The Preface Paradox is often discussed for its implications for rational belief. Much less discussed is a variant of the Preface Paradox for knowledge. In this paper, I argue that the most plausible closure-friendly resolution to the Preface Paradox for Knowledge is to say that in any given context, we do not know much. I call this view “Socraticism”. I argue that Socraticism is the most plausible view on two accounts—(1) this view is compatible with the claim that most of (...) our knowledge ascriptions are true, and (2) provided that (1) is true, the costs of accepting Socraticism are much less than the costs of accepting any other resolution to the Paradox. I argue for (1) in Section 2 by developing a question-sensitive contextualist model for knowledge that shows how Socraticism is compatible with the claim that most of our knowledge ascriptions are true. I also argue how this contextualist model can achieve this result where other contextualist models fail. I then consider other closure-friendly solutions to the paradox in Section 3 and show how accepting those solutions forces us to give up a number of plausible epistemic principles. (shrink)

This paper explores the consequences of applying two natural ideas from epistemology to decision theory: (1) that knowledge should guide our actions, and (2) that we know a lot of non-trivial things. In particular, we explore the consequences of these ideas as they are applied to standard decision theoretic puzzles such as the St. Petersburg Paradox. In doing so, we develop a “knowledge-first” decision theory and we will see how it can help us avoid fanaticism with regard to the St. (...) Petersburg puzzle and related puzzles. The result will be a decision theory that gives a novel, but well-motivated, reason for discounting small probabilities when making decisions. We examine the merits and demerits of such a decision theory. (shrink)

Moore supposedly discovered that there are sentences of a certain form that, though they can be true, no rational human being can sincerely and truly utter any of them. MC and MO are particular instances:MC: “It is raining and I believe that it is not raining”MO: “It is raining and I don’t believe that it is raining”In this paper, I show that there are sentences of the same form as MC and MO that can be sincerely and truly uttered by (...) rational agents. We call sentences of the same form as MC and MO “Moorean Sentences”. In Part II, we go over a standard argument for why sentences of the same form as MC and MO cannot be sincerely and truly uttered, and we explain why this argument is unsound. In explaining why this argument is unsound, we rely on the context-sensitivity of belief-reports and show that the premises of the argument are not all true in the same context. We then employ a general theory of belief reports that incorporates guises to explain why our examples are sincerely utterable while Moore’s sentences are typically not sincerely utterable. The answer will turn on the suggestion that belief reports carry a hidden quantifier over guises, where the domain of quantification is determined by context. We conclude with general lessons about Moore’s Paradox and the supposed limits of first-person belief reports. (shrink)