Abstract
Sosa (2007) claims that a necessary condition on knowledge is manifesting an epistemic competence. To manifest an epistemic competence, a belief must satisfy two conditions: (1) it must derive from the exercise of a reliable belief-forming disposition in appropriate conditions for its exercise and (2) that exercise of the disposition in those conditions would not issue a false belief in a close possible world. Drawing on recent psychological research, I show that memories that are issued by episodic memory retrieval fail to satisfy either of these conditions. This presents Sosa, and other proponents of similar conditions (e.g. some safety theorists and process reliabilists), with a dilemma: (1) deny that episodic memories count as knowledge or (2) give up the conditions as necessary conditions on knowledge. I explore the implications of this dilemma for our understanding of knowledge, memory and the relationship between them.
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Notes
Strictly speaking, Sosa (2007) also counts reliable dispositions implicitly to trust dispositions of this kind as epistemic competences. In the cases I discuss, dispositions to receive certain ranges of deliverances in certain conditions and dispositions implicitly to trust such dispositions don’t come apart. For simplicity, therefore, I don’t explicitly discuss dispositions of the latter type.
The generality problem is a sizeable problem so there might be more to say about this issue than I’ve said here. However, the above gives us reason to think that EMR is probably the right level of specificity for the disposition that issues your attitude memory.
I’m not claiming, nor is it important, that attitude formation actually works this way. This is just intended as an illustration.
I owe the idea of quarantine failure, as well as the term, to Goldman (2006).
Indeed, EMR seems so prone to error that memory researchers have started to question traditional assumptions about its function. Traditionally, it’s been assumed that the function of EMR is to retrieve accurate memories of the personal past. However, that doesn’t fit well with a picture of EMR in which it issues false beliefs even in everyday, run-of-the-mill situations. In response to this, researchers are starting to suggest that EMR’s primary function is related to facilitation of future planning and simulation of future events rather than accurate recollection of the past (see, for example, Addis et al. 2007 and Levine 1997).
More specifically, many EMR-issued memories fail to satisfy the security condition and all EMR-issued memories fail to satisfy the reliability condition. If a disposition is unreliable, all beliefs that issue from that disposition fail to satisfy the reliability condition. Failure to satisfy the security condition doesn’t generalize in the same way. To show that a belief fails to satisfy the security condition, we have to show that the particular exercise of the particular disposition that issued the belief in the actual world would issue a false belief in a close possible world. Therefore, beliefs have to be shown to fail to satisfy the security condition on a case-by-case basis. For these reasons, we can draw the strong conclusion that all EMR-issued memories fail to satisfy the reliability condition but only the weaker conclusion that many EMR-issued memories fail to satisfy the security condition.
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Acknowledgments
I owe thanks to Ernie Sosa, Alvin Goldman and two anonymous reviewers for this journal for their helpful comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to Katy Meadows for a series of invaluable discussions.
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Shanton, K. Memory, Knowledge and Epistemic Competence. Rev.Phil.Psych. 2, 89–104 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-010-0038-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-010-0038-8