Abstract
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 argue that both accounts
remain ultimately unsatisfactory. JTBED faces two formidable
problems: first, it cannot account for animal knowledge, and,
second, it does not offer a satisfactory account of how we access
factive reasons. Although KFED can solve these two problems,
it has some problems of its own. While intuitively knowledge is
logically stronger than justified belief, on KFED it turns out to
be weaker: knowledge does not entail justified belief, but justified
belief does entail knowledge. Nevertheless, disjunctivists
are right on at least a couple of points: we standardly justify
our perceptual beliefs by appealing to factive reasons such as
seeing that p and so factive reasons ought to play some role
in our theory of justification. In addition, KFED’s account of
our access to factive reasons also is spot on. Rather than going
disjunctivist, these insights can be suitably incorporated into a
Knowledge First Virtue Epistemology (KFVE).