Defining Knowledge, Misc

Adrian Heathcote has proposed a truth-making account of knowledge that combines traditional conditions of justified true belief with the truth-making condition, which would jointly provide us with the sufficient condition of knowledge, and this truth-maker account of knowledge in turn explains why a gettiered justified true belief fails to be regarded as a genuine instance of knowledge. In this paper, by the comparison of two different casual models that are illustrated by the thermometer and the clock respectively, however, it will (...) be argued that Heathcote’s truth-making account of knowledge fails to cope with the Gettier case of the stopped clock and therefore is called for some further remedy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Given the complexity of the Cosmos, and of the contingent observer, it is axiomatic that the obverse of the law of identity includes a complex reverse: a thing not only is only what it is, it also is not all those things which it is not. But, given the possible combinations of knowledge and ignorance regarding a given topic, any number of various conflations of the two sides of this axiom is possible regarding that topic. Further, given the extent (...) of ignorance possible regarding a topic, the extent of this conflation can be so deep that a person may have a virtually unlimited body of 'logic' upon which to seem to confirm the sense that a favored position is sound. Moreover, given the demands and rewards of the practical epistemological algorithms in which we continually are engaged, much of the a priori knowledge on which such algorithms are based is obscured. As one of the most a priori conceptions, omnipotence, divine or otherwise, is especially opaque. Abraham Lincoln said if you want to test a person’s character, you can’t do so simply by making him suffer, but by giving him power. Logic is a power to know or prove things; but, what a person is in the habit of most valuing informs all his logic. Divine omnipotence is defined as essentially primary, creative, and immediately coherent. But, a more-or-less pressing concern for cognitive efficiency, combined with a psychologically adversarial response to a world of disharmony and progressive entropy, impels us to re-conceptualize omnipotence in terms of a notion which, by being logically indifferent to the relations of effects to their causes, is 'epistemologically adverse' to any positive concept of power. (shrink)

We propose that, for the purpose of studying theoretical properties of the knowledge of an agent with Artificial General Intelligence (that is, the knowledge of an AGI), a pragmatic way to define such an agent’s knowledge (restricted to the language of Epistemic Arithmetic, or EA) is as follows. We declare an AGI to know an EA-statement φ if and only if that AGI would include φ in the resulting enumeration if that AGI were commanded: “Enumerate all the EA-sentences which you (...) know.” This definition is non-circular because an AGI, being capable of practical English communication, is capable of understanding the everyday English word “know” independently of how any philosopher formally defines knowledge; we elaborate further on the non-circularity of this circular-looking definition. This elegantly solves the problem that different AGIs may have different internal knowledge definitions and yet we want to study knowledge of AGIs in general, without having to study different AGIs separately just because they have separate internal knowledge definitions. Finally, we suggest how this definition of AGI knowledge can be used as a bridge which could allow the AGI research community to import certain abstract results about mechanical knowing agents from mathematical logic. (shrink)

Modalists think that knowledge requires forming your belief in a “modally stable” way: using a method that wouldn't easily go wrong (i.e. safety), or using a method that wouldn't have given you this belief had it been false (i.e. sensitivity). Recent Modalist projects from Justin Clarke-Doane and Dan Baras defend a principle they call “Modal Security,” roughly: if evidence undermines your belief, then it must give you a reason to doubt the safety or sensitivity of your belief. Another recent Modalist (...) project from Carlotta Pavese and Bob Beddor defends “Modal Virtue Epistemology”: knowledge is a belief that is maximally modally robust across “normal” worlds. We'll offer new objections to these recent Modalist projects. We will then argue for a rival view, Explanationism: knowing something is believing it because it's true. We will show how Explanationism offers a better account of undermining defeaters than Modalism, and a better account of knowledge. (shrink)

This essay explores a problem for Nyāya epistemologists. It concerns the notion of pramā. Roughly speaking, a pramā is a conscious mental event of knowledge-acquisition, i.e., a conscious experience or thought in undergoing which an agent learns or comes to know something. Call any event of this sort a knowledge-event. The problem is this. On the one hand, many Naiyāyikas accept what I will call the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge, the view that a conscious experience or thought is a knowledge-event (...) just in case it is true and non-recollective. On the other hand, they are also committed to what I shall call Nyāya Infallibilism, the thesis that every knowledge-event is produced by causes that couldn’t have given rise to an error. These two commitments seem to conflict with each other in cases of epistemic luck, i.e., cases where an agent arrives a true judgement accidentally or as a matter of luck. While the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge seems to predict that these judgements are knowledge-events, Nyāya Infallibilism seems to entail that they aren’t. In this essay, I show that Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya, the 14th century Naiyāyika, solves this problem by adopting what I call epistemic localism, the view that upstream causal factors play no epistemically significant role in the production of knowledge. (shrink)

Belief-state ascription — determining what someone “knew,” “believed,” was “aware of,” etc. — is central to many areas of law. In criminal law, the distinction between knowledge and recklessness, and the use of broad jury instructions concerning other belief states, presupposes a common and stable understanding of what those belief-state terms mean. But a wealth of empirical work at the intersection of philosophy and psychology — falling under the banner of “Experimental Epistemology” — reveals how laypeople’s understandings of mens rea (...) concepts differ systematically from what scholars, courts, and perhaps legislators, have assumed. -/- As implemented, mens rea concepts are much more context-dependent and normatively evaluative than the conventional wisdom suggests, even assuming that jurors are following jury instructions to the letter. As a result, there is less difference between knowledge and recklessness than is typically assumed; jurors consistently “over”-ascribe knowledge to criminal defendants; and concepts like “belief,” “awareness,” and “conscious disregard” mean different things in different contexts, resulting in mens rea findings systematically responsive to aspects of the case traditionally considered irrelevant to the meaning of those terms. -/- This Article provides the first systematic account of the factors driving jurors’ ascriptions of the specific belief states criminal law invokes. After surveying mens rea jury instructions, introducing the Experimental Epistemology literature to the legal literature on mens rea, and examining the implications of that literature for criminal law, this Article considers ways to begin bridging the surprisingly large gap between mens rea theory and practice. (shrink)

A standard view in philosophy is that knowledge entails justification. Yet recent research suggests otherwise. We argue that this admirable and striking research suffers from an important limitation: participants were asked about knowledge but not justification. Thus it is possible that people attributed knowledge partly because they thought the belief was justified. Perhaps though, if given the opportunity, people would deny justification while still attributing knowledge. It is also possible that earlier findings were due to perspective taking. This paper reports (...) further research that directly addresses these questions. Our findings support the hypothesis that knowledge entails justification on the ordinary view. (shrink)

Whether some condition is equivalent to a conjunction of some (sub-) conditions has been a major issue in analytic philosophy. Examples include: knowledge, acting freely, causation, and justice. Philosophers have striven to offer analyses of these, and other concepts, by showing them equivalent to such a conjunction. Timothy Williamson offers a number of arguments for the idea that knowledge is ‘prime’, hence not equivalent to or composed by some such conjunction. I focus on one of his arguments: the requirement that (...) such conjuncts must be freely recombinable. Although there has been a great deal of discussion of Williamson’s arguments, the flaw I describe has gone unnoticed. Williamson’s argument is expressed in terms of conditions, and cases of the condition. Does the condition include specific information, or is the specific information only part of the case? His argument equivocates between more and less general specifications of the conditions. Once this distinction is clarified, his argument can be seen to be vitiated by this conflation. Neither option yields a sound argument for Williamson’s desired conclusion. (shrink)

The generality problem is one of the most pressing challenges for reliabilism. The problem begins with this question: of all the process types exemplified by a given process token, which types are the relevant ones for determining whether the resultant belief counts as knowledge? As philosophers like Earl Conee and Richard Feldman have argued, extant responses to the generality problem have failed, and it looks as if no solution is forthcoming. In this paper, I present a new response to the (...) generality problem that illuminates the nature of knowledge-enabling reliability. My response builds upon the insights of Juan Comesaña’s well-founded solution to the generality problem, according to which relevant types are content–evidence pairs, i.e., descriptions of both the target belief’s content and the evidence on which the belief was based. While most responses to the generality problem, including Comesaña’s, only posit one relevant type for any given process token, I argue that knowledge-enabling reliability requires a process token to be reliable with respect to multiple content–evidence pairs, each with varying degrees of descriptive specificity. I call this solution multi-type evidential reliabilism. After offering a clear formulation of MTE, I conclude by arguing that MTE is sufficiently informative to rebut Conee and Feldman’s generality problem objection to a reliability condition on knowledge. (shrink)

Approximation involves representing things in ways that might be close to the truth but are nevertheless false. Given the widespread reliance on approximations in science and everyday life, here we ask whether it is conceptually possible for false approximations to qualify as knowledge. According to the factivity account, it is impossible to know false approximations, because knowledge requires truth. According to the representational adequacy account, it is possible to know false approximations, if they are close enough to the truth for (...) present purposes. In this paper, we adopt an experimental methodology to begin testing these two theories. When an agent provides a false and practically inadequate answer, both theories predict that people will deny knowledge. But the theories disagree about an agent who provides a false but practically adequate answer: the factivity hypothesis again predicts knowledge denial, whereas the representational adequacy hypothesis predicts knowledge attribution. Across two experiments, our principal finding was that people tended to attribute knowledge for false but practically adequate answers, which supports the representational adequacy account. We propose an interpretation of existing findings that preserves a conceptual link between knowledge and truth. According to this proposal, truth is not necessary for knowledge, but it is a feature of prototypical knowledge. (shrink)

It is widely accepted in epistemology that knowledge is factive, meaning that only truths can be known. We argue that this theory creates a skeptical challenge: because many of our beliefs are only approximately true, and therefore false, they do not count as knowledge. We consider several responses to this challenge and propose a new one. We propose easing the truth requirement on knowledge to allow approximately true, practically adequate representations to count as knowledge. In addition to addressing the skeptical (...) challenge, this view also coheres with several previous theoretical proposals in epistemology. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of how virtue epistemology can accommodate knowledge acquired through testimony and extended cognition. Section 1 articulates the characteristic claim of virtue epistemology, and introduces the issues discussed in the paper. Section 2 details a related pair of objections to VE: that it is unable to accommodate cases of knowledge through testimony and extended cognition. Section 3 reviews two different virtue epistemologies and their responses to these objections presented in Greco :1–26, 2012). Considerations are presented for (...) why both of these accounts and responses are inadequate. Because of this, I suggest that it is unlikely that an analysis of the attribution relation will provide an adequate response to the objections. Section 4 advocates for a revised VE and a different way of dealing with the objections, which accommodates how agents are sometimes epistemically dependent on external sources. The central claim, for which a novel argument is presented, is that in some cases of knowledge the success is attributable to the abilities of an information system of which the knower is a part. This requires an important revision to traditional VE, but the characteristic claim of VE still holds true–every instance of knowledge is an instance of success attributable to ability. Thus, VE’s solutions to problems concerning the nature and value of knowledge are secured. (shrink)

Here is a definition of knowledge: for you to know a proposition p is for you to have an outright belief in p that is correct precisely because it manifests the virtue of rationality. This definition resembles Ernest Sosa’s “virtue theory”, except that on this definition, the only virtue that must be manifested in all instances of knowledge is rationality, and no reductive account of rationality is attempted—rationality is assumed to be an irreducibly normative notion. This definition is compatible with (...) “internalism” about rationality, and with a form of “pragmatic encroachment” on the conditions of rational outright belief. An interpretation is given of this definition, and especially of the sense of ’because’ that it involves. On this interpretation, this definition entails that both safety and adherence are necessary conditions on knowledge; it supports a kind of contextualism about terms like ‘knowledge’; and it provides resources to defend safety, adherence, and contextualism, against some recent objections. (shrink)

Modal epistemic conditions have played an important role in post-Gettier theories of knowledge. These conditions purportedly eliminate the pernicious kind of luck present in all Gettier-type cases and offer a rather convincing way of refuting skepticism. This motivates the view that conditions of this sort are necessary for knowledge. I argue against this. I claim that modal conditions, particularly sensitivity and safety, are not necessary for knowledge. I do this by noting that the problem cases for both conditions point to (...) a problem that cannot be fixed even by a revised similarity ranking or ordering of worlds. I offer as groundwork a set theoretical analysis of the profiles of the problem cases for safety and sensitivity. I then demonstrate that these conditions fail whenever necessary links constitutive of the epistemic situation actually obtain but are not modally preserved. (shrink)

This is a reply to Howard Sankey’s comment (“Factivity or Grounds? Comment on Mizrahi”) on my paper, “You Can’t Handle the Truth: Knowledge = Epistemic Certainty,” in which I present an argument from the factivity of knowledge for the conclusion that knowledge is epistemic certainty. While Sankey is right that factivity does not entail epistemic certainty, the factivity of knowledge does entail that knowledge is epistemic certainty.

Epistemology for the Rest of the World. Edited by Mizumoto Masaharu, Stich Stephen, McCready Eric.

I argue that S knows that p implies that S is properly committed to the truth of p, not that S believes that p. Belief is not required for knowledge because it is possible that one could know that there are no beliefs. Being ‘properly committed’ to the truth of a proposition is a matter of having a certain normative status, not occupying a particular psychological state. After arguing that knowledge requires commitment instead of belief, I go on to demonstrate (...) the theoretical utility of this hypothesis. (shrink)

Virtue epistemologists define knowledge as true belief produced by intellectual virtue. In this paper, I review how this definition fails in three important ways. First, it fails as an account of the ordinary knowledge concept, because neither belief nor reliability is essential to knowledge ordinarily understood. Second, it fails as an account of the knowledge relation itself, insofar as that relation is operationalized in the scientific study of cognition. Third, it serves no prescriptive purpose identified up till now. An alternative (...) theory, abilism, provides a superior account of knowledge as it is ordinarily and scientifically understood. According to abilism, knowledge is an accurate representation produced by cognitive ability. (shrink)

It is often claimed that Plato’s definition of knowledge as “true opinion with an account” is in agreement with the contemporary analysis of knowledge as “justified true belief”. Some scholars disagree with the attribution of JTB to Plato. I analyze three influential arguments against the assumption of Plato’s agreement with JTB, and refute them. Then I provide my own argument against the assumption. I argue that the contemporary interpretation of the JTB formula understands “belief” not in the sense of an (...) “opinion,” but rather of a “degree of confidence.” Accordingly, “justification” is understood not as applying to the opinion itself, but rather to the person having a certain degree of confidence. I support this claim by showing the difference between the traditional and the contemporary understanding of “evidence,” the former referring to a property of the proposition, while the latter meaning the body of reasons, which supports the person’s confidence to a certain degree. Thus, I conclude that Plato understands knowledge as “correct opinion validated by a rational explanation,” and it has very little in common with the contemporary understanding of knowledge as “sufficiently supported subjective degree of confidence in the truth of a proposition.”. (shrink)

During the last decades, knowledge has attracted the greatest attention in a growing number of disciplines, generating a deluge of literature. However, it has yet to become the object of a fully established sociology of knowledge able to fulfil the challenges of present society, often called the knowledge-society. We posit knowledge as a basis on which to model social life, proposing a three-dimensional approach to social reality (i.e., individuals, social aggregates, knowledge). Looking at knowledge as at ‘a cooperative good’ and (...) a communicative process, we then apply the same three dimensions to knowledge itself as a sociological production, ending up with a typology encompassing three knowledge families (intellectual, practical and objectified) and three ways of access (direct personal knowing, indirect social acquaintance, externally recognised and personally introjected acknowledge). Steps towards a theory of knowledge-society are then proposed. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek an account of the nature of epistemic intuition. Given the resources of Dual-Process Theory in Psychology, I argue that the intuitions of elite epistemologists, such as Fred Dretske, are not a priori, pre-theoretic, insights. Instead, they are a posteriori insights into the phenomena of knowledge, not the concept of knowledge. Dretske intuitions are technical, modal intuitions about hypothetical counterfactual cases using System II reflections. Such intuitions depended on thinking about the implications of laws of nature (...) in particular circumstances and were used to defend Dretske’s reliable indicator account of knowledge. That account suggested that one must have conclusive reasons when one has empirical knowledge that P. (shrink)

I begin by criticizing reductionist knowledge-first epistemology according to which knowledge can be used to reductively analyze other epistemic phenomena. My central concern is that proponents of such an approach commit a similar mistake to the one that they charge their opponents with. This is the mistake of seeking to reductively analyze basic epistemic phenomena in terms of other allegedly more fundamental phenomena. I then turn to non-reductionist brands of knowledge-first epistemology. Specifically, I consider the knowledge norms of assertion and (...) contrast them with an alternative that I have developed elsewhere (Gerken 2011, 2012a, 2013b, 2014, 2015a, 2015c, MS). On the basis of the critical discussion, I question whether a knowledge-first program that is both plausible and distinctive has been identified. On a more positive note, I sketch the contours of an alternative that I label ‘equilibristic epistemology.’ According to this approach, there isn’t a single epistemic phenomenon or concept that is “first.” Rather, there are a number of basic epistemic phenomena that are not reductively analyzable although they may be co-elucidated in a non-reductive manner. This approach preserves some grains of truth in knowledge-first epistemology. For example, it preserves the idea that knowledge can be taken to be explanatorily basic and unanalyzable. However, since no single epistemic phenomenon is first, knowledge is not first. (shrink)

In this paper I will offer a comprehensive defense of the safety account of knowledge against counterexamples that have been recently put forward. In Sect. 2, I will discuss different versions of safety, arguing that a specific variant of method-relativized safety is the most plausible. I will then use this specific version of safety to respond to counterexamples in the recent literature. In Sect. 3, I will address alleged examples of safe beliefs that still constitute Gettier cases. In Sect. 4, (...) I will discuss alleged examples of unsafe knowledge. In Sect. 5, I will address alleged cases of safe belief that do not constitute knowledge for non-Gettier reasons. My overall goal is to show that there are no successful counterexamples to robust anti-luck epistemology and to highlight some major presuppositions of my reply. (shrink)

У статті проаналізовано категорію дикості в поезії Олега Лишеги. Екокритична категорія дикості – як протилежність до цивілізованого, обжитого, людського – дає змогу окреслити основні ознаки лісу у поезії Лишеги як дикого, непередбачуваного, тваринного, магічного простору. Близька взаємодія суб’єкта лірики із лісовим ландшафтом створює глибшу ідентичність дикого лісу, який, отримавши голос, промовляє у тексті. Надзвичайно важливим для поета є збереження неприрученості, гармонійне співіснування світу природи і світу людей.

Evidentialism has shown itself to be an important research program in contemporary epistemology, with evidentialists giving theories of virtually every important topic in epistemology. Nevertheless, at the heart of evidentialism is a handful of concepts, namely evidence, evidence possession, and evidential fit. If evidentialists cannot give us a plausible account of these concepts, then their research program, with all its various theories, will be in serious trouble. In this paper, I argue that evidentialists has yet to give a plausible account (...) of evidence possession and the prospects for doing so are dim. (shrink)

In his book Knowledge and Practical Interests Jason Stanley offers an argument for the conclusion that it is quite unlikely that an ambiguity theory of ‘knows’ can be “linguistically grounded”. His argument rests on two important assumptions: that linguistic grounding of ambiguity requires evidence of the purported different senses of a word being represented by different words in other languages and that such evidence is lacking in the case of ‘knows’. In this paper, I challenge the conclusion that there isn’t (...) a linguistic grounding for an ambiguity theory of ‘knows’ by making cases against both of Stanley’s major assumptions. I will do this by making a case for a prime facie linguistic grounding for a polysemy theory of ‘knows’ without appealing to word use in other languages. Given that a polysemy theory of ‘knows’ is a type of ambiguity theory of ‘knows’, if I succeed in linguistically grounding a polysemy theory of ‘knows’, then I have shown that at least one type of ambiguity theory of ‘knows’ can be linguistically grounded. (shrink)

The ambiguity theory of ‘knows’ is the view that ‘knows’ and its cognates have more than one propositional sense – i.e. more than one sense that can properly be used in ‘knows that’ etc. constructions. Given that most of us are ‘intuitive invariantists’ – i.e. most of us initially have the intuition that ‘knows’ is univocal – defenders of the ambiguity theory need to offer an explanation for the semantic blindness present if ‘knows’ is in fact ambiguous. This paper is (...) an attempt to offer such an explanation. Section 1 contains a general argument for the ubiquity of semantic blindness for ambiguous words; the upshot being that semantic blindness for the ambiguity of ‘knows’ is thus unsurprising. Section 2 offers more specific arguments for why ‘knows’ is the type of ambiguous word that we’re very unlikely to quickly recognize is ambiguous. (shrink)

This paper is an extended prolepsis in favor of epistemic situationism, the thesis that epistemic virtues are not sufficiently widely distributed for a virtue-theoretic constraint on knowledge to apply without leading to skepticism. It deals with four objections to epistemic situation: 1) that virtuous dispositions are not required for knowledge, 2) that the Big Five or Big Six personality model proves that intellectual virtues are a reasonable ideal, 3) that the cognitive-affective personality system framework proves that intellectual virtues are a (...) reasonable ideal, and 4) that weakening the reliability requirement through epistemic dependence or abilism means that common inferential strategies really are virtues. The paper concludes with reflections on the replication crisis in psychological science. (shrink)

The overall goal of this paper is to apply Hintikka’s Socratic Epistemology to Gettier’s counterexamples to the tripartite definition of knowledge as justified true belief. In the process, I will make full use of Socratic Epistemology’s methodology and commitments. This includes, among other things, looking at Gettier’s counterexamples as games between an Inquirer and Nature (the source of information), as well as treating the items in them as pieces of information. The strategy that I employ in this paper also makes (...) use of frames (or partitions). One of the important results of this paper is a scenario where Gettier cannot setup the dilemma for the tripartite definition of knowledge. (shrink)

The 'Gettier Problem' has been central to epistemology since 1963, when Edmund Gettier presented a powerful challenge to the standard analysis of knowledge. Now twenty-six leading philosophers examine the issues that arise from Gettier's challenge, setting the agenda for future work on the central problem of epistemology.

Anti-intellectualists about knowledge-how insist that, when an agent S knows how to φ, it is in virtue of some ability, rather than in virtue of any propositional attitudes, S has. Recently, a popular strategy for attacking the anti-intellectualist position proceeds by appealing to cases where an agent is claimed to possess a reliable ability to φ while nonetheless intuitively lacking knowledge-how to φ. John Bengson & Marc Moffett (2009; 2011a; 2011b) and Carlotta Pavese (2015a; 2015b) have embraced precisely this strategy (...) and have thus claimed, for different reasons, that anti-intellectualism is defective on the grounds that possessing the ability to φ is not sufficient for knowing how to φ. We investigate this strategy of argument-by-counterexample to the anti- intellectualist’s sufficiency thesis and show that, at the end of the day, anti-intellectualism remains unscathed. (shrink)

In “Beat the (Backward) Clock,” we argued that John Williams and Neil Sinhababu’s Backward Clock Case fails to be a counterexample to Robert Nozick’s or Fred Dretske’s Theories of Knowledge. Williams’ reply to our paper, “There’s Nothing to Beat a Backward Clock: A Rejoinder to Adams, Barker and Clarke,” is a further attempt to defend their counterexample against a range of objections. In this paper, we argue that, despite the number and length of footnotes, Williams is still wrong.

Our curiosity has us interested in finding out the truth. Knowing the fact of the matter fulfills the interest. This fulfillment is something satisfying about knowledge. Additionally, knowledge is a good way for a person to relate to a proposition. Knowing is good because of what knowledge is. In other words, knowledge is intrinsically good. The credibility of these assessments calls for some explanation. A traditional view is that knowledge is justified true belief with no Gettier accidents. This conception is (...) particularly helpful in accounting for the assessments of knowledge. Features of the relation of a mind to a known proposition that are articulated in the traditional view make the relation satisfying and attractive. What is explicit in the traditional view renders these assets of knowledge readily understandable. The view explains the assets better than do alternative conceptions of knowledge. (shrink)

El término “conocimiento” y la disciplina filosófica que lo estudia —la teoría del conocimiento— han experimentado notables cambios hasta el presente. La teoría clásica concibe el conocimiento en íntima unión con la verdad, como una captación intelectual de realidades necesarias e inmutables. Con la llegada de la modernidad, la difusión de un clima escéptico puso en duda esta pretensión, cuestionando la aptitud misma del conocimiento para la verdad. Esta duda ha presidido toda la modernidad hasta el presente. Para responder al (...) desafío escéptico, las principales corrientes de la llamada epistemología analítica contemporánea han intentado, sin éxito, explorar el carácter justificante del conocimiento. En este intento, han destacado teorías encaminadas a mostrar que el conocimiento recibe su justificación desde un fundamento, como el fundacionismo y el coherentismo; teorías encaminadas a mostrar que el conocimiento recibe su justificación desde sus fuentes, como el externismo y el internismo; y teorías encaminadas a mostrar que la recibe por las facultades cognitivas mismas como instrumentos de conocimiento fiables, como la epistemología de la virtud. Todas ellas generan, a su vez, nuevas paradojas e imponen la necesidad de volver a los fundamentos de esta disciplina, presentes en la teoría clásica, para descubrir la conexión entre conocimiento y verdad, e intentar detener el desafío escéptico. (shrink)

I present an argument for a sophisticated version of sceptical invariantism that has so far gone unnoticed: Bifurcated Sceptical Invariantism (BSI). I argue that it can, on the one hand, (dis)solve the Gettier problem, address the dogmatism paradox and, on the other hand, show some due respect to the Moorean methodological incentive of ‘saving epistemic appearances’. A fortiori, BSI promises to reap some other important explanatory fruit that I go on to adduce (e.g. account for concessive knowledge attributions). BSI can (...) achieve this much because it distinguishes between two distinct but closely interrelated (sub)concepts of (propositional) knowledge, fallible-but-safe knowledge and infallible-and-sensitive knowledge, and explains how the pragmatics and the semantics of knowledge discourse operate at the interface of these two (sub)concepts of knowledge. I conclude that BSI is a novel theory of knowledge discourse that merits serious investigation. (shrink)

The knowledge-first solution to the New Evil Demon Problem (NEDP) goes hand in hand with a particular conception of the normativity of justification, one according to which a justified belief is one that satisfies some sort of ought or should (Williamson forthcoming). This claim is incompatible with another, well accepted, view that regards the normativity of justification. According to this established view, a justified belief is rather something that is neither obligatory, nor forbidden (see e.g. Alston 1989, 1993, 2006; Ginet (...) 1975). The purpose of this contribution is to settle the debate between these two irreconcilable conceptions of the normativity of justification. The main upshot is that the knowledge-first conception of the normativity of justification, the one on which the knowledge-first solution to the NEDP relies, seems in fact superior. (shrink)

I show that accepting Moss’s claim that features of a rational agent’s credence function can constitute knowledge, together with the claim that a rational agent should only act on the basis of reasons that he knows, predicts and explains evidential decision theory’s failure to recommend the right choice for the Newcomb problem. The Newcomb problem can be seen, in light of Moss’s suggestion, as a manifestation of a Gettier case in the domain of choice. This serves as strong evidence for (...) both Moss’s claim and the knowledge-based action approach. (shrink)

The main examples of pragmatic encroachment presented by Jason Stanley involve the idea that knowledge ascription occurs more readily in cases where stakes are low rather than high. This is the stakes hypothesis. In this paper an example is presented showing that in some cases knowledge ascription is more readily appropriate where stakes are high rather than low.

The generality problem is commonly seen as one of the most pressing issues for process reliabilism. The generality problem starts with the following question: of all the process types exemplified by a given process token, which type is the relevant one for measuring reliability? Defenders of the generality problem claim that process reliabilists have a burden to produce an informative account of process type relevance. As they argue, without such a successful account, the reasonability of process reliabilism is significantly undermined. (...) One way for the reliabilist to respond is to attempt to construct such a theory of type relevance. But another way of responding is to argue that, if finding an account of type relevance is a burden for the reliabilist, then it is also a burden for everyone else. Thus, the generality problem doesn’t present some unique reason to reject process reliabilism. I call this latter strategy a parrying response. In this essay, I examine the contemporary parrying responses of Michael Bishop and Juan Comesaña, which have both faced recent criticism. I respond to these critics, and argue that parrying responses are far stronger than defenders of the generality problem have appreciated. (shrink)

It has been objected recently that naïve realism is inconsistent with an empirically well-supported hypothesis that unconscious perception is possible. Because epistemological disjunctivism is plausible only in conjunction with naïve realism (for a reason I provide), the objection reaches it too. In response, I show that the unconscious perception hypothesis can be changed from a problem into an advantage of epistemological disjunctivism. I do this by suggesting that: (i) naïve realism is consistent with the hypothesis; (ii) the contrast between epistemological (...) disjunctivism and epistemic externalism explains the difference in epistemic import between conscious and unconscious perception. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Tristan Haze offers two examples that, he claims, are counterexamples to Nozick's Theory of Knowledge. Haze claims his examples work against Nozick's theory understood as relativized to belief forming methods M. We believe that they fail to be counterexamples to Nozick's theory. Since he aims the examples at tracking theories generally, we will also explain why they are not counterexamples to Dretske's Conclusive Reasons Theory of Knowledge.

Peter Baumann develops and defends a distinctive version of epistemic contextualism, the view that the truth conditions or the meaning of knowledge attributions of the form "S knows that p" can vary with the context of the attributor. The first part of the book examines arguments for contextualism and develops Baumann's version. It begins by dealing with the argument from cases and ordinary usage, and then addresses "theoretical" arguments, from reliability and from luck. The second part of the book discusses (...) the problems contextualism faces, to which it must respond, and provides an extension of contextualism beyond epistemology. The third part of the book is focused on some major objections to contextualism and alternative views, namely subject-sensitive invariantism, contrastivism and relativism. (shrink)

A central topic in experimental epistemology has been the ways that non-epistemic evaluations of an agent’s actions can affect whether the agent is taken to have certain kinds of knowledge. Several scholars have found that the positive or negative valence of an action can influence attributions of knowledge to the agent. These evaluative effects on knowledge attributions are commonly seen as performance errors, failing to reflect individuals’ genuine conceptual competence with knows. In the present article, I report the results of (...) a series of studies designed to test the leading version of this view, which appeals to the allegedly distorting influence of individuals’ motivation to blame. I argue that the data pose significant challenges to such a view. (shrink)

John N. Williams argued that Peter Klein's defeasibility theory of knowledge excludes the possibility of one knowing that one has a posteriori knowledge. He does that by way of adding a new twist to an objection Klein himself answered more than forty years ago. In this paper I argue that Williams' objection misses its target because of this new twist.

Anti-luck epistemologists tell us that knowledge is incompatible with epistemic luck and that epistemic luck is just a special case of luck in general. Much work has been done on the intricacies of the first claim. In this paper, I scrutinize the second claim. I argue that it does not survive scrutiny. I then offer an analysis of luck that explains the relevant data and avoids the problems from which the current views of luck suffer. However, this analysis of luck (...) is of no help to the anti-luck epistemologist for it uses knowledge to explain luck, making this account of knowledge circular. The main lesson is that the only viable analysis of luck is not suited for the anti-luck epistemologist's coveted noncircular analysis of knowledge. (shrink)