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Summary Primitivism about knowledge is the view that knowledge is an unanalyzable notion. Most primitivists argue that instead of being analysed, knowledge should be understood as the most fundamental mental state, and that knowledge should be deployed in the analysis or elucidation of other epistemological notions, such as belief, evidence, and justification. Many also argue that knowledge plays a normative role in action or practical reasoning. Recent research in this area has followed, or responded to, the influential work of Timothy Williamson's "Knowledge First" epistemology, according to which knowledge is a basic mental state, evidence is to be understood in terms of knowledge such that one's evidence is all and only what one knows ("E=K"), knowledge is not a luminous condition, and knowledge is the norm of assertion and of belief.
Key works See especially Williamson 2000, as well as Pritchard & Greenough 2009 for a collection of critical essays and Williamson's replies. Hawthorne 2004, Millar 2007, and Littlejohn 2017 develop aspects of the knowledge first program. Blome-Tillmann 2007 argues that knowledge is unanalyzable. Nagel 2012 and Nagel 2013 examine the idea that knowledge is a mental state. Millar 2011 discusses the value of knowledge. Hawthorne 2005 discusses the knowledge-first conception of evidence, and Sutton 2007 argues that justified beliefs are all and only knowledge. Hawthorne & Stanley 2008 and Fantl & McGrath 2009 argue that knowledge is normatively connected with action and practical rationality, and Jackson 2012 considers how best to understand knowledge norms. Srinivasan 2013 further develops the argument against luminosity. For thorough criticism of knowledge first epistemology, see McGlynn 2014; for supportive and critical essays, see Carter et al 2017. For background to the contemporary discussion, see Marion 2000 and Marion 2000
Introductions See Williamson 2011, and the exchange between Williamson 2013 / Williamson 2013 and Dougherty & Rysiew 2013. For an overview of the knowledge norms on assertion, practical reasoning, and belief, see Benton 2014.
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  1. Inferential Knowledge and the Gettier Conjecture.Rodrigo Borges - forthcoming - In Rodrigo Borges Claudio de Almeida & Peter Klein (eds.), Explaining Knowledge: New Essays on the Gettier Problem. Oxford University Press.
    I propose and defend the conjecture that what explains why Gettiered subjects fail to know is the fact that their justified true belief depends essentially on unknown propositions. The conjecture follows from the plausible principle about inference in general according to which one knows the conclusion of one’s inference only if one knows all the premises it involves essentially.
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  2. Knowledge as a (non-factive) mental state.Adam Michael Bricker - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-22.
    The thesis that knowledge is a factive mental state plays a central role in knowledge-first epistemology, but accepting this thesis requires also accepting an unusually severe version of externalism about the mind. On this strong attitude externalism, whether S is in the mental state of knowledge can and often will rapidly change in virtue of changes in external states of reality with which S has no causal contact. It is commonly thought that this externalism requirement originates in the factivity of (...)
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  3. Knowledge First Approaches to Epistemology and Mind.A. Carter, E. Gordon & B. Jarvis (eds.) - forthcoming - Oxford University Press.
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  4. Putting Knowledge to Work: New Directions for Knowledge-First Epistemology.Artūrs Logins & Jacques Henri Vollet (eds.) - forthcoming - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    During the last 20 years, knowledge-centered approaches have become increasingly popular in analytic epistemology. Rather than trying to account for knowledge in other terms, these approaches take knowledge as the starting point for the elucidation of other epistemic notions (such as belief, justification, rationality, etc.). Knowledge-centered approaches have been so influential that it now looks like epistemology is undergoing a factive turn. However, relatively little has been done to explore how knowledge-centered views fare in new fields inside and beyond epistemology (...)
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  5. Natural Curiosity.Jennifer Nagel - forthcoming - In Artūrs Logins & Jacques-Henri Vollet (eds.), Putting Knowledge to Work: New Directions for Knowledge-First Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Curiosity is evident in humans of all sorts from early infancy, and it has also been said to appear in a wide range of other animals, including monkeys, birds, rats, and octopuses. The classical definition of curiosity as an intrinsic desire for knowledge may seem inapplicable to animal curiosity: one might wonder how and indeed whether a rat could have such a fancy desire. Even if rats must learn many things to survive, one might expect their learning must be driven (...)
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  6. Where Did It Come From? Where Will It Go?Williamson Timothy - forthcoming - In Artūrs Logins & Jacques Henri Vollet (eds.), Putting Knowledge to Work: New Directions for Knowledge-First Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  7. How Infallibilists Can Have It All.Nevin Climenhaga - 2023 - The Monist 106 (4):363-380.
    I advance a novel argument for an infallibilist theory of knowledge, according to which we know all and only those propositions that are certain for us. I argue that this theory lets us reconcile major extant theories of knowledge, in the following sense: for any of these theories, if we require that its central condition (evidential support, reliability, safety, etc.) obtains to a maximal degree, we get a theory of knowledge extensionally equivalent to infallibilism. As such, the infallibilist can affirm (...)
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  8. Knowledge‐first perceptual epistemology: A comment on Littlejohn and Millar.David de Bruijn - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (3):329-345.
    According to epistemological disjunctivism (ED), ordinary perceptual experience ensures an opportunity for perceptual knowledge. In recent years, two distinct models of this idea have been developed. For Duncan Pritchard (Epistemological disjunctivism, 2012, Oxford University Press; Epistemic angst: Radical skepticism and the groundlessness of our believing, 2012, Princeton University Press), perception provides distinctly powerful reasons for belief. By contrast, Clayton Littlejohn (Journal of Philosophical Research, 41, 201; Knowledge first, 2017, Oxford University Press; Normativity: Epistemic and practical, 2018, Oxford University Press) and (...)
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  9. A Knowledge-First Account of Group Knowledge.Domingos Faria - 2022 - Logos and Episteme 13 (1):37-53.
    The aim of this paper is to relate two trending topics in contemporary epistemology: the discussion of group knowledge and the discussion of knowledge-first approach. In social epistemology no one has seriously applied and developed Williamson’s theory of knowledge-first approach to the case of group knowledge yet. For example, scholars of group knowledge typically assume that knowledge is analyzed in terms of more basic concepts, such as group belief or acceptance, group justification, and so on. However, if Williamson’s theory of (...)
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  10. Wittgenstein’s Wager: On [Absolute] Certainty.Noah Greenstein - 2022 - Southwest Philosophy Review 38 (1):51-57.
    Knowledge is analyzed in terms of the cost incurred when mistakes are made — things we should have known better, but didn’t. Following Wittgenstein at the end of On Certainty, an Epistemic Wager, similar to Pascal’s Wager, is set up to represent the cost differences not in belief vs. disbelief, but in knowledge vs. skepticism. This leads to a core class of absolutely certain knowledge, related to Moorean Facts, that is integrated into our everyday lives. This core knowledge is resistant (...)
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  11. Introduction to Knowledge, Number and Reality. Encounters with the Work of Keith Hossack.Nils Kürbis, Jonathan Nassim & Bahram Assadian - 2022 - In Nils Kürbis, Jonathan Nassim & Bahram Assadian (eds.), Knowledge, Number and Reality. Encounters with the Work of Keith Hossack. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 1-30.
    The Introduction to "Knowledge, Number and Reality. Encounters with the Work of Keith Hossack" provides an overview over Hossack's work and the contributions to the volume.
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  12. John Cook Wilson on the indefinability of knowledge.Guy Longworth & Simon Bastian Wimmer - 2022 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (4):1547-1564.
    Can knowledge be defined? We expound an argument of John Cook Wilson's that it cannot. Cook Wilson's argument connects knowing with having the power to inquire. We suggest that if he is right about that connection, then knowledge is, indeed, indefinable.
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  13. Reductive Views of Knowledge and the Small Difference Principle.Simon Wimmer - 2022 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (8):777-788.
    I develop a challenge to reductive views of knowing that φ that appeal to what I call a gradable property. Such appeal allows for properties that are intrinsically very similar to the property of knowing that φ, but differ significantly in their normative significance. This violates the independently plausible claim Pautz (2017) labels the small difference principle.
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  14. Cook Wilson on knowledge and forms of thinking.Simon Wimmer & Guy Longworth - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-22.
    John Cook Wilson is an important predecessor of contemporary knowledge first epistemologists: among other parallels, he claimed that knowledge is indefinable. We reconstruct four arguments for this claim discernible in his work, three of which find no clear analogues in contemporary discussions of knowledge first epistemology. We pay special attention to Cook Wilson’s view of the relation between knowledge and forms of thinking (like belief). Claims of Cook Wilson’s that support the indefinability of knowledge include: that knowledge, unlike belief, straddles (...)
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  15. Knowledge is a mental state (at least sometimes).Adam Michael Bricker - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (5):1461-1481.
    It is widely held in philosophy that knowing is not a state of mind. On this view, rather than knowledge itself constituting a mental state, when we know, we occupy a belief state that exhibits some additional non-mental characteristics. Fascinatingly, however, new empirical findings from cognitive neuroscience and experimental philosophy now offer direct, converging evidence that the brain can—and often does—treat knowledge as if it is a mental state in its own right. While some might be tempted to keep the (...)
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  16. Persistent burglars and knocks on doors: Causal indispensability of knowing vindicated.Artūrs Https://Orcidorg Logins - 2021 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (4):1335-1357.
    The aim of the present article is to accomplish two things. The first is to show that given some further plausible assumptions, existing challenges to the indispensability of knowledge in causal explanation of action fail. The second is to elaborate an overlooked and distinct argument in favor of the causal efficacy of knowledge. In short, even if knowledge were dispensable in causal explanation of action, it is still indispensable in causal explanation of other mental attitudes and, in particular, some reactive (...)
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  17. Lying: Knowledge or belief?Neri Marsili - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (5):1445-1460.
    A new definition of lying is gaining traction, according to which you lie only if you say what you know to be false. Drawing inspiration from “New Evil Demon” scenarios, I present a battery of counterexamples against this “Knowledge Account” of lying. Along the way, I comment upon the methodology of conceptual analysis, the moral implications of the Knowledge Account, and its ties with knowledge-first epistemology.
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  18. Knowing, Believing, and Acting as if You Know.Dilip Ninan - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44.
    Commentary on Philips et. al. "Knowledge Before Belief".
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  19. The neural and cognitive mechanisms of knowledge attribution: An EEG study.Adam Michael Bricker - 2020 - Cognition 203 (C):104412.
    Despite the ubiquity of knowledge attribution in human social cognition, its associated neural and cognitive mechanisms are poorly documented. A wealth of converging evidence in cognitive neuroscience has identified independent perspective-taking and inhibitory processes for belief attribution, but the extent to which these processes are shared by knowledge attribution isn't presently understood. Here, we present the findings of an EEG study designed to directly address this shortcoming. These findings suggest that belief attribution is not a component process in knowledge attribution, (...)
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  20. Lying, Belief, and Knowledge.Matthew A. Benton - 2019 - In Jörg Meibauer (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Lying. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 120-133.
    What is the relationship between lying, belief, and knowledge? Prominent accounts of lying define it in terms of belief, namely telling someone something one believes to be false, often with the intent to deceive. This paper develops a novel account of lying by deriving evaluative dimensions of responsibility from the knowledge norm of assertion. Lies are best understood as special cases of vicious assertion; lying is the anti-paradigm of proper assertion. This enables an account of lying in terms of knowledge: (...)
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  21. Jessica Brown: Fallibilism: Evidence and Knowledge.Matthew McGrath - 2019 - Journal of Philosophy 116 (11):637-644.
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  22. Epistemic Territory.Jennifer Nagel - 2019 - Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 93:67-86.
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  23. Is Every Theory of Knowledge False?Blake Roeber - 2019 - Noûs 54 (4):839-866.
    Is knowledge consistent with literally any credence in the relevant proposition, including credence 0? Of course not. But is credence 0 the only credence in p that entails that you don’t know that p? Knowledge entails belief (most epistemologists think), and it’s impossible to believe that p while having credence 0 in p. Is it true that, for every value of ‘x,’ if it’s impossible to know that p while having credence x in p, this is simply because it’s impossible (...)
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  24. Reassessing the Case Against Evidential Externalism.Giada Fratantonio & Aidan McGlynn - 2018 - In Veli Mitova (ed.), The Factive Turn in Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    This paper reassesses the case against Evidential Externalism, the thesis that one's evidence fails to supervene on one's non-factive mental states, focusing on two objections to Externalism due by Nicholas Silins: the armchair access argument and the supervenience argument. It also examines Silins's attempt to undermine the force of one major source of motivation for Externalism, namely that the rival Internalist picture of evidence is implicated in some central arguments for scepticism. While Silins concludes that the case against Evidential Externalism (...)
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  25. Against Knowledge-First Epistemology.Mikkel Gerken - 2018 - In Gordon and Jarvis Carter (ed.), Knowledge-First Approaches in Epistemology and Mind. Oxford University Press. pp. 46-71.
    I begin by criticizing reductionist knowledge-first epistemology according to which knowledge can be used to reductively analyze other epistemic phenomena. My central concern is that proponents of such an approach commit a similar mistake to the one that they charge their opponents with. This is the mistake of seeking to reductively analyze basic epistemic phenomena in terms of other allegedly more fundamental phenomena. I then turn to non-reductionist brands of knowledge-first epistemology. Specifically, I consider the knowledge norms of assertion and (...)
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  26. Good Thinking: A Knowledge First Virtue Epistemology.Christoph Kelp - 2018 - London, UK: Routledge.
    Process reliabilism -- Virtue reliabilism: justified belief -- Virtue reliabilism: knowledge -- Knowledge first virtue reliabilism -- The competition -- The safety dilemma -- Lottery cases.
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  27. Epistemology Personalized.Matthew A. Benton - 2017 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (269):813-834.
    Recent epistemology has focused almost exclusively on propositional knowledge. This paper considers an underexplored area of epistemology, namely knowledge of persons: if propositional knowledge is a state of mind, consisting in a subject's attitude to a (true) proposition, the account developed here thinks of interpersonal knowledge as a state of minds, involving a subject's attitude to another (existing) subject. This kind of knowledge is distinct from propositional knowledge, but it exhibits a gradability characteristic of context-sensitivity, and admits of shifty thresholds. (...)
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  28. Explaining Knowledge: New Essays on the Gettier Problem.Rodrigo Borges, Claudio de Almeida & Peter David Klein (eds.) - 2017 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    The 'Gettier Problem' has been central to epistemology since 1963, when Edmund Gettier presented a powerful challenge to the standard analysis of knowledge. Now twenty-six leading philosophers examine the issues that arise from Gettier's challenge, setting the agenda for future work on the central problem of epistemology.
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  29. Epistemic Conditions on “Ought”: E=K as a Case Study.Cameron Boult - 2017 - Acta Analytica 32 (2):223-244.
    In The Norm of Belief, John Gibbons claims that there is a “natural reaction” to the general idea that one can be normatively required to Ø when that requirement is in some sense outside of one’s first person perspective or inaccessible to one. The reaction amounts to the claim that this is not possible. Whether this is a natural or intuitive idea or not, it is difficult to articulate exactly why we might think it is correct. To do so, we (...)
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  30. Knowledge First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind.J. Adam Carter, Emma C. Gordon & Benjamin W. Jarvis (eds.) - 2017 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    'Knowledge-First' constitutes what is widely regarded as one of the most significant innovations in contemporary epistemology in the past 25 years. Knowledge-first epistemology is the idea that knowledge per se should not be analysed in terms of its constituent parts (e.g., justification, belief), but rather that these and other notions should be analysed in terms of the concept of knowledge. This volume features a substantive introduction and 13 original essays from leading and up-and-coming philosophers on the topic of knowledge-first philosophy. (...)
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  31. Basic Knowledge First.Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa - 2017 - Episteme 14 (3):343-361.
    An infuential twenty-first century philosophical project posits a central role for knowledge: knowledge is more fundamental than epistemic states like belief and justification. So-called “knowledge first” theorists find support for this thought in identifying central theoretical roles for knowledge. I argue that a similar methodology supports a privileged role for more specific category of basic knowledge. Some of the roles that knowledge first theorists have posited for knowledge generally are better suited for basic knowledge.
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  32. On Putting Knowledge 'First'.Jonathan Ichikawa & C. S. I. Jenkins - 2017 - In Joseph Adam Carter, Emma C. Gordon & Benjamin Jarvis (eds.), Knowledge First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind. Oxford University Press.
    There is a New Idea in epistemology. It goes by the name of ‘knowledge first,’ and it is particularly associated with Timothy Williamson’s book Knowledge and Its Limits. In slogan form, to put knowledge first is to treat knowledge as basic or fundamental, and to explain other states—belief, justification, maybe even content itself—in terms of knowledge, instead of vice versa. The idea has proven enormously interesting, and equally controversial. But deep foundational questions about its actual content remain relatively unexplored. We (...)
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  33. Inferring as a way of knowing.Nicholas Koziolek - 2017 - Synthese (Suppl 7):1563-1582.
    Plausibly, an inference is an act of coming to believe something on the basis of something else you already believe. But what is it to come to believe some- thing on the basis of something else? I propose a disjunctive answer: it is either for some beliefs to rationally cause another—where rational causation is understood as causation that is either actually or potentially productive of knowledge—or for some beliefs to “deviantly” cause another, but for the believer mistakenly to come thereby (...)
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  34. How and Why Knowledge is First.Clayton Littlejohn - 2017 - In A. Carter, E. Gordon & B. Jarvis (eds.), Knowledge First. Oxford University Press. pp. 19-45.
    A defense of the idea that knowledge is first in the sense that there is nothing prior to knowledge that puts reasons or evidence in your possession. Includes a critical discussion of the idea that perception or perceptual experience might provide reasons and a defense of a knowledge-first approach to justified belief.
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  35. Mindreading Knowledge.Aidan McGlynn - 2017 - In Joseph Adam Carter, Emma C. Gordon & Benjamin W. Jarvis (eds.), Knowledge First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 72-94.
  36. In support of the Knowledge-First conception of the normativity of justification.Anne Meylan - 2017 - In Joseph Adam Carter, Emma C. Gordon & Benjamin Jarvis (eds.), Knowledge First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. pp. 246-258.
    The knowledge-first solution to the New Evil Demon Problem (NEDP) goes hand in hand with a particular conception of the normativity of justification, one according to which a justified belief is one that satisfies some sort of ought or should (Williamson forthcoming). This claim is incompatible with another, well accepted, view that regards the normativity of justification. According to this established view, a justified belief is rather something that is neither obligatory, nor forbidden (see e.g. Alston 1989, 1993, 2006; Ginet (...)
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  37. No Need for Excuses: Against Knowledge-First Epistemology and the Knowledge Norm of Assertion.Joshua Schechter - 2017 - In J. Adam Carter, Emma Gordon & Benjamin Jarvis (eds.), Knowledge-First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind. Oxford University Press. pp. 132-159.
    Since the publication of Timothy Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits, knowledge-first epistemology has become increasingly influential within epistemology. This paper discusses the viability of the knowledge-first program. The paper has two main parts. In the first part, I briefly present knowledge-first epistemology as well as several big picture reasons for concern about this program. While this considerations are pressing, I concede, however, that they are not conclusive. To determine the viability of knowledge-first epistemology will require philosophers to carefully evaluate the (...)
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  38. The Cost of Treating Knowledge as a Mental State.Martin Smith - 2017 - In A. Carter, E. Gordon & B. Jarvis (eds.), Knowledge First, Approaches to Epistemology and Mind. Oxford University Press. pp. 95-112.
    My concern in this paper is with the claim that knowledge is a mental state – a claim that Williamson places front and centre in Knowledge and Its Limits. While I am not by any means convinced that the claim is false, I do think it carries certain costs that have not been widely appreciated. One source of resistance to this claim derives from internalism about the mental – the view, roughly speaking, that one’s mental states are determined by one’s (...)
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  39. Acting on Knowledge.Timothy Williamson - 2017 - In J. Adam Carter, Emma C. Gordon & Benjamin W. Jarvis (eds.), Knowledge First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 163-181.
    'Knowledge and its Limits' starts its exposition of the knowledge-first approach to epistemology with a structural analogy between knowledge and action as the two key relations between mind and world (Williamson 2000: 1, 6-8). This chapter aims to reconsider the relation between knowledge and action, and refine the analogy.
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  40. Gricean Quality.Matthew A. Benton - 2016 - Noûs 50 (4):689-703.
    Some philosophers oppose recent arguments for the Knowledge Norm of Assertion by claiming that assertion, being an act much like any other, will be subject to norms governing acts generally, such as those articulated by Grice for the purpose of successful, cooperative endeavours. But in fact, Grice is a traitor to their cause; or rather, they are his dissenters, not his disciples. Drawing on Grice's unpublished papers, I show that he thought of asserting as a special linguistic act in need (...)
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  41. Evil and Evidence.Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne & Yoaav Isaacs - 2016 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 7:1-31.
    The problem of evil is the most prominent argument against the existence of God. Skeptical theists contend that it is not a good argument. Their reasons for this contention vary widely, involving such notions as CORNEA, epistemic appearances, 'gratuitous' evils, 'levering' evidence, and the representativeness of goods. We aim to dispel some confusions about these notions, in particular by clarifying their roles within a probabilistic epistemology. In addition, we develop new responses to the problem of evil from both the phenomenal (...)
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  42. Bad Luck for the Anti‐Luck Epistemologist.Rodrigo Borges - 2016 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (4):463-479.
    Anti-luck epistemologists tell us that knowledge is incompatible with epistemic luck and that epistemic luck is just a special case of luck in general. Much work has been done on the intricacies of the first claim. In this paper, I scrutinize the second claim. I argue that it does not survive scrutiny. I then offer an analysis of luck that explains the relevant data and avoids the problems from which the current views of luck suffer. However, this analysis of luck (...)
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  43. Tracking Inferences Is not Enough: The Given as Tie-Breaker.Marc Champagne - 2016 - Logos and Episteme 7 (2):129-135.
    Most inferentialists hope to bypass givenness by tracking the conditionals claimants are implicitly committed to. I argue that this approach is underdetermined because one can always construct parallel trees of conditionals. I illustrate this using the Müller-Lyer illusion and touching a table. In the former case, the lines are either even or uneven; in the latter case, a moving hand will either sweep through or be halted. For each possibility, we can rationally foresee consequents. However, I argue that, until and (...)
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  44. Justified Belief: Knowledge First‐Style.Christoph Kelp - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (1):79-100.
    Recent knowledge first epistemology features a number of different accounts of justified belief, including a knowledge first reductionism according to which to believe justifiably is to know Sutton, Littlejohn, Williamson, a knowledge first version of accessibilism Millar and a knowledge first version of mentalism Bird. This paper offers a knowledge first version of virtue epistemology and argues that it is preferable to its knowledge first epistemological rivals: only knowledge first virtue epistemology manages to steer clear of a number of problems (...)
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  45. Epistemic Frankfurt Cases Revisited.Christoph9 Kelp - 2016 - American Philosophical Quarterly 53 (1):27-37.
    In Kelp, it is argued that there are epistemic Frankfurt cases that serve to show that knowledge does not require safety from error. In this paper, these Frankfurt cases are revisited. It is first argued that a recent response to the earlier argument by Duncan Pritchard remains unsatisfactory. Then it is shown that Frankfurt cases impact a much wider range of accounts. Specifically, it is argued in some detail that, in conjunction with the infamous Fake Barn cases, they generate a (...)
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  46. Perceptual Justification: Factive Reasons and Fallible Virtues.Christoph9 Kelp & Harmen8 Ghijsen - 2016 - In C. Mi, M. Slote & E. Sosa (eds.), Moral and Intellectual Virtues in Western and Chinese Philosophy. Routledge.
    Two different versions of epistemological disjunctivism have recently been upheld in the literature: a traditional, Justified True Belief Epistemological Disjunctivism (JTBED) and a Knowledge First Epistemological Disjunctivism (KFED). JTBED holds that factive reasons of the form “S sees that p” provide the rational support in virtue of which one has perceptual knowledge, while KFED holds that factive reasons of the form “S sees that p” just are ways of knowing that p which additionally provide justification for believing that p. We (...)
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  47. Knowledge and Reliability.Jennifer Nagel - 2016 - In Hilary Kornblith & Brian McLaughlin (eds.), Alvin Goldman and his Critics. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 237-256.
    Internalists have criticised reliabilism for overlooking the importance of the subject's point of view in the generation of knowledge. This paper argues that there is a troubling ambiguity in the intuitive examples that internalists have used to make their case, and on either way of resolving this ambiguity, reliabilism is untouched. However, the argument used to defend reliabilism against the internalist cases could also be used to defend a more radical form of externalism in epistemology.
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  48. Ways and Means: When Sometimes “Knowledge-First” Epistemology Is Not Epistemology.Brian New - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (3):827-834.
    I will claim that the distinction Craig French describes between “specific realizations of knowledge” and “means of knowing”, after respective theorisations by Timothy Williamson and Quassim Cassam, can be seen as a faultline between epistemology on the one hand, and the analysis of ordinary language use on the other. The possibility of this disjunction, I believe, raises the question as to whether the latter kind of analysis has anything to contribute to epistemology at all. Cassam’s “explanatory” conception of ways of (...)
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  49. Norms of Belief.Mona Simion, Christoph Kelp & Harmen Ghijsen - 2016 - Philosophical Issues 26 (1):374-392.
    When in the business of offering an account of the epistemic normativity of belief, one is faced with the following dilemma: strongly externalist norms fail to account for the intuition of justification in radical deception scenarios, while milder norms are incapable to explain what is epistemically wrong with false beliefs. This paper has two main aims; we first look at one way out of the dilemma, defended by Timothy Williamson and Clayton Littlejohn, and argue that it fails. Second, we identify (...)
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  50. Defeatism Defeated.Max Baker-Hytch & Matthew A. Benton - 2015 - Philosophical Perspectives 29 (1):40-66.
    Many epistemologists are enamored with a defeat condition on knowledge. In this paper we present some implementation problems for defeatism, understood along either internalist or externalist lines. We then propose that one who accepts a knowledge norm of belief, according to which one ought to believe only what one knows, can explain away much of the motivation for defeatism. This is an important result, because on the one hand it respects the plausibility of the intuitions about defeat shared by many (...)
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