Knowledge, Hope, and Fallibilism

Synthese 198:1673-1689 (2021)
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Abstract

Hope, in its propositional construction "I hope that p," is compatible with a stated chance for the speaker that not-p. On fallibilist construals of knowledge, knowledge is compatible with a chance of being wrong, such that one can know that p even though there is an epistemic chance for one that not-p. But self-ascriptions of propositional hope that p seem to be incompatible, in some sense, with self-ascriptions of knowing whether p. Data from conjoining hope self-ascription with outright assertions, with first- and third-person knowledge ascriptions, and with factive predicates suggest a problem: when combined with a plausible principle on the rationality of hope, they suggest that fallibilism is false. By contrast, the infallibilist about knowledge can straightforwardly explain why knowledge would be incompatible with hope, and can offer a simple and unified explanation of all the linguistic data introduced here. This suggests that fallibilists bear an explanatory burden which has been hitherto overlooked.

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Matthew A. Benton
Seattle Pacific University

Citations of this work

The Focus Theory of Hope.Andrew Chignell - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1):44-63.
Hedged Assertion.Matthew A. Benton & Peter Van Elswyk - 2018 - In Sanford Goldberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Assertion. Oxford University Press. pp. 245-263.
Knowledge is the Norm of Assertion.Matthew A. Benton - 2024 - In Blake Roeber, Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 329-339.
Fitting anxiety and prudent anxiety.James Fritz - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):8555-8578.
Epistemological Aspects of Hope.Matthew A. Benton - 2019 - In Claudia Blöser & Titus Stahl (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Hope: An Introduction (The Moral Psychology of the Emotions). Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 135-151.

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Knowledge and lotteries.John Hawthorne - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Knowledge in an uncertain world.Jeremy Fantl & Matthew McGrath - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Matthew McGrath.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2003 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (210):105-116.

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