Synopsis: I wonder why, in light of some solid cases of lottery knowledge, people still doubt lottery knowledge. I also suggest an X-phi research project that thought would boom after 2004 but didn’t. General motivational prolegomena: So I made it … Continue reading
In a short article entitled “Was I Fooled?”, with which he opens his book What Is the Name of This Book? The Riddle of Dracula and Other Logical Puzzles (Prentice Hall, 1978), Raymond Smullyan reports on the problem which he … Continue reading
In his very interesting “Knowledge and Certainty” (Phil Issues, 2008), Jason says the following things to which we might want to refer later. A. “A person’s belief satisfies the property expressed by a subjective use of “certain” relative to a … Continue reading
We all know that G.E. Moore famously pointed out that there is something extremely odd about statements like ‘It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is’, even though such statements would often be true. Unger, Williamson, and others have claimed … Continue reading
I’ve been reading Hawthorne and Stanley’s new piece “Knowledge and Action,” (downloadable here at Jason’s website), and will post a couple of things about this really fine piece. So here’s one issue. Restrict what we are talking about to propositional … Continue reading
Probability and Inference: Essays in Honour of Henry E. Kyburg, Jr., William Harper and Gregory Wheeler (eds.) (King’s College Publications, London, 2007) is now available at Amazon in the US and UK. New essays by Gert de Cooman and Enrique … Continue reading
A fairly standard approach to the preface paradox is basically Lockean. On the Lockean story, belief is degree of belief past a certain threshold. We then explain away the inconsistency involved in the paradox by an underlying probabilistic coherence. The … Continue reading
Back at Acme, our team of epistemologists are on the scene looking at Inspector 14′s record of length measurements for pole 453-01-120. Name this pole “p”. To simplify, suppose there are n physical measurements, the conditions for measurement were standardized, … Continue reading
Many philosophers argue that paradoxes like the so-called “preface paradox” show that it is not a requirement of rationality that the contents of one’s beliefs should all be consistent with each other. (For example, David Christensen argues for this in … Continue reading
This is a reminder about the May 1 deadline for paper submission for the special issue of Synthese, “Knowability and Beyond,” which aims to cover modal epistemic issues relevant to knowability, broadly construed. The issue will contain invited papers by … Continue reading