In this paper, I respond to Pierre Le Morvan’s critique of my thesis that ignorance is lack of true belief rather than absence of knowledge. I argue that the distinction between dispositional and non-dispositional accounts of belief, as I made it in a previous paper, is correct as it stands. Also, I criticize the viability and the importance of Le Morvan’s distinction between propositional and factive ignorance. Finally, I provide two arguments in favor of the thesis that (...) ignorance is lack of true belief rather than absence of knowledge. (shrink)

Given the significant exculpatory power that ignorance has when it comes to moral, legal, and epistemic transgressions, it is important to have an accurate understanding of the concept of ignorance. According to the Standard View of factual ignorance, a person is ignorant that p whenever they do not know that p, while on the New View, a person is ignorant that p whenever they do not truly believe that p. On their own though, neither of these accounts explains how ignorance (...) can often be a degreed notion—how we can sometimes be slightly ignorant, quite ignorant, or completely ignorant that p. In this paper, I will argue that there is a route for advocates of the Standard View and the New View to accommodate the gradability of ignorance. On the view I defend, ‘ignorant’ picks out everyone that is ignorant to some degree, making it possible that ignorance can be both degreed and characterized as a lack of knowledge or true belief. Even though we can be ignorant to a greater or lesser extent, the only way to avoid being ignorant that p is to know or truly believe. (shrink)

Research on the capacity to understand others' minds has tended to focus on representations ofbeliefs,which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations ofknowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one does not even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across cognitive science, (...) we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that nonhuman primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge (but not belief) attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibits a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind – one that is focused on understanding others' minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it. (shrink)

Suppose that knowledge and ignorance are complements in the sense of being mutually exclusive: for person S and fact p, either S knows that p or is ignorant that p. Understood in this way, ignorance amounts to a lack or absence of knowledge: S is ignorant that p if and only if it is not the case that S knows that p. Let us call the thesis that knowledge and ignorance are opposites the “Complement Thesis”. In this (...) article, I discuss its deployment in an ingenious new argument advanced by Alvin Goldman and Erik Olsson (2009) which, if sound, establishes that there is a kind of knowledge that amounts to nothing more than true belief. I rebut their argument and in doing so delineate some important epistemological lessons brought to light by the contrast between ignorance and knowledge. (shrink)

Suppose that knowledge and ignorance are complements in the sense of being mutually exclusive: for person S and fact p, either S knows that p or is ignorant that p. Understood in this way, ignorance amounts to a lack or absence of knowledge: S is ignorant that p if and only if it is not the case that S knows that p. Let us call the thesis that knowledge and ignorance are opposites the “Complement Thesis”. In this (...) article, I discuss its deployment in an ingenious new argument advanced by Alvin Goldman and Erik Olsson (2009) which, if sound, establishes that there is a kind of knowledge that amounts to nothing more than true belief. I rebut their argument and in doing so delineate some important epistemological lessons brought to light by the contrast between ignorance and knowledge. (shrink)

In the current debate there are two epistemological approaches to the definition of ignorance: the Standard View and the New View. The former defines ignorance simply as not knowing, while the latter defines it as the absence of true belief. One of the main differences between these two positions lies in rejecting (Standard View) or in accepting (New View) the factivity of ignorance, i.e., if an agent is ignorant of φ, then φ is true. In the present article, (...) we first provide a criticism of the Standard View in favour of the New View. Secondly, we propose a formal setting to represent the notion of factive ignorance. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a defence of the New View, on which ignorance is lack of true belief rather than lack of knowledge. Pierre Le Morvan has argued that the New View is untenable, partly because it fails to take into account the distinction between propositional and factive ignorance. I argue that propositional ignorance is just a subspecies of factive ignorance and that all the work that needs to be done can be done by using (...) the concept of factive ignorance. I also defend two arguments of mine in favour of the New View against Le Morvan’s criticisms. As to the Linguistic Argument, I point out that the intuitions of the adherent of the New View about cases of true belief that fall short of knowledge are really intuitions about factive rather than propositional ignorance. As to the Excuse Argument, I argue that true belief is exculpatorily relevant: a true belief in a proposition p , where disbelief that p or suspension on p would provide at least a partial excuse, is relevant in that it renders one blameworthy for one’s action, unless further excuses hold. Finally, I reply to two closely related objections that might be levelled against the New View, namely that it seems false that one can reduce one’s ignorance by arbitrarily believing as many propositions as possible and that it seems false that an intellectually conscientious and critical person is more ignorant than an intellectually sloppy and credulous person just because the latter has more true beliefs. (shrink)

According to factive accounts of the norm of belief and decision-making, you should not believe or base decisions on a falsehood. Even when the evidence misleadingly suggests that a false proposition is true, you should not believe it or base decisions on it. Critics claim that factive accounts are counterintuitive and badly mischaracterize our ordinary practice of evaluating beliefs and decisions. This paper reports four experiments that rigorously test the critic’s accusations and the viability of factive (...) accounts. The results undermine the accusations and provide the best evidence yet of factive norms of belief and decision-making. The results also help discriminate between two leading candidates for a factive norm: truth and knowledge. Knowledge is the superior candidate. (shrink)

This book is addresses a topic that has received little or no attention in orthodox epistemology. Typical epistemological investigation focuses almost exclusively on knowledge, where knowing that something is the case importantly implies that what is believed is strictly true. This condition on knowledge is known as factivity and it is, to be sure, a bit of epistemological orthodoxy. So, if a belief is to qualify as knowledge according to the orthodox view it cannot be false. (...) There is also an increasingly influential group of epistemologists who argue that one ought to act only on what one knows, because truth of belief is the surest way to guarantee that our actions work out as planned. They defend what is known as the knowledge norm for action. This view is typically justified in virtue of the idea that successful intentional action should stem from knowledge because knowledge is a factive propositional attitude and it is, as a result, success-prone with respect to intentional action. In other words, true beliefs that constitute knowledge are the rationally normative standard for successful acting. But, there are clearly multitudes of cases where epistemic agents operate successfully and even rationally on the basis of beliefs that are false. That this is the case is not especially controversial. Sometimes false beliefs facilitate successful action. Of course, this can be because the agent is simply lucky. However, there is something particularly important about some false beliefs that relates to successful action but not in virtue of luck. While not strictly true, the beliefs in question are close to the truth or approximately true. This gives rise to the possibility that there are knowledge-like states that play roles very similar to knowledge but which are only quasi-factive. That is to say such states imply approximate truth and do not imply strict truth. Moreover, often such beliefs facilitate successful action in virtue of their being approximately true and this suggests a much more plausible norm for successful action that encompasses both cases of rational action guided by such quasi-factive states as well as cases of rational action guided by knowledge. The thesis of this book is that quasi-factive knowledge-like states are far more common that epistemologists have acknowledge and the book introduces a theory of such states and how they give rise to a much more reasonable account of the norms for action. This involves some tricky issues concerning approximate truth, the rationality of believing not strictly true claims, the justification of approximately true beliefs, the nature of false but approximately true evidence, the norms of belief, knowledge and quasi-knowledge, etc. (shrink)

Russian translation of Gettier E. L. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? // Analysis, vol. 23, 1963. Translated by Lev Lamberov with kind permission of the author.

Edmund Gettier is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This short piece, published in 1963, seemed to many decisively to refute an otherwise attractive analysis of knowledge. It stimulated a renewed effort, still ongoing, to clarify exactly what knowledge comprises.

Her belief is true, but it isn't knowledge. This is a classic illustration of a central problem in epistemology: determining what knowledge requires in addition to true belief.

The traditional conception of knowledge as justified true belief is refuted in two famous counterexamples by Edmund L. Gettier. Roderick M. Chisholm has attempted to rescue a version of the traditional conception by distinguishing between defective and nondefective kinds of justification, and redefining knowledge more specifically as nondefectively justified true belief. Chisholm's revised definition avoids Gettier's counterexamples, but goes too far in the opposite direction, imposing conditions that are too narrow and not jointly necessary for (...) class='Hi'>knowledge. Chisholm's definition excludes some claims that intuitively constitute genuine knowledge1 by entailing that if a true belief is invalidated as knowledge when defectively justified by a total body of evidence that also makes evident at least one false proposition, then no knowledge whatsoever can be supported by the same evidence. An alternative analysis of knowledge is proposed, according to which the potential loophole between the state of affairs that justifies belief in a proposition, and the state of affairs that makes the proposition true, permitted by the traditional concept of knowledge and discovered by Gettier's counterexamples, is closed by redefining knowledge as semantically‐epistemically evidentially relevant justified true belief. (shrink)

One of the most venerable and enduring intuitions in epistemology concerns the relationship between true belief and knowledge. Famously articulated by Socrates, it holds that true belief does not suffice for knowledge. I discuss a matching intuition about ignorance according to which true belief does not suffice for the absence of ignorance. I argue that the latter intuition undercuts the New View of Ignorance and supports the Standard View of Ignorance.

In this paper, we argue that the usual approach to modelling knowledge and belief with the necessity modality |$\Box $| does not produce intuitive outcomes in the framework of the Belnap–Dunn logic (⁠|$\textsf{BD}$|⁠, alias |$\textbf{FDE}$|—first-degree entailment). We then motivate and introduce a nonstandard modality |$\blacksquare $| that formalizes knowledge and belief in |$\textsf{BD}$| and use |$\blacksquare $| to define |$\bullet $| and |$\blacktriangledown $| that formalize the unknown truth and ignorance as not knowing whether, respectively. Moreover, we introduce (...) another modality |$\textbf{I}$| that stands for factive ignorance and show its connection with |$\blacksquare $|⁠. We equip these modalities with Kripke-frame-based semantics and construct a sound and complete analytic cut system for |$\textsf{BD}^{\blacksquare }$| and |$\textsf{BD}^{\textbf{I}}$|—the expansions of |$\textsf{BD}$| with |$\blacksquare $| and |$\textbf{I}$|⁠. In addition, we show that |$\Box $| as it is customarily defined in |$\textsf{BD}$| cannot define any of the introduced modalities, nor, conversely, neither |$\blacksquare $| nor |$\textbf{I}$| can define |$\Box $|⁠. We also demonstrate that |$\blacksquare $| and |$\textbf{I}$| are not interdefinable and establish the definability of several important classes of frames using |$\blacksquare $|⁠. (shrink)

Crispin Sartwell ingeniously defends the provocative thesis that mere true belief suffices for knowledge. In doing so, he challenges one of the most deeply entrenched epistemological tenets, namely that knowledge must be more than mere true belief. Particularly interesting is the way he defends his thesis by appealing to considerations adduced by such prominent epistemologists as William Alston, Laurence BonJour, Alvin Goldman and Paul Moser, each of whom denies that knowledge is merely true belief. (...) In this paper, I argue that the case Sartwell presents for his thesis fails. However, by examining why it fails, we may derive at least four important epistemological lessons: being justified does not entail being able to give a justification; we should distinguish between epistemic justification conceived of as intrinsically conducive to truth and conceived of as extrinsically conducive to truth; we should distinguish between epistemic justification conceived of as an essential criterion of knowledge and conceived of as an accidental criterion of knowledge ; and epistemologists need to specify how the telos of inquiry involves more than the acquisition of true beliefs.Socrates: Then tell me: what definition can we give with the least risk of contradicting ourselves? (shrink)

[ES] En este breve trabajo, se presenta una edición bilingüe de Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?, de Edmund L. Gettier, donde se presentan contraejemplos a la definición de «conocimiento» como «creencia verdadera justificada». [ES] In this brief text, a bilingual edition of Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?, by Edmund L. Gettier, some counterexamples are presented to the definition of «knowledge» as «justified true belief».

It is all but universally accepted in epistemology that knowledge is factive: S knows that p only if p. The purpose of this thesis is to present an argument against the factivity of knowledge and in doing so develop a non-factive approach to the analysis of knowledge. The argument against factivity presented here rests largely on empirical evidence, especially extant research into visuomotor noise, which suggests that the beliefs that guide everyday motor action are not (...) strictly true. However, as we still want to attribute knowledge on the basis of successful motor action, I argue that the best option is to replace factivity with a weaker constraint on knowledge, one on which certain false beliefs might still be known. In defence of this point, I develop the non-factive analysis of knowledge, which demonstrates that a non-factive constraint might do the same theoretical work as factivity. (shrink)

This thesis offers a fresh interpretation and defense of epistemological disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge. I adopt a multilevel approach according to which perceptual knowledge on one level can enjoy factive rational support provided by perceptual knowledge of the same proposition on a different level. Here I invoke a distinction Ernest Sosa draws between ‘judgmental’ and ‘merely functional’ belief to articulate what I call the bifurcated conception of perceptual knowledge. The view that results is a form (...) of epistemological disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge specifically at the higher judgmental level, layered over a straightforward externalism about perceptual knowledge at the lower merely functional level. The first chapter orients the reader to epistemological disjunctivism— with particular emphasis on the ‘reflective epistemological disjunctivism’ defended by Duncan Pritchard with inspiration from John McDowell. Here I review the arguments for thinking such a proposal true, as well as highlight some problems and three emerging challenges for the view: what I call the internalist challenge, the new access challenge, and the ‘new evil genius’ challenge. These challenges largely inspire the chapters to follow. In the second chapter I present the positive proposal: a fresh interpretation of epistemological disjunctivism in terms of perceptual knowledge at the specifically judgmental level. I argue that this is a modification that epistemological disjunctivists should adopt since it inoculates their view against the internalist challenge: the challenge of explaining why perception should provide one with knowledge by providing one with motivating reasons for belief. In the third chapter I motivate the view further in connection with the more familiar ‘basis problem’ for epistemological disjunctivism. I argue that this approach supports a unique strategy for solving that problem: one that is consistent both with what is known as ‘the entailment’ thesis and the thought that we can reduce perceptual knowledge to a kind of rationally supported belief. In the fourth chapter I move to playing defense. I defend the proposal against the so-called ‘new evil genius’ challenge. This is the challenge to explain why subjects in pairs of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cases can seem equally justified for sustaining their perceptual beliefs. I argue that what we are being sensitive to here, rather, is the fact that both subjects can be equally epistemically responsible and/or reasonable for believing what they do. Before concluding this chapter I also offer an error theory. In the fifth chapter I defend the proposal against the new access challenges raised in chapter one. These alleged challenges for epistemological disjunctivism arise specifically for versions of reflective epistemological disjunctivism that hold that one’s rational support for perceptual beliefs is not only factive but reflectively accessible as well. Rather than address the challenges head on, I try to dislodge the thought they depend upon—viz., that one’s factive rational support for perceptual beliefs is reflectively accessible to the subject. Here I argue that the reflective accessibility of one’s factive rational support is actually a wheel turning idly in the debate with the underdetermination-based radical sceptic—so that we can simply drop it without consequence. The result is an epistemological disjunctivism that is immune to access problems. I then offer a final summary and conclude. At the end of this thesis I have attached an appendix, which is an excursion into religious epistemology and an exploration of a form of religious epistemological disjunctivism. Here I apply the epistemological disjunctivist insight to the case of religious perception in order to defend the idea that one can offer independent rational support for theistic belief by appealing to religious beliefs that are justified on the basis of religious experiences. This appendix chapter is in keeping with the general spirit of the thesis insofar as it seeks to developed epistemological disjunctivism in new and fruitful directions. (shrink)

Discussion of the sufficiency of the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief has focused on cases in which justified true belief does not constitute knowledge because one's justification depends essentially on a false belief or is defeated by a false statement. I propose three cases designed to show that the traditional account is insufficient for other reasons and that, Consequently, Even undefeated justified true belief does not constitute knowledge.

Two different versions of epistemological disjunctivism have recently been upheld in the literature: a traditional, Justified True Belief Epistemological Disjunctivism (JTBED) and a Knowledge First Epistemological Disjunctivism (KFED). JTBED holds that factive reasons of the form “S sees that p” provide the rational support in virtue of which one has perceptual knowledge, while KFED holds that factive reasons of the form “S sees that p” just are ways of knowing that p which additionally provide justification (...) for believing that p. We argue that both accounts remain ultimately unsatisfactory. JTBED faces two formidable problems: first, it cannot account for animal knowledge, and, second, it does not offer a satisfactory account of how we access factive reasons. Although KFED can solve these two problems, it has some problems of its own. While intuitively knowledge is logically stronger than justified belief, on KFED it turns out to be weaker: knowledge does not entail justified belief, but justified belief does entail knowledge. Nevertheless, disjunctivists are right on at least a couple of points: we standardly justify our perceptual beliefs by appealing to factive reasons such as seeing that p and so factive reasons ought to play some role in our theory of justification. In addition, KFED’s account of our access to factive reasons also is spot on. Rather than going disjunctivist, these insights can be suitably incorporated into a Knowledge First Virtue Epistemology (KFVE). (shrink)

An ingenious argument – we may call it the Argument from Excuse – purports to show that the Standard View of Ignorance is false and the New View of Ignorance is true. On the former, ignorance is lack of knowledge; on the latter, ignorance is lack of true belief. I defend the Standard View by arguing that the Argument from Excuse is unsound. I also argue that an implication of my case is that Factual Ignorance Thesis (FIT) (...) is false. According to FIT, whenever an agent A acts from factual ignorance, A is morally blameworthy (culpable) for the act only if A is morally blameworthy (culpable) for the ignorance from which A acts. (shrink)

Ignorance is a neglected issue in philosophy. This is surprising for, contrary to what one might expect, it is not clear what ignorance is. Some philosophers say or assume that it is a lack of knowledge, whereas others claim or presuppose that it is an absence of true belief. What is one ignorant of when one is ignorant? What kinds of ignorance are there? This neglect is also remarkable because ignorance plays a crucial role in all sorts of (...) controversial societal issues. Ignorance is often thought to be a moral and legal excuse; it is a core concept in medical ethics and debates about privacy, and it features in religious traditions and debates about belief in God. This book does not only study an epistemic phenomenon that is interesting in itself, but also provides important tools that can be fruitfully used in debates within and beyond philosophy. (shrink)

Knowledge is standardly taken to be belief that is both true and justified (and perhaps meets other conditions as well). Timothy Williamson rejects the standard epistemology for its inability to solve the Gettier problem. The moral of this failure, he argues, is that knowledge does not factor into a combination that includes a mental state (belief) and an external condition (truth), but is itself a type of mental state. Knowledge is, according to his preferred account, the (...) most general factive mental state. I argue, however, that Gettier cases pose a serious problem for Williamson’s epistemology: in these cases, thesubject may have a factive mental state that fails to be cognitive. Hence, knowledge cannot be the most general factive mental state. (shrink)

[ES] En este breve trabajo, se presenta una edición bilingüe de Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?, de Edmund L. Gettier, donde se presentan contraejemplos a la definición de «conocimiento» como «creencia verdadera justificada». [ES] In this brief text, a bilingual edition of Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?, by Edmund L. Gettier, some counterexamples are presented to the definition of «knowledge» as «justified true belief».

On an initially plausible view of ignorance, ignorance is equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge-that. I argue that this view is incorrect, as lack of sufficient justification for one's true belief or lack of belief doesn't necessarily amount to ignorance. My argument rests on linguistic considerations of common uses of 'ignorant' and its cognates. The phrase 'is ignorant of', I argue, functions differently grammatically and semantically from the phrase 'does not know', when the latter is used (...) propositionally. 'Is ignorant of' does not have a genuine propositional use but is best understood as equivalent to 'is not knowledgeable of'. I further argue that 'knowledgeable' and 'ignorant' are relative gradable expressions. Relative gradables typically are associated with an implicit or explicit standard of comparison, give rise to borderline cases and trigger the Sorites Paradox in their unmarked form. From these linguistic considerations, it follows that being ignorant admits of degree, and that one can fail to be ignorant despite lacking true beliefs concerning the propositions constituting a particular subject matter. The proposed treatment of knowledgeability and ignorance of facts and subject matters lends itself to an alternative reply to the problem of skepticism, which I will call the ‘simple response’. In the final section of the paper I argue that ignorance can also reflect incompetence with respect to a particular activity. The latter, I argue, is a case of lacking a particular kind of ability-involving knowledge-how, viz. practical knowledge of how to perform the activity in question. (shrink)

Rik Peels has once again forcefully argued that ignorance is not equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge. In doing so, he endeavors to refute the Standard View of Ignorance according to which they are equivalent, and to advance what he calls the “New View” according to which ignorance is equivalent (merely) to the lack or absence of true belief. I defend the Standard View against his new attempted refutation.

After almost a decade, the discussion initiated by Professor Edmund Gettier's provocative paper “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” continues. The most recent contribution to this discussion is Professor John Turk Saunders' attempt to counter Professor Irving Thalberg's claim that a principle that Gettier employs in reaching his notorious negative conclusion is unjustified. I am moved to add to the discussion at this time because it seems to me that the principle in question is unjustified. But more fundamentally, Gettier's (...) argument fails because the putative counter-examples on which it rests fail to make their intended point. I shall discuss these claims in turn.The epistemic principle which I consider unjustified is the one which Thalberg has called the Principle of Deducibility for Justification and which Gettier formulates as follows: “for any proposition P, if S is justified in believing P, and P entails Q, and S deduces Q from P and accepts Q as a result of this deduction, then S is justified in believing Q.”. (shrink)

Is knowledge justified true belief? Most philosophers believe that the answer is clearly ‘no’, as demonstrated by Gettier cases. But Gettier cases don’t obviously refute the traditional view that knowledge is justified true belief (JTB). There are ways of resisting Gettier cases, at least one of which is partly successful. Nevertheless, when properly understood, Gettier cases point to a flaw in JTB, though it takes some work to appreciate just what it is. The nature of the (...) flaw helps us better understand the nature of knowledge and epistemic justification. I propose a crucial improvement to the traditional view, relying on an intuitive and independently plausible metaphysical distinction pertaining to the manifestation of intellectual powers, which supplements the traditional components of justification, truth and belief. (shrink)

Knowledge implies the presence of a positive relation between a person and a fact. Factual ignorance, on the other hand, implies the absence of some positive relation between a person and a fact. The two most influential views of ignorance hold that what is lacking in cases of factual ignorance is knowledge or true belief, but these accounts fail to explain a number of basic facts about ignorance. In their place, we propose a novel and systematic defense (...) of the view that factual ignorance is the absence of awareness, an account that both comes apart from the dominant views and overcomes their deficiencies. Given the important role that ignorance plays in moral and legal theory and our understanding of various epistemic injustices, a precise and theoretically unproblematic account of the nature of ignorance is important not only for normative epistemology, but also for law, ethics, and applied epistemology. (shrink)

It is argued that the two main accounts of ignorance in the contemporary literature—in the terms of the lack of knowledge and the lack of true belief—are lacking in key respects. A new way of thinking about ignorance is offered that can accommodate the motivations for both of the standard views, but which in the process also avoids the problems that afflict these proposals. In short, this new account of ignorance incorporates the idea that ignorance essentially involves not (...) just the absence of a certain epistemic good, but also an intellectual failing of inquiry. It is further contended that making sense of this normative dimension to ignorance requires one to situate one’s account of ignorance within a wider epistemic axiology. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally (...) share philosophers’ intuitions about these cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

Because knowledge entails true belief, it is can be hard to explain why a given action is naturally seen as driven by one of these states as opposed to the other. A simpler and more radical characterization of knowledge helps to solve this problem while also shedding some light on what is special about social learning.

In Probabilistic Knowledge Sarah Moss proposes that our credences and subjective probability judgments (SPJs) can constitute knowledge. Mossean probabilistic knowledge is grounded in probabilistic beliefs that are justified, true, and unGettiered. In this paper I aim to address and solve two challenges that arise in the vicinity of the factivity condition for probabilistic knowledge: the factivity challenge and the challenge from probabilistic arguments from ignorance (probabilistic AIs). I argue that while Moss's deflationary solution to the (...) factivity challenge formally works, it leaves us ill-equipped to handle probabilistic AIs. An account of probabilistic knowledge that cannot overcome probabilistic AIs makes knowledge of thoroughly probabilistic contents a rare and unstable phenomenon, at best, or, at worst, impossible. I hold that establishing a metaphysically enriched account of probabilistic truth is therefore mandatory. I go on to develop a truth-conditional approach on probabilistic factivity that is relativistic in its nature and centers on objective chances. I show that while the approach is still compatible with Moss's overall semantics for probabilistic knowledge, it provides us with a simple but forceful answer to probabilistic AIs. (shrink)

This paper argues that two widely accepted principles about the indicative conditional jointly presuppose the falsity of one of the most prominent arguments against epistemological iteration principles. The first principle about the indicative conditional, which has close ties both to the Ramsey test and the “or‐to‐if” inference, says that knowing a material conditional suffices for knowing the corresponding indicative. The second principle says that conditional contradictions cannot be true when their antecedents are epistemically possible. Taken together, these principles entail (...) that it is impossible to be in a certain kind of epistemic state: namely, a state of ignorance about which of two partially overlapping bodies of knowledge corresponds to one's actual one. However, some of the more popular “margin for error” style arguments against epistemological iteration principles suggest that such states are not only possible, but commonplace. I argue that the tension between these views runs deep, arising just as much for non‐factive attitudes like belief, presupposition, and certainty. I also argue that this is worse news for those who accept the principles about the indicative conditional than it is for those who reject epistemological iteration principles. (shrink)

In the contemporary epistemological literature, ignorance is normally understood as the absence of an epistemic standing, usually either knowledge or true belief. It is argued here that this way of thinking about ignorance misses a crucial ingredient, which is the normative aspect of ignorance. In particular, to be ignorant is not merely to lack the target epistemic standing, but also entails that this is an epistemic standing that one ought to have. I explore the motivations for this claim, (...) and show how it can help us make sense of a range of cases concerning ignorance that the conventional, non-normative, accounts of ignorance struggle with. I also use this normative conception of ignorance to help elucidate the specific kind of epistemic standing the lack of which is entailed by ignorance. (shrink)

What is knowledge? I this paper I defend the claim that knowledge is justified true belief by arguing that, contrary to common belief, Gettier cases do not refute it. My defence will be of the anti-luck kind: I will argue that (1) Gettier cases necessarily involve veritic luck, and (2) that a plausible version of reliabilism excludes veritic luck. There is thus a prominent and plausible account of justification according to which Gettier cases do not feature justified (...) beliefs, and therefore, do not present counterexamples to the tripartite analysis. I defend the account of justification against objections, and contrast my defence of the tripartite analysis to similar ones from the literature. I close by considering some implications of this way of thinking about justification and knowledge. (shrink)

What is knowledge? I this paper I defend the claim that knowledge is justified true belief by arguing that, contrary to common belief, Gettier cases do not refute it. My defence will be of the anti-luck kind: I will argue that (1) Gettier cases necessarily involve veritic luck, and (2) that a plausible version of reliabilism excludes veritic luck. There is thus a prominent and plausible account of justification according to which Gettier cases do not feature justified (...) beliefs, and therefore, do not present counterexamples to the tripartite analysis. I defend the account of justification against objections, and contrast my defence of the tripartite analysis to similar ones from the literature. I close by considering some implications of this way of thinking about justification and knowledge. (shrink)

Many epistemologists have recently defended views on which all evidence is true or perceptual reasons are facts. On such views a common account of basic perceptual reasons is that the fact that one sees that p is one’s reason for believing that p. I argue that that account is wrong; rather, in the basic case the fact that p itself is one’s reason for believing that p. I show that my proposal is better motivated, solves a fundamental objection that (...) the received view faces, and illuminates the nature of reasons for belief. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Drawing inspiration from Fred Dretske, L. S. Carrier, John A. Barker, and Robert Nozick, we develop a tracking analysis of knowing according to which a true belief constitutes knowledge if and only if it is based on reasons that are sensitive to the fact that makes it true, that is, reasons that wouldn’t obtain if the belief weren’t true. We show that our sensitivity analysis handles numerous Gettier-type cases and lottery problems, blocks pathways leading to (...) skepticism, and validates the epistemic closure thesis that correct inferences from known premises yield knowledge of the conclusions. We discuss the plausible views of Ted Warfield and Branden Fitelson regarding cases of knowledge acquired via inference from false premises, and we show how our sensitivity analysis can account for such cases. We present arguments designed to discredit putative counterexamples to sensitivity analyses recently proffered by Tristan Haze, John Williams and Neil Sinhababu, which involve true statements made by untrustworthy informants and strange clocks that sometimes display the correct time while running backwards. Finally, we show that in virtue of employing the paradox-free subjunctive conditionals codified by Relevance Logic theorists instead of the paradox-laden subjunctive conditionals codified by Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in publications about the epistemology of ignorance. In this article, I examine the proliferation of the concept ignorance that has come with the increased interest in the topic. I identify three conceptions of ignorance in the current literature: (1) ignorance as lack of knowledge/true belief, (2) ignorance as actively upheld false outlooks and (3) ignorance as substantive epistemic practice. These different conceptions of ignorance are as of yet unacknowledged but are bound to (...) impede epistemology of ignorance and, therefore, need to be uncovered. After discussing three unsuccessful ways of dealing with these varying conceptions, I put forward an integrated conception of ignorance that is more adequate for serving as the foundation of epistemology of ignorance. Introducing an alternative conception of ignorance provides us with a foundation for both epistemological and more broadly philosophical work on ignorance. (shrink)