Epistemic Closure, Necessary Truths, and Safety

American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (4):391-401 (2022)
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Abstract

According to the safety account of knowledge, one knows that p only if one's belief could not easily have been false. An important issue for the account is whether we should only examine the belief in the target proposition when evaluating whether a belief is safe or not. In this paper, it is argued that if we only examine the belief in the target proposition, then the account fails to account for why beliefs in necessary truths could fall short of knowledge. But, if we also examine beliefs in other relevant propositions, then the account fails to preserve epistemic closure. Therefore, the safety account cannot find a safe path between epistemic closure and necessary truths.

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Bin Zhao
Peking University

Citations of this work

Sensitivity, Safety, and Epistemic Closure.Bin Zhao - 2022 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 30 (1):56-71.

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References found in this work

Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
Discrimination and perceptual knowledge.Alvin I. Goldman - 1976 - Journal of Philosophy 73 (November):771-791.
Knowledge and Lotteries.John Hawthorne - 2005 - Philosophical Quarterly 55 (219):353-356.

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