Williamson On the Margins of Knowledge: A Criticism

Foundations of Science 28 (1):273-285 (2020)
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Abstract

In this paper, we argue that Williamson’s arguments against luminosity and the KK principle do not work, at least in a scientific context. Both of these arguments are based on the presence of a so-called “buffer zone” between situations in which one is in a position to know p and situations in which one is in a position to know ¬p. In those positions belonging to the buffer zone ¬p holds, but one is not in a position to know ¬p. The presence of this buffer zone triggers two types of sorites arguments. We show that this kind of argument does not hold in a scientific context, where the buffer zone is controlled by a quantitative measurement of the experimental error.

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Author Profiles

Ciro De Florio
Università Cattolica di Milano
Vincenzo Fano
Università degli Studi di Urbino

References found in this work

Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
Knowledge and its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (1):200-201.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2003 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (210):105-116.
Luminosity and the safety of knowledge.Ram Neta & Guy Rohrbaugh - 2004 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85 (4):396–406.

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