiates a certain argument against epistemic closure. I then prove a theorem that relates the new paradox to epistemological scepticism. I conclude by assessing the use of the Knower in arguments against syntactical treatments of knowledge.