Are Modal Conditions Necessary for Knowledge?

Kritike 13 (1):101 (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Modal epistemic conditions have played an important role in post-Gettier theories of knowledge. These conditions purportedly eliminate the pernicious kind of luck present in all Gettier-type cases and offer a rather convincing way of refuting skepticism. This motivates the view that conditions of this sort are necessary for knowledge. I argue against this. I claim that modal conditions, particularly sensitivity and safety, are not necessary for knowledge. I do this by noting that the problem cases for both conditions point to a problem that cannot be fixed even by a revised similarity ranking or ordering of worlds. I offer as groundwork a set theoretical analysis of the profiles of the problem cases for safety and sensitivity. I then demonstrate that these conditions fail whenever necessary links constitutive of the epistemic situation actually obtain but are not modally preserved.

Similar books and articles

Safety’s swamp: Against the value of modal stability.Georgi Gardiner - 2017 - American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (2):119-129.
What Should a Theory of Knowledge Do?Elijah Chudnoff - 2011 - Dialectica 65 (4):561-579.
Sensitivity Actually.Michael Blome-Tillmann - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (3):606-625.
Do Safety Failures Preclude Knowledge?J. R. Fett - 2018 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 22 (2):301-319.
‘Unlucky’ Gettier Cases.Jim Stone - 2013 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (3):421-430.
Competence to know.Lisa Miracchi - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (1):29-56.
Epistemic luck and logical necessities: armchair luck revisited.Guido Melchior - 2017 - In Smiljana Gartner Bojan Borstner (ed.), Thought Experiments between Nature and Society. A Festschrift for Nenad Miščević. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 137-150.
Epistemic Value and Fortuitous Truth.Colin Cheyne - 1997 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 1 (1):109–134.

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-07-01

Downloads
596 (#26,695)

6 months
134 (#21,372)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Mark Anthony Dacela
De La Salle University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references