This paper critically explores Timothy Williamson’s view of evidence, and it does so in light of the problem of epistemic luck. Williamson’s view of evidence is, of course, a crucially important aspect of his novel and influential “knowledge-first” epistemological project. Notoriously, one crucial thesis of this project is that one’s evidence is equivalent to what one knows. This has come to be known as the E = K thesis. This paper specifically addresses Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology and the E = K (...) thesis in the context of anti-luck epistemology and the idea that knowledge is factive. Williamson’s views on these matters are worth investigating in some detail because he subscribes to a well-worked out anti-luck view of knowledge that incorporates what is perhaps the most common anti-luck condition. But this paper is also of more general importance because the critique of Williamson’s views on these matters reveals some important things about the nature of evidence and evidence is one of the most fundamental concepts in epistemology. (shrink)

This is an editorial introduction to a special issue of Acta Analytica on epistemic luck.

Deliberation about what to do in any context requires reasoning about what will or would happen in various alternative situations, including situations that the agent knows will never in fact be realized. In contexts that involve two or more agents who have to take account of each others' deliberation, the counterfactual reasoning may become quite complex. When I deliberate, I have to consider not only what the causal effects would be of alternative choices that I might make, but also what (...) other agents might believe about the potential effects of my choices, and how their alternative possible actions might affect my beliefs. Counterfactual possibilities are implicit in the models that game theorists and decision theorists have developed – in the alternative branches in the trees that model extensive form games and the different cells of the matrices of strategic form representations – but much of the reasoning about those possibilities remains in the informal commentary on and motivation for the models developed. Puzzlement is sometimes expressed by game theorists about the relevance of what happens in a game ‘off the equilibrium path’: of what would happen if what is both true and known by the players to be true were instead false. (shrink)

En la epistemología moderna, el falibilismo es una vía media entre el dogmatismo y el escepticismo. Su origen histórico se encuentra en una rama de la antigua escuela del escepticismo académico. Ya que la diferencia entre las formas fuerte y débil del falibilismo, así como la distinción entre probabilidad epistémica y verosimilitud, sólo han sido comprendidas en las últimas dos décadas, no podemos esperar encontrar formulaciones claras de dichas doctrinas entre los filósofos griegos y romanos. Pero hemos mostrado que las (...) dos ideas centrales del falibilismo –el grado de certeza y el grado de cercanía a la verdad– están presentes en la tradición escéptica al menos desde los tiempos de Cicerón. (shrink)

According to Williamson, your evidence consists of all and only what you know (E = K). According to his critics, it doesn’t. While E = K calls for revision, the revisions it calls for are minor. E = K gets this much right. Only true propositions can constitute evidence and anything you know non-inferentially is part of your evidence. In this paper, I defend these two theses about evidence and its possession from Williamson’s critics who think we should break more (...) radically from E = K. (shrink)

Antognazza (“The Benefit to Philosophy”, “The Distinction in Kind”), Dutant (“The Legend”), and I (“Knowledge Before Gettier”) have argued for the historical falsity of the claim that, prior to Gettier’s famous counterexamples of sixty years ago, the so-called ‘traditional’ conception of knowledge was the justified true belief (JTB) conception. This note addresses a related historical question that, rather surprisingly, has not yet been addressed in the philosophical literature; to wit: when did this claim first appear in this literature?

The phrase ‘burden of proof’ or ‘onus probandi’ originally referred to something determined by a judge in a legal proceeding. Some claims would be accepted as true by the court, and other relevant claims would require proving. The burden of doing this proving could be assigned to one or another party by the judge. Success or failure to meet this burden could be determined by the judge or the jury, as could consequences of success or failure.

We investigate the discrete (finite) case of the Popper–Renyi theory of conditional probability, introducing discrete conditional probabilistic models for knowledge and conditional belief, and comparing them with the more standard plausibility models. We also consider a related notion, that of safe belief, which is a weak (non-negatively introspective) type of “knowledge”. We develop a probabilistic version of this concept (“degree of safety”) and we analyze its role in games. We completely axiomatize the logic of conditional belief, knowledge and safe belief (...) over conditional probabilistic models. We develop a theory of probabilistic dynamic belief revision, introducing probabilistic “action models” and proposing a notion of probabilistic update product, that comes together with appropriate reduction laws. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that hinge propositions are ways of acting that constitute abilities or skills. My starting point is Moyal-Sharrock's account of hinge propositions. However, Moyal-Sharrock's account leaves gaps to be filled, as it does not offer a unified explanation of the origin of our ungrounded grounds. Her account also lacks resources to respond to the issue of demarcation, since it does not provide a criterion for distinguishing ways of acting that can legitimately fulfill the role of ungrounded (...) grounds from those that cannot. Without an answer to this issue, the relativistic threat is serious. I then propose that by narrowing the ways of acting to those that are constitutive of abilities, we can deal with the relativistic threat. I provide an ecological approach to abilities through which I explain why abilities are reality-soaked and therefore why the ways of acting that constitute them are legitimate ungrounded grounds. Based on that approach, I provide an answer to the issue of demarcation that defuses the relativistic threat. (shrink)

Pričujoči tekst analizira možnost utemeljitve epistemske teorije, ki bo zagotavljala upravičene in upravičljive kriterije za to, kdaj je določeno prepričanje znanje. Izhodišče nam predstavlja Goldmanovo teorijo reliabilnosti, kjer je določeno prepričanje epistemsko upravičeno le, če je dobljeno na osnovi procesov in mehanizmov, ki so zanesljivi. Problem tako zastavljene teorije upravičbe je dejstvo, daje zelo težko določiti, kateri so procesi, ki so zanesljivi. Pri tem je še posebej vprašljivo Goldmanovo zatrjevanje, da so zanesljivi lahko le tipi procesov, da pa posamezni primerki (...) procesov lahko proizvedejo le posamezna prepričanja, ki pa so ali resnična ali neresnična. Nejasnost je predvsem v tem, ker enostavno ne obstaja dovolj zanesljiv proces, mehanizem, ki bi nam vnaprej omogočil ocenjevanje posameznega prepričanja. V tej zvezi ne pomaga niti Goldmanovo razlikovanje med ohlapno in strogo upravičbo, ker, če sprejmemo ohlapno upravičbo kot utemeljeno, potem je dana možnost za sprejetje tudi nezanesljivih procesov in mehanizmov, kar pa pomeni, daje stroga upravičba zgolj nekaj ekstravagantnega. Možen izhod iz te zagate predstavlja ločevanje nivoja izvornih kognitivnih procesov in nivoja pridobljenih metod, postopkov..., vendar se izkaže, da tudi to ni rešitev. Zato predlagamo naslednjo opredelitev teorije upravičbe: Prepričanje p, ki ga ima oseba S v t, je upravičeno čče je i primerek tipa procesa, ki bi ga najboljša kognitivna znanost klasificirala kot zanesljivega. (shrink)

El artículo muestra la forma en que laepistemología de las virtudes puederesolver algunos de los problemasepistemológicos clásicos, y la manera enque puede lograrse una concepciónintegrada de las variantes confiabilistay responsabilista de la epistemología delas virtudesThis paper shows the way in which Virtue Epistemology can solve some ofthe classical epistemological problems,and the way in which an integrated approach of the Reliabilist and Responsibilist variants of Virtue Epistemology can be achieved.