In this paper, I’ll survey a number of closure principles of epistemic justification and find them all wanting. However, it’ll be my contention that there’s a novel closure principle of epistemic justification that has the virtues of its close cousin closure principles, without their vices. This closure principle of epistemic justification can be happily thought of as a multi-premise closure principle and it cannot be used in Cartesian skeptical arguments that employ a closure principle of epistemic justification. In this way, (...) then, it represents marked improvement over other contemporary closure principles of epistemic justification that require both sacrificing multi-premise closure and forcing anti-Cartesian skeptics who reject the closure principle employed in certain Cartesian skeptical arguments to cast aside justification closure. (shrink)

Half a century later, a Dretskean stance on epistemic closure remains a minority view. Why? Mainly because critics have successfully poked holes in the epistemologies on which closure fails. However, none of the familiar pro-closure moves works against the counterexamples on display here. It is argued that these counterexamples pose the following dilemma: either accept that epistemic closure principles are false, and steal the thunder from those who attack classical logic on the basis of similarly problematic cases—specifically, relevance logicians and (...) like-minded philosophers—or stick with closure and surrender to relevantist claims of failure in truth-preservation aimed at classical rules of inference. Classicist closure advocates find the promise of a way out of the dilemma in the works of Roy Sorensen and John Hawthorne. The paper argues against their pro-closure move and renews Robert Audi’s call for a theory of closure-failure. (shrink)

RESUMEN El uso de las intuiciones como evidencia es ubicuo en la epistemología, pero no poco controvertido. Por más de una década y media, algunos epistemólogos experimentales han cuestionado esta apelación a las intuiciones epistémicas. Estos filósofos explotan los métodos de la psicología experimental, en particular métodos de encuestas, para poner a prueba cuán ampliamente compartidas son algunas intuiciones. Dado su compromiso con la relevancia de la investigación empírica a la construcción de teorías filosóficas, estos filósofos califican como naturalistas metodológicos. (...) Pero algunos naturalistas metodológicos que también recomiendan renunciar a esa apelación de la intuición como evidencia no basan su caso en encuestas. En este artículo considero dos desafíos fundamentales a la práctica estándar de apelar a las intuiciones que estos filósofos naturalistas plantean y argumento que un proyecto epistemológico inspirado en el trabajo de Edward Craig le permite, en principio, al epistemólogo que comparte ese naturalismo metodológico lidiar con ellos. De todas formas concluyo que, independientemente del éxito del enfoque Craiguiano, las intuiciones tienen un rol que jugar en el teorizar epistemológico en relación a la adjudicación entre enfoques.ABSTRACT The use of intuitions as evidence is widespread in epistemology, but not uncontroversial. For over a decade and a half, some experimental epistemologists have called into question this appeal to epistemic intuitions. These philosophers bring the methods of experimental psychology, in particular survey methods, to bear on epistemological theorizing. Given their commitment to the relevance of empirical work to philosophical theory construction, they qualify as methodological naturalists. But some methodological naturalists who also recommend giving up appeals to intuition as evidence do not base their case on experimental surveys. In this article I consider two main challenges to the standard practice of appealing to intuitions posed by these naturalist philosophers and argue that a Craig-style epistemological project can allow the methodological naturalist to address them. Anyway I conclude that, regardless of the truth of the Craigian approach, intuitions still have a role to play in epistemological theorizing in the adjudication between approaches. (shrink)

It is widely thought that if knowledge requires sensitivity, knowledge is not closed because sensitivity is not closed. This paper argues that there is no valid argument from sensitivity failure to non-closure of knowledge. Sensitivity does not imply non-closure of knowledge. Closure considerations cannot be used to adjudicate between safety and sensitivity accounts of knowledge.

That knowledge is factive, that is, that knowledge that p requires that p, has for a long time typically been treated as a truism. Recently, however, some authors have raised doubts about and arguments against this claim. In a recent paper in this journal, Michael Shaffer presents new arguments against the denial of the factivity of knowledge. This article discusses one of Shaffer’s objections: the one from “inconsistency and explosion”. I discuss two potential replies to Shaffer’s problem: dialetheism plus paraconsistency (...) and epistemic pluralism. This is not to be understood so much as a criticism of Shaffer’s view but rather as a request to develop his very promising objection from inconsistency and explosion further. (shrink)

Current epistemological orthodoxy has it that knowledge is incompatible with luck. More precisely: Knowledge is incompatible with epistemic luck . This is often treated as a truism which is not even in need of argumentative support. In this paper, I argue that there is lucky knowledge. In the first part, I use an intuitive and not very developed notion of luck to show that there are cases of knowledge which are “lucky” in that sense. In the second part, I look (...) at philosophical conceptions of luck and come to the conclusion that knowledge can be lucky in those senses, too. I also turns out that a probabilistic notion of luck can help us see in what ways a particular piece of knowledge or belief can be lucky or not lucky. (shrink)

This article discusses Keith DeRose’s treatment of the lottery problem in Chapter 5 of his recent The Appearance of Ignorance. I agree with a lot of it but also raise some critical points and questions and make some friendly proposals. I discuss different ways to set up the problem, go into the difference between knowing and ending inquiry, propose to distinguish between two different kinds of lotteries, add to the defense of the idea that one can know lottery propositions, give (...) a critical discussion of DeRose’s contextualist solution to the problem, and support his defense against an absurdity objection with additional arguments. (shrink)

Guido Melchior’s important and rich book (Melchior _Knowing and Checking. __An Epistemological Investigation_ 2019 ) draws our attention to the much neglected topic of checking. There are many new leads to follow. Here, I will pick a few that seem to me to allow the most room for discussion and disagreement: the alleged modal profile of checking (Sect. 1), the contrastive aspects of checking (Sect. 2), and the relation of checking to closure (Sect. 3). I will end with two smaller (...) points worth bringing up here (Sect. 4). (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of epistemological skepticism - the view that we do not and cannot know anything about the world around us - focus very much on a certain kind of skeptical argument involving a skeptical scenario (a situation familiar from Descartes’ First Meditation). According to the argument, knowing some ordinary proposition about the world (one we usually take ourselves to know) requires knowing we are not in some such skeptical scenario SK; however, since we cannot know that we are not (...) in SK we also cannot know any ordinary proposition. One of the most prominent skeptical scenarios is the brain-in-the-vat-scenario: An evil scientist has operated on an unsuspecting subject, removed the subject’s brain and put it in a vat where it is kept functioning and is connected to some computer which feeds the brain the illusion that everything is “normal”. This paper looks at one aspect of this scenario after another – envatment, disembodiment, weird cognitive processes, lack of the right kind of epistemic standing, and systematic deception. The conclusion is that none of these aspects (in isolation or in combination) is of any relevance for a would-be skeptical argument; the brain-in-the-vat-scenario is irrelevant to and useless for skeptical purposes. Given that related scenarios (e.g., involving evil demons) share the defects of the brain-in-the-vat-scenario, the skeptic should not put any hopes on Cartesian topoi. (shrink)