Sensitivity, Safety, and Epistemic Closure

International Journal of Philosophical Studies 30 (1):56-71 (2022)
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Abstract

It has been argued that an advantage of the safety account over the sensitivity account is that the safety account preserves epistemic closure, while the sensitivity account implies epistemic closure failure. However, the argument fails to take the method-relativity of the modal conditions on knowledge, viz., sensitivity and safety, into account. In this paper, I argue that the sensitivity account and the safety account are on a par with respect to epistemic closure once the method-relativity of the modal conditions is taken into account. Therefore, epistemic closure is no longer an arbiter in the debate.

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Bin Zhao
Peking University

Citations of this work

On Mentioning Belief-Formation Methods in Sensitivity Subjunctives.Bin Zhao - 2025 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 12:232-246.
On Relativizing the Sensitivity Condition to Belief-Formation Methods.Bin Zhao - 2024 - American Philosophical Quarterly 61 (2):165-175.
Epistemic Closure, Necessary Truths, and Safety.Bin Zhao - 2022 - American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (4):391-401.
Why better safe than sensitive.Haicheng Zhao - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (3):838-855.

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Knowledge and lotteries.John Hawthorne - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Epistemic Luck.Duncan Pritchard - 2005 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
A Theory of Conditionals.Robert Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher, Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford,: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.

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