Memory, Knowledge, and Epistemic Luck

Philosophical Quarterly 72 (4):896-917 (2022)
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Abstract

Does ‘remembering that p’ entail ‘knowing that p’? The widely-accepted epistemic theory of memory answers affirmatively. This paper purports to reveal the tension between ETM and the prevailing anti-luck epistemology. Central to my argument is the fact that we often ‘vaguely remember’ a fact, of which one plausible interpretation is that our true memory-based beliefs formed in this way could easily have been false. Drawing on prominent theories of misremembering in philosophy of psychology, I will construct cases where the subject vaguely remembers that p while fails to meet the safety condition, which imply either that ETM is false or that safety is unnecessary for knowledge. The conclusion reached in this paper will be a conditional: if veritic epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge, then ‘remembering that p’ does not entail ‘knowing that p’.

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Changsheng Lai
Shanghai JiaoTong University

Citations of this work

The Justificatory Power of Memory Experience.Lu Teng - 2024 - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 5.
Memory belief is weak.Changsheng Lai - 2023 - Ratio 36 (3):204-214.
Is ‘Remembering’ a Normative Concept?Changsheng Lai - 2024 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 32 (4):404-427.
Remembering requires no reliability.Changsheng Lai - 2023 - Philosophical Studies (1):1-21.

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References found in this work

Theory of knowledge.Roderick M. Chisholm - 1966 - Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice-Hall.
A Theory of Conditionals.Robert Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford,: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.
Discrimination and perceptual knowledge.Alvin I. Goldman - 1976 - Journal of Philosophy 73 (November):771-791.

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