Epistemology

Epistemology with Peter Klein

Syllabus

The Goals of the Course

During the course we will explore nine issues in epistemology – each discussed in recently published essays. The primary goals of the course are for you to:

  1. Gain a good understanding of the issues including alternative ways of responding to each issue and
  2. Develop your own position on each issue.

I encourage you to work together in study groups; I will circulate an email sign-up sheet and distribute it to those people who sign up.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites are Intro to Logic (730:201 or a higher level logic course) and two other courses in philosophy. If you have not satisfied those prerequisites and have not already received special permission to take the course, please see me after the first class meeting.

Requirements

In accordance with the University policy that states that students are expected to attend all classes, class attendance is required. If you expect to miss any classes for any reason whatsoever, please use the University absence reporting website. An email is automatically sent to me, so you needn’t inform me directly of your expectation that you will miss a class. Nevertheless, if you miss a class (or classes), you should discuss the absence with me immediately after the first class meeting that you return. If you don’t, the absence will not be excused.

There will be two papers plus a final take-home exam. Each is worth 200 points. In addition, there will be at least six surprise quizzes. Each is worth 25 points and the best four (4) will count towards your final point total. Thus, there is a total of 700 possible points. A bonus of up to 25 points can be added for class participation; also, you will lose 25 points for each unexcused class absence beyond the first one. That is, you have one “free” absence.

Grade equivalents

Using a 200 point scale, the grade equivalences are:

  • $A \ge 180$
  • $B+ = 170 – 179$
  • $B = 160 – 169$
  • $C+ = 150 – 159$
  • $C = 140 – 149$
  • $D = 120 – 139$
  • $F \le 119$

Surprise Quizzes

There will be at least six surprise quizzes. The quizzes will be on the reading assigned for the day of the quiz. There are no make-up surprise quizzes, but none will be given on religious holidays. Typically, they will be of this general form:

  1. State as carefully as you can X’s argument that y and
  2. State what do you take to be the best objection to X’s view (regardless of whether you endorse the objection).

During the quiz you may consult any notes you have taken on the reading(s) but you may not consult the reading itself. The quiz will be given at the beginning of the class and will last ONLY 20 minutes. Thus, if you are 5 minutes late to class, you will have only 15 minutes to complete the quiz. If you have scored 25 points on four surprise quizzes, you need not take any more of them.

Papers

No late papers will be accepted unless something you could not have anticipated prevented you from getting it to me. “The printer didn’t work” and “my hard drive crashed” are not a legitimate reasons for papers being late because those things happen often enough to require some backup plan. If you miss a class on the day that the paper is due because of a religious holiday or University sponsored event, please make sure that either someone else hands in the paper for you or it is put in my mailbox (basement of Seminary 1) before the class (the building closes at 4:30.).

All papers must be typed, double-spaced (with a 12 point font, and inch margins) and free of grammatical/spelling errors. If there are more than two such errors on any given page, the paper will be returned to you for correction and it will automatically lose ten (10) points. I urge you to get some help in proof reading your papers. (The word “argument” has just one “e.” It is a sacred word!)All papers (including the take home final) must employ some standard reference form for footnotes and bibliography. Here’s a good websiteEvery paper and every answer on the final exam must have a thesis. The first sentence of the paper (or exam question) MUST state the thesis and begin as follows: “The purpose of this paper (answer) is to… First, I will… Second, I will … etc … Finally,I will…” Papers and answers to questions on the final that do not begin that exact way will lose twenty (20) points. Please use words like “therefore” and “hence” with great caution. This is not a thesis: “The purpose of this paper is to explore . . .” These are theses: “The purpose of this paper is to show that . . .” “The purpose of this paper is to defend the claim that . . .” “The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that . . .” Please do not use the expression “I feel that . . .” to express what you believe to be true; use “I believe that . . .” Of course, “I feel warm” is fine but “I feel that Descartes is right” is not.

A title for your paper that encapsulates your thesis is required. The paper may be on any essay that we have read up to the point that the paper is due as long as it is not a second paper on the same essay that was discussed in your first paper. No BS is allowed. What you would not say to a thoughtful roommate you should not write in a philosophy paper. Don’t make claims that you cannot substantiate with good, generally available, and acknowledged evidence that you have examined carefully. For most of us that means we should not make claims about Einstein’s relativity theory, the Higgs boson, Darwin’s account of the transmission of traits, or properties of infinitely large sets. Always give examples of universal or partial generalizations. So, if you claim that all/some people act only out of self-interest, give some examples to show that it is a universal or widely distributed property.Finally, writing a philosophy paper is a way of discovering what you ought to think, not a way of describing what you thought before you began writing the paper. Have fun with the ideas! The truth is not always the first or second or third thing that pops into your head. Unexamined thoughts aren’t worth having – to (mis)appropriate what Socrates said in the Apology [38a].

Plagiarism

Academic communities depend upon academic integrity, and a necessary condition of your having academic integrity is that the work you represent as yours is, in fact, yours. You MUST indicate when and to what extent you have relied upon anyone else’s texts or ideas. That being said, I encourage you to form study groups.

Disabilities

If you have a learning disability (I have dyslexia, so I know what that’s like), please see me and we can make some appropriate arrangements.

Office and Office Hours

I strongly encourage you to come to my office to discuss the readings, your papers, the class lectures/discussions with me. I will have regularly scheduled office hours on M and W from 4:30-6:00 in room 207, Seminary 3, but I could meet you at other times if you have a class during the regularly scheduled office hours. To set up an appointment, please email me at: pdklein@rci.rutgers.edu. I ask that you set up an appointment (even during the regular hours) so that you don’t have to spend too much time waiting and so that I can unlock the front door to let you into Seminary 3 (which closes at 4:30).

Materials for the Course

There are two books to buy: Epistemology: New Essays, ed. Quentin Smith, (Oxford University Press, 2008); Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, ed. Matthais Steup and Ernest Sosa, (Blackwell Publishing, 2005). BOTH are in paperback.

Schedule of Assignments

Date Assignments
1/23 Introduction to the Course, Gettier Problem (handout)
1/28 E, Kornblith, 5-23
1/30 2nd meeting on Kornblith
2/4 3rd meeting on Kornblith
2/6 E, Klein, 25-61 (Group 1 papers due)
2/11 2nd meeting on Klein
2/13 3rd meeting on Klein
2/18 E, Goldman, 63-82 (Group 2 papers due)
2/20 2nd meeting on Goldman
2/25 3rd meeting on Goldman
2/27 E, Conee and Feldman, 83-104 (Group 3 papers due)
3/4 2nd meeting on Conee and Feldman
3/6 3rd meeting on Conee and Feldman
3/11 C, Klein/Ginet, 131-156 (Group 4 papers due)
3/13 2nd meeting on Klein/Ginet
SPRING BREAK
3/25 3rd meeting on Klein/Ginet
3/27 E, Sosa, 121-136 (Group 2 papers due)
4/1 2nd meeting on Sosa
4/3 3rd meeting on Sosa
4/8 C, Dretske/Hawthorne, 13-46 (Group 3 papers due)
4/10 2nd meeting on Dretske/Hawthorne
4/15 3rd meeting on Dretske/Hawthorne
4/17 C, Vogel/Fumerton, 72-97 (Group 4 papers due)
4/22 2nd meeting on V ogel/Fumerton
4/24 3rd meeting on V ogel/Fumerton
4/29 C, Conee/Cohen, 47-71 (Group 1 papers due)
5/1 2nd meeting on Conee/Cohen (final exam distributed)
5/6 3rd meeting on Conee/Cohen

Final Exam

The final exam is a take-home exam, due in the Undergraduate Philosophy Department Office in 1 Seminary Place on 5/13 by 3 p.m. (Sharp!). The exam will be distributed on 5/1. You may not talk with anyone about it until after 3 p.m. on 5/13. You may consult any written material you wish in preparing your answer(s), but be sure to make clear the extent to which you have relied upon the work of others. (Please re-read the section on plagiarism in the syllabus.) Note: If you have 450 points (not including class participation, but including absences) prior to the final exam, you do not have to take it. You will be assigned an “A” for the course. (If you do take it and your total points are less than 624, you will not be assigned an “A.”)

September 4th, 2013 The Gettier Problem

What’s Gettier’s main point?

  • JTB is not complete because there are cases where JTB isn’t knowledge.
    • JTB is not sufficient for knowledge.
  • What he’s after is, … how does he argue for it?
    • One strategy he is uses is describing cases where you have justification and belief and (by accident) truth. > Yeah, Jones/Smith has a JTB, but he does not have > knowledge.
  • To know that p is to know everything about the concepts of p.
    • To know that Kp you probably need to have the concepts of K, “knowledge.”
    • Therefore, if you don’t know about knowing you can’t know (?).
  • Look at the simple justification closure principle.
    • Counterexamples?

September 9th, 2013 Reading, ‘Knowledge Needs No Justification’, Hilary Kornblith

The Standard View, that knowledge is justified true belief plus something else. JTB+

  • Internalists argue that a feature of belief in virtue of which it is justified must, in some sense, be internal to the person that holds it.
    • Externalists deny this.
  • Reliabalists think that justification comes from reliable belief-forming processes, reliably leading to truth.
  • Goldman rejected justification in ‘A Causal Theory of Knowing’.
    • He has said little in writing about this.
    • In “A Causal Theory of Knowing”, Goldman argued that knowledge of p is nothing more than true belief caused by the fact that p.

2. Dialectical conceptions of justification

  • Justification is seen as a matter of the ability to present arguments in support of one’s beliefs.
  • In the case of scientific communities, the ability to respond to arguments from one’s community may be central to one’s knowledge.
  • Note that not all communities are like this, for instance astrologers with tea leaves.
    • The scientific community is highly idiosyncratic.
  • If justification is identified with the ability to respond to socially available challenges, then justification is not a necessary condition for knowledge.
  • If justification is identified with the process of reflecting on one’s beliefs, then justification is not a necessary condition for knowledge.

The dialectical conception of justification, whether in its social form-which requires an ability to justify one’s beliefs to one’s community-or in its more individualist form-which requires that one be in a position to justify one’s beliefs to oneself, does not present us with a plausible necessary condition on knowledge.

3. Objective conceptions of justification

  • While objective standards for justification do not suffer from the same trouble of being arbitrary that dialectical ones do, Kornblith thinks that the more objective you make the standards, the less plausible it is that these standards of justification.
  • Consider probabilistic standards.
    • It’s widely implausible that any agent can compute the crazy complicated independent and dependent conjunctions and disjunctions of propositions and their probability.
    • So it’s a little weird to impose standards that are unachievable.
  • There will always be a gap between the actual reliability of a process and the perceived reliability of a process, and so this is no grounds for justicational objectivity.

4. Conclusion

  • Failure to meet the standards of justification, either dialectical or objective, is evidence that one does not know.
    • But it is not a necessary condition.
  • Failure to meet the standards for justification deprives one of knowledge even if justification is not a necessary condition for knowledge.
    • Consider Jack, who has a lucky guess belief that is true which he thinks is knowledge.
    • When ask to satisfy the standards of his community, he will be unable to and will give up on his knowledge claim.
    • When made to satisfy his own standards, he will be unable to and thus no longer believe it.
    • It’s no longer knowledge.

September 9th, 2013 1st Meeting on Kornblith

  • Descartes thinks that knowledge needs to be indubitable.
  • Moore says “he knows that he has a hand,” and so if any theory attests he doesn’t, it’s a bad theory.
    • It’s because he knows that he has a hand more than he knows your theory of knowledge.
  • You can tether a belief to truth with justification.
    • Gettier said this wasn’t good enough because you can have a justified true belief that isn’t knowledge.
      • Gettier cases do not entail the proposition which is false.
  • Here are two ways of talking about justification.
    • Defeasiblility theory.
    • Reliabalism.
  • There are two ways of solving Gettier.
    • Ramping up evidence.
    • Add a causal condition.
    • Neither challenge justification.
  • Kornblith shows that justification isn’t a necessary condition of knowledge, his formulation.
  • Read carefully footnote 24.

September 11th, 2013 2nd Meeting on Kornblith

  • Starting with AJ Ayer and Alvin Goldman, what tied truth to belief was reliable process.
    • You might offer as reasons for belief an absolutely terrible reason.
      • You might still know it if the belief was formed by a reliable process.
    • You might provide fallacious reasoning, but if the all the processes you used reliably produce truth, then you know.
    • Here’s a case where the traditions will come apart:
      • Think of the gypsie fortune teller who can predict the winner of the horse race.
      • And they can predict the next one. And the next one. And over and over again.
      • They don’t know that they can get it right, but they believe it.
      • They think knowledge is a property that many other animals have.
      • Knowledge is a representational state.
      • The gypsie fortune-teller knows because the representation
      • Does that mean our epistemic evaluation of the fortune-teller and the horse-race-scientist with rational reasons has to be the same? Not better?
  • Supervinience is when a set of properties A supervenes on a set B if and only if a change in the set of A properties implies a change in the set of B properties.
  • Types of justification
    • Doxastic justification is the belief state of justification actualized.
      • This is what reliabilists are interested in.
    • Propositional justification is the belief state of justification potentially.
  • Arguements on paper or dialetical arguments
    • Public (community)
      • Epistemic communities
      • Contextualism
    • Private
      • Cartesian
      • Foley

September 16th, 2013 3rd Meeting on Kornblith

  • Argument:
    1. There are only x levels of justification.
    2. None of the x levels of justification are necessary for knowledge.
    3. Therefore, justification is not necessary for knowledge.
  • There are two forms of justification for Kornblith:
    1. Objective.
    2. Subjective, of which there are:
      1. Public, of where there are:
        1. Contextualist
        2. Equal?
      2. Private
  • Galileo had knowledge but did not satisfy the requirements of the community.
    • Your community can have totally kooky reasons for believing what they do.
    • So you can have knowledge without satisfying their requirements.
  • The contextualist account of justification.
    • It’s that the standards for justification vary based on context.
    • Suppose I say, along with Keith DeRose and Stewart Cohen, has this example:
      • Consider a case A where a husband and wife are driving their car and the husband said, “I’d like to deposit this cheque in the bank.”
      • “How is the bank open?”
      • “It was open last Saturday, and I think I remember seeing a sign.”
      • The person knew, therefore? We count this as knowledge.
      • Now suppose the same case, but Klein is the person who has to deposit the cheque and it is absolutely crucial that Klein get it in, otherwise Klein will lose his house, money, etc.
      • It’s important to see what contextualists mean, S knows that p.
        • “Know” is attributor relative, where it is like “here”, “now”, “I”, “we.”
        • Attributor relative something reflexive …
    • Suppose Klein has very high standards, close to the Cartesian, and he says that you don’t know unless you can eliminate all standards for doubt.
      • Hume says the only way to avoid doubts, ignore the doubts of philosophers.
  • Closure where h = “I have a hand.”
    1. If S knows that h, then S knows that there is no evil genius making S falsely believe that h.
      • I disagree, because it is possible that S can know that h and S can falsely believe h. How? Because if the evil genius made S believe that h and h were actually true, it would be an instance of falsely believing despite being true. How? Because the belief that h would violate the norms of believing.
      • I think this argument may be abusing “believing falsely” by making it seem like the only way to do that is to believe something that is false. I think it’s confusing because of perspective. Replace “belief” with “know”, perhaps?
      • Yes. It is not necessarily true that if S knows that h, then S doesn’t falsely believe, because what the consequent should be is falsely know that h.
    2. S doesn’t know that there is not an evil genius.
      • This means you have to be able to defeat all other cases.
    3. Therefore, S doesn’t know that h.

September 18th, 2013 Reading, ‘Useful False Beliefs’, Peter Klein

  • Purpose: Examine the role of false beliefs in the production of knowledge.

Key notions

  1. Propositional vs. Doxastic justification.
    • Propositions are the contents of beliefs.
    • S can be propositionally justified and not believe p.
  2. Causal and evidential overdetermination
    • An event or state is causally overdetermined if and only if it has at least two actual causes of which, in the actual circumstances, acted as a sufficient cause to produce the state or event.
    • A proposition p is evidentially overdetermined for S if and only if there exists at least two independent bases available for S each of which is sufficient to propositionally justify p.

      E(S) ⇔ ∃ e1e2(JSp) ∧ e1 ≠ e2

  3. Knowledge
    • S‘s doxastically justified, true belief falls short of being knowledge if S felicitously acquired the true belief on the basis of part of the relevant evidence when some other part of the evidence, if combined with the evidence S did acquire, defeats the justification.
    • S inferentially knows that h if and only if:
      1. h is true;
      2. S believes that h;
      3. S‘s belief that h is inferred from and doxastically justified by another belief, say the belief that e, which is doxastically justified.
      4. There is no genuine defeater of the propositional justification of any of the propositions in the evidential path up to and including e, and there is no genuine defeater of the propositional justification of any proposition between e and h.

A review of Gettier

  • Two Gettier principles:
  1. Fallibilism: A person, S, can be doxastically justified in believing a proposition, p, and p can be false.
  2. Closure: If a person, S, is doxastically justified in believing a proposition, p, and p entails q, and S comes to believe that q on the basis of deducing it from p, then S is doxastically justified in believing that p.

Examples and prelimnary discussion of useful falsehoods

  1. The Appointment Case
    • Klein believes that his secretary told him on Friday that he has an appointment with a student on Monday.
    • Klein does have an appointment with his student on Monday.
    • His secretary told him on Thursday, however.
    • There is an available, undefeated, propositional evidential chain for the belief that Klein has an appointment on Monday, but Klein took an evidential path which contained a false proposition.
  2. The Santa Claus Case
    • Mom and Dad tell Virginia that Santa will put presents under the tree.
    • She infers that there will be presents under the tree.
    • There will be presents under the tree. The intuition is that, therefore, she knows!
  3. The Average Rainfall Case
    • Weatherman believes that the average annual precipitation in Northwest Montana is about 13 inches.
    • He believes this on the grounds that there have been accurate records for over 80 years, and 13 inches is what they say.
    • The average rainfall is 13 inches, but records have only been kept for 79 years.
    • He knows.
  4. The Ptolemaic Astronomer Case
    • In Oxford University in astronomy class, the best Ptolemaic astronomer taught students to calculate the relative positions of planets with the Ptolemaic model.
    • The Professor asks students whether Mars will be visible in 800 years from now, assuming Mars and Earth exist and visibility is good.
    • The students accurately determine whether Mars will be visible, say the answer is yes.
    • They know.

The proposed characterization of useful falsehoods

  • The belief that uf is a useful falsehood to S for acquiring knowledge that h by producing a doxastically justified belief that h if and only if:
    1. uf is false;
      • Analytically required that uf must be false.
    2. The belief that uf is doxastically justified for S;
      • An instance of the general requirement that doxastic justification which depends on another beliefs requires that belief to be doxastically justified.
    3. The belief that uf is essential in the causal production of the belief that h;
      • Analytically contained in the notion of a useful falsehood that justifies h, since such falsehoods, unlike the so-called harmless ones, are essential in producing doxastically justified beliefs.
    4. uf propositionally justifies h;
      • Follows from the general account of doxastic justification given earlier. One consequence of that account is that, if the belief that uf doxastically justifies the belief that h, then uf propositionally justifies h.
    5. uf entails a true proposition t;
    6. t propositionally justified h;
      • This might look redundant, but it isn’t because it isn’t necessarily true for all cases, isn’t generally true about justification.
    7. Whatever doxastically justifies the belief that uf for S also propositionally justified t for S.

Though there is a genuine (justification-precluding) defeater in the justificatory path taken by the agent, there is no genuine defeater along the path not taken.

September 18th, 2013 1st Meeting on Klein

Some background

  • What most people think Gettier showed was that JTB was not sufficient for knowledge, not that they were not necessary.
    • A lot of people thought that this may mean there is another condition, and the first attempt was evidentialism.
    • The way that epistemologists initially attempted to solve this way by beefing up the justification condition.
    • The recipe is find a false belief your justified in, find a true proposition that it entails, using closure.
      • This belief will be true and justified which you believe on the basis of the deduction from a false justified belief.
  • Clark grants that JTB is not sufficient, and the way that he solves the Gettier problem is by saying the proposition that you use as evidence must be a JTB for you.
    • If you get to the evidence or belief by chains of inference, they must all be true.
    • It must be fully-grounded, if there is something false in there, it will be “lucky break” that you had a JTB.
    • This is the first evidentialist approach.

Evidentialism

  • Disjunctive normal form: {a, b, c, d. . . x}:

    ∃ *x**F(x) ≡ F(a) ∨ *F(b) ∨ F(*c*) ∨ . . .

  • Michael Clark came up with a case where you have justified, true, belief that whose basis is good and you still do not have knowledge.
    • Klein comes to believe that Ben owns a Ford.
    • As it turns out, Ben stole the Ford.
    • He has a valid-looking title, and there’s testimony that he bought it, etc.
    • Klein comes to believe that someone in the class owns a Ford on the basis that Ben owns a Ford.
    • As it turns out, someone does own a Ford in the class, but clearly not Ben.
    • Imagine that Klein is epistemically careful, a careful reasoner. He notes that it’s more likely that someone owns a Ford, and that the belief is less likely to be wrong, less risky.
      • This clever reasoner did not make use of any false belief.
  • Consider another case: Klein has good evidence that Ben and Sherri own a Ford. Ben does not, Sherri does. Klein believes on these grounds that “someone owns a Ford.”
    • This is epistemically overdetermined, having two ways to get to the same belief, one false, one true, and still knowledge.
  • You can always fix a theory which is supposedly defeated by a counterexample by just ad-hoc ruling out the counter-example. But it’s just that, it’s ad-hoc.
    • So evidentialism was supposed to not work (for now).

Defeasibility

  • Many people think that defeasibility theory is part of the evidentialist tradition.
    • The expression “defeasibility” comes from ethics.
  • Say E is the set of all evidence, for and against, a proposition p.
  • e is the set of evidence which justifies S in believing p. Notation: *e**JSp*
  • A good definition takes the cases where almost it’s almost universally thought someone has knowledge and validates it, where it’s almost universally thought someone doesn’t and validates it, and where it’s almost universally vague and clarifies it and why it’s vague.

Reliablism

  • There can be misleading evidence, so defeasibility eliminates too much.
    • The simple defensibility theory isn’t good, that, looks too strong.
    • Many people thought that defeasibility didn’t work.
    • There was an alternatively available, which fit really nicely with naturalized epistemology.
  • Some people think that if you want to know what knowledge is, you shouldn’t sit in your EZ chair and thinking about.
    • Just like if you want to figure out what gold is, you go study gold things.
    • If you want to study knowledge, go become a cognitive scientist or psychologist.
    • Knowledge is the end of a process, go and study the process!
  • The first shot was Alvin Goldman’s paper, ‘A Causal Theory of Knowledge.’
    • Knowledge happens in the brain, in the mind.
    • Knowledge, therefore, has a certain causal genealogy.
    • The object has to be in the causal history of the belief.
    • Suppose I look outside the window and I believe there will be rain in ten minutes. That belief cannot be caused by the rain in the ten minutes because the causal chain isn’t temporally there yet.
  • Sometimes this is called internalist, where evidentialists and defeasibility theorists are called externalists.
  • Barn facade case:
    • Supose you’re going through phony barn country.
    • A hurricane has come through upper Vermont, but people come for the barns.
    • The tourist agency think that this will destroy the industry, so they put up facades.
    • You’re going through the country, and you see the 1 real barn.
    • The barn is appropriately caused, it’s justified true belief, but the intuition is that it is not knowledge.

September 23rd, 2013 2nd Meeting on Klein

  • The recipe for Gettier cases is having a false, justified that entails a true belief, and you have an accident!
    • The general view is that Gettier basically shows that there cannot be a useful falsehood.
    • The way you work out what is essential evidence is dropping it from the set of evidence justifying a belief, and if it no longer justifies the belief, it was essential. If it still justifies, it’s a harmless falsehoods.
  • You are entitled to believe a proposition if and only if you believe the proposition on the grounds of the propositions which reliably get that proposition on the grounds of the evidence.
    • You’re doxasticly entitled to a belief if the propositional evidence justifies you.

September 25th, 2013 3rd Meeting on Klein

  • The initial response to the Gettier literature was the no false grounds view, where every justifier cannot be false.
    • This will not be enough because of the clever reasoner knows that “someone owns a Ford” from “Nogot owns a Ford”, and as it turns out “Havit owns a Ford” and Havit is someone.
      • False grounds, true justified belief, knowledge.
      • The clever reasoner is careful and is less likely to be wrong with the someone clause.
      • This gets rid of this conditions necessity.
    • Cases of epistemic overdetermination will show that it isn’t even sufficient.
  • Most foundationalists who are reliablists think that there are basic proposition and beliefs which justify all other propositions and beliefs.
  • An essential falsehood is when if you remove it, you can no longer be justified in believing truth.
  • If you’re stuck on a long paper and you’ve found an objection, instead of giving up on the paper, just counter it and clench victory from the jaws of the philosophical community.
  • The problem of useful falsehoods is a problem for evidentialists, defeasibility theorists, and reliablists.
    • The generality problem for reliablists is an instance of many different processes.
      • For reliablists, they have to say that useful falsehoods are part of a reliable process, whereas harmful falsehoods are not. So there’s a way out!
    • For defeasibility, there is the distinction between genuine and misleading defeaters a la Grabit and Grabit’s brother.

September 30th, 2013 Reading, ‘Immediate Justification and Process Reliablism’, Alvin Goldman

Introduction

  • Is there a species of prima facie justification that is immediate, direct, basic, or foundational?
    • It is puzzling whether and how immediate justification could arise.
    • This is the core issue for foundationalists and coherentists.
    • An older conception is that some beliefs are self-justifying, that they do not need anything else to justify them but themselves.
      • This is no longer very popular.
  • In general, there are justifying factors that are doxastic and propositional, where propositional does not presuppose that the agent actually believe the target justifying factor and doxastic does.
  • There are three central questions:
    1. Is there a species of justification that is immediate, direct, or basic?
      • Are some beliefs made justified in virtue of states of affairs or processes that confer justification without themselves being justified?
    2. If yes, how is immediate justification conferral possible?
      • What is wrong with the arguments against unjustified justifiers.
    3. Assuming that these arguments are invalid, what types of states or processes can serve as immediate justification?
  • Must the unjustified justifiers themselves be contentful? Three possible answers:
    1. Immediate justifiers are contentful for the agent.
    2. Immediate justifiers are non-contentful.
    3. They can be either.

Feldman’s proposal A proper response to experience

Being spontaneously formed makes a belief immediately justified.

  • This is quickly rejected with an alternative with an addendum of “proper response to experience”

A spontaneously formed belief is justified provided it is a proper response to experience and is not defeated by other evidence the believer has.

September 30th, 2013 1st Meeting on Goldman

  • Suppose there is some belief Bp.
    • “Belief is true” -> propositional content
    • “She had the belief” -> belief state
    • “Justified belief”
      • Could mean the believing is justified. “You’re not justified to that state“
      • The content of the state, “You don’t have good enough evidence” or “You have good evidence but there’s this opposing view.”
  • When Goldman talks about coherentism,
    • You could talk about self-justified beliefs
    • If you’re familiar with Aristotle you’ll see the epistemic regress is part of a lot of regresses that Aristotle wanted to avoid.
  • What is the traditional view? Crude Aristotle.
    • Suppose you say, here’s a substance. It can have two types of properties:
      1. Essential properties, it is necessary that the substance have this property. If it loses it, it is no longer that substance.
      2. Accidental properties, it acquires and loses this property.
  • Coherentism
    • Bad form, circular reasoning
    • Better form

October 9th, 2013 1st Meeting on Conee & Feldman

  • Suppose you’re driving along, and you see what you take to be what is someone walking through a brick wall.
    • Well, you’re prima facie justified in believing that that person is walking through the wall, but you’re not going to think you have ultima facie justification.
    • It can be quickly overruled.

Why when geese fly why is it that one leg is longer than the other?

More geese.

  • There are direct realists and indirect realists
    • Direct realists think that the basic propositions in foundational justification are states of affairs,
      • “There are tables.”
      • Claim about physical objects.
    • Indirect realists
      • Direct, non-inferential knowledge of objects.
      • I’m not just aware of ideas, I can infer there are physical objects with constant properties.
    • Idealists
      • This is not “‘ideal’-ist”, it is “‘idea’-ist.”
      • The only things that exists are ideas and collections of ideas.
  • If you think of a mind of something like a room where all we see is something like images on the wall, like Plato’s cave, I could infer that these correspond to non mind-independent, but I do not necessarily.
    • How do I get out of mind?
  • What Huemer thinks is that if I am having a phenomenal experience, then I am entitled to the belief, and the belief is knowledge if the proposition is not overridden by other knowledge I have.
    • So this is where there is prima facie, “non-overriden.”
    • And then there is ultima facie, “undefeated.”
  • Goldman is saying that there is the belief, “I have a pain.”
    • Most people have taken this type of belief to be a basic belief.
    • If they’re like Huemer, also tables, because there are basic beliefs about the world and about internal mental states.
      • If indirect realism is correct there has to be a seeming that there is a pain distinct from having a pain.
  • Suppose you are just terrible at distinguishing a tickle from a pain, then you would, in some sense, could be wrong about how it seems to you.
    • You’re just terrible at classifying pains.
    • It’s propositional enough in the sense that you could say it about the seemings for the person going through the wall.
      • I’m not sure if you should categorize that as going through a wall or as a person.
    • There are people that believe they have pains that do not, psychological problems, etc.

October 14th, 2013 2nd Meeting on Conee & Feldman

  • Foundationalists think that there is a causal chain from basic beliefs to more complex beliefs.
    • They will try to explain how the belief is caused by evidence, or “the proposition.”
    • Suppose I believe something on basis of bad evidence, I do not know it. Suppose I come to believe it on good evidence, does the citing reasons and justification make you doxastically justifiers.
  • Decisions made by the Senate supervene on the votes of individual Senators.
    • If a legislation didn’t pass, it could

October 16th, 2013 ‘Experiential Justification’ by Anthony Brueckner

  • The topic is justification and perceptual beliefs.
  • The most attractive view of perceptual justification is that perceptual beliefs are justified in virtue of their relation to propositional-content-bearing experiences.

Perception Beliefs and Theories of Justification

  • At first pass, perceptual beliefs are beliefs that are caused by perceptual experiences. Though this is too narrow and too wide because:
    1. Seeing a red cup can cause the belief that 2 + 3 = 5
    2. Wide, because hallucinations
  • Characterizing it in terms of propositions is problematic because the belief with content that a red cup is present could well be caused in multifarious ways.
  • Some questions:
    1. Do perceptual beliefs amount to knowledge?
    2. When, if ever, are perceptual beliefs justified?
      • How are they justified?
    3. In virtue of what are justified perceptual beliefs justified?
  • Theories of justification:
    • Coheretism, justified beliefs depend for their justification upon their relations to other beliefs.
      • Pure coherentism is all justified beliefs being justified in relation to other beliefs.

An application of the Foregoing Categorization

  • Williamson thinks that “E = K”, that one’s knowledge is equal to what one evidentially believes.
    • Experiences are never justifiers for one’s perceptual beliefs because experiences are obviously not believed propositions.
  • Then, Williamson has two options:
    1. Adopt that foundational beliefs are justified without justifiers.
    2. A version of coherentism.
  • Coherentism is not explored in Knowledge and its Limits, so Williamson’s view is undetermined.

Experiential Justification

  • Returning to foundationalism, how do perceptual experiences justify perceptual beliefs?
    • Perhaps the belief is caused by the experience and the experience is cause by the thing in itself.
      • This leaves no rational for holding that perceptual beliefs caused by illusory experiences.

Beliefs have propositional content, while perceptual representations have non-propositional content. Both states can be veridical: beliefs are veridical when their propositional truth conditions are satisfied; perceptual experiences are veridical when their non-propositional correctness conditions are satisfied (as we find in the cases of good maps and accurate photographs).

  • If an experience has a propositional content, as does a belief, then the experience is to that degree belief-like.

Pryor

If you’re to have justification for believing p on the basis of certain experiences or grounds E, then for every q which is “bad” relative to E and p, you have to have antecedent justification for believing q to be false-justification which doesn’t rest on or presuppose any E-based justification you may have for believing p. (p. 531)

October 16th, 2013 3rd Meeting on Connee/Feldman

A Note on Method From the Syllabus

What is the thesis (sometimes a compound one) in the essay? What are the main steps in arguing for the thesis? What are some plausible objections to the steps? Did the author fairly represent and adequately respond to objections? What is your view about the soundness of the author’s arguments?

Fallacy of Misplaced Necessity

  1. Bachelors are necessarily unmarried.
  2. John is a bachelor. Therefore, c) John cannot marry.
Necessary(If it's been raining two hours, the ground is wet)
!=
If it's been raining two hours, necessary(the ground is wet)

October 21st, 2013 Is Infinitism the Solution to the Regress Problem?

On Connee/Feldman

  • Most moral principle are defeasible.
    • “Don’t lie.” Well, the Nazis are the door …
    • “Keep promises.” Well, your friend loaned you a gun, and they’re in no state to have a gun.
    • These are called “rules of thumb.” Where the rule of thumb was that an inch is roughly the length of a thumb.
  • The way to solve the Gettier problem for deafisbility theorist is:

    K = JTB + E = *e**Jsp = (e ∧ *d)¬Js*p*

  • If knowledge is sometimes vague, that doesn’t mean knowledge is always vague.

The Regress Problem

The phrase “I suspend judgement” we adopt in place of I am unable to say which of the objects presented I should believe or which I should disbelieve. As to whether we are equal we cannot say. … Neither affirms nor denies anything.

  • He’s not saying an “ought to suspend,” because that’s a dogmatic claim.

I determine nothing, to put forward something not evident. We hold that to determine is not simply to. For in this sense no doubt we will be found a skeptic determines nothing, not even the expression that nothing is determinable.

  • The problem with Pyrhonnian skepticism. Here’s how they solve it:
  • The modes were meant to form suspension on judgment.
  • The Platonic skeptics thought the Pyrrohnian skeptics were dogmatic because the conclusions would be “I don’t know.”, whereas they concluded, “I don’t know if I know.”

October 28rd, 2013 Ginet’s Response to Klein

  • “Klein has confused being able to answer questions about justifiedness with the state of being justifiedness.”
    • Fred doesn’t have to be able to do this in order to be justified. It’s not about the justification, it’s about how justification arises.
    • The fact about justification is that it arises in a foundational way.
  • On a priori beliefs, on pg. 142, Ginet will say, > The fact that he understands it is his justification > for believing it, because that fact entails his believing > it.
    • Merely understanding that “5 + 3 = 9” is not sufficient for have a JTB. Does merely understanding do it?
    • My understanding is that “5 + 4 = 9” and this implies that “5 + 3 = 9” is false.
      • So what’s the difference between understanding and understanding it’s true.
      • “I understand what it means for x to be true.”
  • Many people think that suppose I want to argue that arguing for something is a good way to show that it’s true.
    • “Arguing is a good way to show something is true. Give me reasons and inferences and deductions.”
    • Suppose someone argues that, “Reason to the best explanation is the best explanation for how to get the truth or something.”
      • This is not typical circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is when the conclusion of an argument is contained in the premises from which the conclusion was argued.
      • Begging the question has to do with the form of the argument.
    • “What’s the best way to argue for something?” Suppose Klein responds, “W1“, well what’s the best way for arguing for that? “W2“, well why aren’t you giving me your best way?
      • If my practice is going to be consistent with my belief, I have to use my best way, which isn’t way 2, it’s way 1. If you ask for the best way and I use it, you cannot be mad, because if I were to use another way, you would say why didn’t I use my way?
      • I’m not assuming the proposition I’m trying to prove, the proposition I’m trying to prove is about the method I use to prove it.

October 30th, 2013 ‘Skeptical and Perceptual Knowledge’ by Ernest Sosa

  • Dreams pose a deeper problem than that a BIV or EDD
    • In what follows Sosa takes up this paradox.
    • First, a heterodox conception of dreams.
    • Second, a resolution based on a conception of knowlege as apt belief.

Varieties of skepticism

  • There are many forms.
    • The Pyrrhonian suspends judgment using tropes that counter any reasons offered in favor of belief.
    • The Academic are more assertive, by claiming that we know nothing
      • In general or some large department of common sense or science.
    • Any attempt to refute this claims will beg the question.
      • Using implicit claims of the realm in general.
  • Irrefutable does not mean true.
    • If refuting such a skeptic requires adducing some premise, to do which is implictly claim knowledge of its truth, so we’re bound to beg the question.
  • Such varieties of skepticism are less problematic than the variety of main interest to Sosa.
    • At the heart of common sense, our skeptic claims to find a commitment that precludes knowledge
      • Either in general or in some main department.
    • According to this commitment, a belief can only amount to knowledge if it is sensitive.
      • Which means had its contents been false, then it would not have been believed by the believer.

Skepticism, sensitivity, and safety

  • If a sensitivity requirement is indeed at the core of common sense, it puts the skeptic in a good position.
    • Belief that one is not radicallt misled turns out to be insensitive.
    • Radical scenarios are constructed to secure this result.
Basis-relative sensitivity
A belief constitutes knowledge if and only if had it been false, then the believer would not have held it on the same basis on which he actually holds it.
  • This is not helpful unless we externalize perceptual bases for belief.
    • Had its content been false, then trivially, it ould not have been a factive basis, since any such basis has to be veridical.
  • However, consider a normal perceiver and a counterpart BIV.
    • Deprived of factive perception, a BIV must bases their justified beliefs on something more internal than that.
  • The appeal to perceptual states falls short in resolving the skeptical paradox because when one seens a white surface illuminated with red light, one is justified in taking the surface to be red, provided one has no reason to suspect the quality of the light.
Basis-relative safety
A belief cannot consitute knowledge if the believer might too easily have so believed on the same basis while his belief was false.
In order to know one must believe on a certain basis, possibly the null basis, where so believing on such a basis has a strong enough tendancy to be right.
  • Safety does not serve the skeptic as does sensitivity.
    • Belief that one is not radically deceived is insnsitive, but a belief can be safe despite being insensitive.

Why the dream scenario is special

  • Our line of reasoning is effect against the usual run of radical skeptical scenarious, such as BIV, EDD, and the Matrix.
    • Only the dream scenario stands apart.
    • Dreams are so common that the possibility one dreams is not outlandish.
      • Therefore, I cannoy defend the safety of my belief that I am awake by adducing how remote is the possibility that I go wrong in so believing.
  • There are those who defend common sense against the sensitivity- weilding skeptic by rejecting closure.
    • Even if we do not know ourselves to be free of radical scenarios, we can still know of hands and fires.
      • This has very implausible consequences.
    • And this strategy could not be used against the safety-weilding skeptic.
      • He can use the dream scenario for a direct attack on ordinary perceptual beliefs.
    • Take a belief that one sees a hand, or a fire.
      • Too easily might one form such a belief on its usual experiential basis, while only dreaming.
      • So it is not a safe belief.
      • This does not depend on closure.
  • This is why the dream scenario has a distinctive important by comparision with the familiar radical scenarios.
    • It is not outlandish
    • It threatens our perceptual beliefs directly.
      • “Not by way of closure.”
  • That does require an orthodox conception of dreams.
    • According to which, beliefs and experiences hosted not only in the dream but also in actuality, while we dream.
      • Only thus would our ordinary perceptual beliefs be threatened by the possibility that we might same on the same experiential basis in a realistic dream.

Is that really how we should conceive of our dreams?

Dreams: The orthodox conception

  • Are dreams made up of conscious states just like those of waking life?
    • Orthodoxy: yes.
    • Orthodoxy: Dream states and waking states are thought to be instrinsically alike though different in cause and effects.
  • This is highly flawed.

Dreams-based skepticism stands out because the dream possibility is too close for comfort.

  • “Subjectively indistinguishable”
    • Too easily we might have been dreaming.
  • Fortuntely, the orthodoxly is not beyond question.

What are dreams made of?

  • Do the characters in our dreams have beliefs and intentions?
    • They do in general, but do I myself also have them as protagonist in my dream?
      • I do believe and intend things in my dream.
      • In my dream I, …
        1. Am concious;
        2. Assent to this or that.
        3. I judge
        4. I choose.
      • But does this really happen?
  • When something happens in my dream, reality tends to not follow suit.
    • When I am chased by a lion, it poses no threat to my skin.
    • What is in question is the inference from (In my dream I believe such and such) to (In actuality I so believe such and such).

November 4th, 2013 2nd Meeting on Sosa

  • Subjective conditional is not closed under the contrapositive.
  • Argument:
    1. Ksh → P(Ks¬BIV)
    2. ¬P(RsBIV)
    3. ∴ ¬Ksh

A Counter Argument to Modus Ponens

  • There are two Republics running, Reagen with 55%, Anderson with 10%
  • One Democratic candidate: Carter at 10%

The Way Nozick Deals with Skepticism

  • Take the claim that I have a hand.
  • Take the claim that I am just a BIV.

h → ¬BIV

  • If you didn’t have a hand, you wouldn’t believe you have a hand.

October 30th, 2013 1st Meeting on ‘Skeptical and Perceptual Knowledge’

  • An automatic door opener can register and is an accurate gauge of the world when the thing in question is of a certain size, at a certain speed, and from a certain distance.
    • Alvin Goldman would flesh this out with “process reliablism.”
      • Imagine a process in its whole history, if it’s only been used one and it got it or didn’t, is that enough?
      • A gauge is reliable if it tracks the facts, the “tracking account.”
  • Nozick thinks to know:
    1. $p$ must be true.
    2. $S$ must believe $p$.
    3. $\lnot p \rightarrowtail \lnot Bp$
    4. $p \rightarrowtail Bp$

November 13th, 2013 3rd Meeting on Dretske/Hawthorne

  1. $K_S A \land A \equiv B$
  2. $K_S (A \land B) \to K_S A \land K_S B$
    1. $A \to B$
    2. $A \to A$
    3. $A \to (A \land B)$
    4. $(A \land B) \to A$
    5. $A \to (A \land B) \land (A \land B) \to A)$
    6. $A \equiv (A \land B)$
  3. $K_S (A \land B) \to K_S B$

November 18th, 2013 Equivalence and the Distribution of Knowledge

  • There are going to be conjunctions that a subject knows but you do not know each conjunct.
    • Ex: “I have a headache and I am not a BIV.”
      • Dretske’s account is: $p$ on the basis of $r$ where $r$ is a conclusive reason for believing $p$.
$H$ $\land$ $\lnot$ BIV
F F T
T F F
F F F
T T T

To take skepticism seriously is not to seriously think you do not know you’re a BIV. You have to employ principles that correctly formulate knowledge.

November 25th, 2013

  • You have to add lines of code that account for modal truths, because otherwise it does not appear to be the case or something.
  • Virtues of theory:
    • Consistency
    • Simplicity
  • William Lyram
    • “Occam’s Razor”, Metaphilosophy
    • “Epistemic Value”,
  • The evidence chain: $$E \to H \to H \lor \lnot E$$

If I am justified in believing something, then I am entitled to use it for something else.

  • If $eJh$, what justifies me in believing not BIV is $h$ (not $e$!).
  • Argument:
    • Sally is a clever car theif in stealing car C
    • Sally, by being a clever car theif:
      • Garages it
      • Has friends that say she owns it
      • Has the title
    • You can have some evidence that can justify you in

December 2nd, 2013

Internal properties
A property of a mind.
External properties
A property of no mind.
Domestic skepticism
Take what we think knowledge is and what governs it. For example, this is a principle that describes what we thing knowledge is:

$$Kp \land (p \to q) \to K_{position_to} q$$

Domestic skepticism responds to knowledge on our everyday terms.

Appeals to our intuitions about what knowledge is
Exotic skepticism
Exotic skepticism defines knowledge and show that the definition is unsatisfiable.

December 4th, 2013 Reading on Contextualism with Connee/Cohen

Contextualism Contested (from Jennifer Nagel)[http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/~nageljen/333/]

Some terms have a content that is uncontroversially context-dependent: the truth-conditions of sentences involving these terms depends on their context of use.

Indexicals are the clearest examples. Terms like “I”, “he”, “you”, “here” and “tomorrow” pick out different things depending on the identity or location of the speaker. The sentence “I will be here tomorrow” might be true, if said by George in the Oval Office today and false, if said by Bob Dylan in Montreal yesterday. No contradiction arises here: what is said by the sentence varies with the context. A term like “I” has a single sense or meaning (= the person speaking) but refers to different individuals in different contexts.

Demonstratives like ‘this’ and ‘that’ are also context-sensitive.

Gradable adjectives like ‘tall’, ‘empty’, and ‘flat’ also seem to be context-sensitive. When you mention that someone is tall, it matters whether you are doing this evaluation in the context of a discussion of NBA players or seven-year-olds. (We’ve already seen in Dretske some discussion of ‘flat’ and ‘empty’ as terms that are supposed to be associated with a standard that varies across different contexts, and the related .)

Quantifiers like every are also often understood to have a scope determined by conversational context. You can say, “I cleaned everything up” or “Everyone was invited to the party” without implying that you cleaned everything in the universe or invited the entire population of the earth.

Note that you could be an invariantist about quantifiers, take every use of a quantifier to have an utterly unrestricted domain, and argue that most of the time we are using quantifiers loosely, so the person who says “I cleaned everything up” is saying some that is strictly speaking or literally false, like the person who says “I’m so hungry I could eat an ox.” The practical implications of the statement are what matter. One advantage of invariantism: the stickler who comes in and says, “No, you didn’t clean up *everything — * you didn’t clean up the dark side of the moon” is obviously an annoying person, but still seems to be saying something true. Contextualists have to say that the loose claim and the stickler’s rebuttal don’t really contradict each other, if the context has changed, but does this make sense of the stickler’s response?

According to Conee, epistemic contextualism arises as an attempt to make sense of a pattern of variation in how we attribute knowledge. We are confident about saying people know various things when stakes are low, and become gradually less confident when stakes are higher or hitherto unmentioned possibilities of error are made salient. There is a widespread inclination to start doubting that anyone knows anything when skeptical arguments are pressed.

Taking account of these patterns, you could think that (1) standards are fixed, and very high – so the man in the street is wrong to think he *knows *where has car is parked, or even whether he has hands; (2) standards are fixed and low – so you do know where your car is even if you’re not looking at it this instant, and people who start doubting that they know things when confronted by skeptical arguments are just making a mistake and should go ahead and assert that they know things, or (3) standards shift: the guy in the street is right to say he knows where his car is, because he remembers parking it on level P3, and the guy in the epistemology seminar is right to say that no one knows whether or not they have hands, since we can’t rule out the possibility that we are bodiless brains in a vat.

Conee argues that you could go for option (1) high standards, and explain our casual use of ‘knows’ by appeal to ‘loose talk.’

Conee thinks that even if option (3) explains our everyday use of ‘knows’, if we are interested in what *knowledge really is, *then we are always in a high- standards context when we are engaged in philosophical discussions of knowledge, so contextualism doesn’t tell us anything special about the nature of knowledge itself. All contextualism will do is tell us not to take too seriously data about casual ascriptions of knowledge, but that’s not a very surprising warning.

More seriously, Conee thinks that (3) doesn’t do justice to the worries of skepticism; the skeptic doesn’t want at the end of the day to be told, “You’re right. And the guy in the street who thinks he knows things is also right.”

Conee is also worried about our apparent lack of awareness of the shifts in truth-conditions for “knows”. Why?

Contextualism Defended (from Jennifer Nagel)[http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/~nageljen/333/]

The skeptical paradox

  1. I know that P.
  2. I do not know that not-H.
  3. I know that P only if I know that not-H.
  • Conclusions:
    1. (1), (2), and (3) all initially appear to be true.
    2. (1), (2), and (3) appear to be in conflict.
  • Low-standards invariantists think that (1) and (3) are TRUE and (2) is false.
  • High-standards invariantists think that (2) and (3) are TRUE and (1) is false.
  • Those denying closure (Dretske, Nozick) think that (1) and (2) are TRUE and (3) is false.
  • Contextualists think that in low stakes contexts (1) and (3) are true and (2) is false; in high-stakes contexts (2) and (3) are true and (1) is false.

What mistake are we making when we fall into the skeptical paradox?

  1. Low-standards invariantists think that (1) and (3) are TRUE and (2) is false.
  2. High-standards invariantists think that (2) and (3) are TRUE and (1) is false.
  3. Those denying closure (Dretske, Nozick) think that (1) and (2) are TRUE and (3) is false.

Contextualists think that the real mistake is (B) – the supposition that the original claims are in conflict. In some contexts (1) and (3) are true and (2) is false, in others (2) and (3) are true and (1) is false. Usually you don’t make claims (1) and (2) within a single context – if you are talking about skepticism you don’t claim (1), and if you are making a common sense claim, you don’t claim (2). For each of claims (1) – (3), in the context where you’d most often make that claim, it would be true. There is no conflict between the truth of these claims in the different contexts in which they are typically made.

  • Cohen argues:
    • The high-standards invariantist can’t explain why in skeptical contexts we really want to deny (1).
  • Not all philosophical contexts involve denying claims like (1).
  • Contextualism does have to explain why we don’t immediately see that (1)-(3) aren’t really in conflict; Cohen argues that the explanation here is similar to the one called for in explaining our shifting-standards use of terms like “flat”.

Contextualism Contested

Semantic contextualism
Something semantic about a symbol varies with some differences in context that involves tokens of the symbol.
Sentence tokens of the same type have different truth conditions.
Some differences in the contextt where a sentence is used affect which conditions about the world must obtain for the use of the sentence to state truth.
Indexical expressions
Undoutedly contextual

I am happy.

Epistemic Contextualism

(EC) Broadly speaking, what varies with some difference in the context in which “knows” is used is the strength of the epistemic position that the subject of the sentence must be in, in order for the sentence to assert a truth.

Heart of Contextualism
In the context of everyday life, the conditions knowledge attributions are loose enough to be met easily.
Skepticism somehow gives rise to truth conditions that are unsatifiable.

Loose Talk

  • Knowledge attributions have the same truth conditions, but people apply contextually varying standards for making the attributions1.
  • To tease this out, ask people “Do you really and truly know $p$?”

Strict Truth

  • The fact that contextualism is true says nothing about the philosophical issue of knowledge. (Does it answer the paradox? No.)
    • All philosophical discussion is carried out in the best context.
    • The “really and truly” context.
  • EC leaves epistemological issues unresolved.

Contextualism Defended

Alternative Accounts

  • The two theses of contextualism:

(a) Ascriptions of knowledge are context – attributor – sensitive.

(b) The context-sensitivity of knowledge ascriptions provides the basis for resolving the skeptical paradox.

  • Connee challenges (a) by arguing for alternative explanations.
    • There is no intuitive reason, Connee says, to support contextualism over this altnerative.
      • But no, it’s not about intuition, it’s just not as good.
      • For instance, the accounts cannot account for “really and truly” contexts.
  • Connee is right that nothing strictly follows from EC, and (b) is logically stronger than (a) (that is, harder to satisfy, more needs to obtain).
    • The method we should use to evaluate contextualism is how the proposals differ in resolving the paradox.
  • The contextualism can concede that the falsity of the contextualist solution to the skeptical paradox is consistent with the thesis that ascriptions of knowledge are context-sensitive.
  • Futhermore, if the correct theory tells us something that conflicts with intuition, how does it account for those intuitions?
  • The second proposal is that philosophy has a single context and so nothing about contextualism truth confers information about other issues.
    • How do we explain the shiftiness of our knowledge ascriptions in a way that avoid skepticism while explaining its appeal?
      • EC proposes a way in terms of contextual shifting truth conditions.
      • Connee’s view does not do this.

Is the Contextualism Model Coherent?

  • Explanatory power does not hold for much is the model is incoherent.

<<<<<<< HEAD

December 9th, 2013 Lecture on Cohen and Connee

  • All three of the premises of the skeptical paradox are supposed to be intuitively plausible, but when you think about it they cannot all be true.
    • It’s paradoxical because two of the things you believe are incompitable with the third thing.
  • You could look at the Surprise Quiz paradox discussion and conclude that

it’s much like the discussion of rhe skeptical paradox.

54d13e242e883ac7125830d64fc82e84152ca48f

  1. This really isn’t very far from the contextualist thesis. “Not true in theory but true in practice” or akin? ↩