Luminosity and the safety of knowledge

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85 (4):396–406 (2004)
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Abstract

In his recent Knowledge and its Limits, Timothy Williamson argues that no non-trivial mental state is such that being in that state suffices for one to be in a position to know that one is in it. In short, there are no “luminous” mental states. His argument depends on a “safety” requirement on knowledge, that one’s confident belief could not easily have been wrong if it is to count as knowledge. We argue that the safety requirement is ambiguous; on one interpretation it is obviously true but useless to his argument, and on the other interpretation it is false

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Author Profiles

Guy Rohrbaugh
Auburn University
Ram Neta
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

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References found in this work

Discrimination and perceptual knowledge.Alvin I. Goldman - 1976 - Journal of Philosophy 73 (November):771-791.
How to defeat opposition to Moore.Ernest Sosa - 1999 - Philosophical Perspectives 13:137-49.
S knows that P.Ram Neta - 2002 - Noûs 36 (4):663–681.
Cognitive homelessness.Timothy Williamson - 1996 - Journal of Philosophy 93 (11):554-573.
Williamson's Anti-luminosity Argument.Brueckner Anthony - 2002 - Philosophical Studies 110 (3):285-293.

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