Comments for Certain Doubts

Comment on Misfit Knowledge? NDPR Review of Evidentialism and Its Discontents by Luis Rosa

Luis Rosa — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:28:15 +0000

If we can conceive of knowledge as requiring negative dependence on (counter) evidence, maybe something along Shieber’s point can be made more easily. So despite the fact that some accounts of K don’t require evidential justification, I’m not sure there is any account of K that allow for the possibility of S knowing that p while having defeaters (in Pollock’s sense) for the belief that p. Now if ‘her evidence all points to not-p’ at premise 2 mean that S has defeaters for the belief that p, it wouldn’t follow that S cannot know p while lacking positive evidence for p.

Comment on Misfit Knowledge? NDPR Review of Evidentialism and Its Discontents by Clayton

Clayton — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:13:39 +0000

Hi Trent,

There’s a reductio in the neighborhood of yours that’s worth considering:

1. Suppose for reductio that knowledge does not entail evidential justification.
2. If 1, then possibly, S knows p though her evidence does not provide adequate support for believing p.
3. If all S’s does not provide adequate support for believing p after perfectly virtuous inquiry, then S should not believe p.
C. So if 1 — modulo the seemingly undeniable 3 — possibly, S knows p though S should not believe p.

By weakening in this way, it seems you can also avoid the worries discussed above. As an added bonus, you can avoid the worry that a sufficient body of evidence doesn’t have to mandate belief in order to be sufficient to justify belief. This is all consistent with your reductio succeeding, but the move from should believe not-p to should not believe p makes it all a bit less contentious. I do think it’s odd that there’s something S knows that S should not believe on purely epistemic grounds, so this still retains much of the force of the original.

(Of course, I think that (2) is trivial since E=K and (3) looks pretty good because you shouldn’t believe what you don’t know.)

Comment on History of Fallibilism about Knowledge by Sam Rickless

Sam Rickless — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 05:19:01 +0000

Sorry to be commenting on this late in the day. I just came across this discussion today. Jennifer’s contribution here is really very helpful, and I appreciate the fact that she mentions my interpretation of Locke’s theory of sensitive knowledge. I agree with almost everything she says, but I just wanted to add a little comment in answer to her very reasonable question, which is why Locke would “blur the lines” between knowledge and opinion in a part of the Essay that is concerned with pointing out the difference between them. First, after the Essay was published, Locke was attacked (publicly) for being a sceptic (a serious charge in those days, in part because of the association between scepticism and atheism) by Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester. When Locke was writing the Essay, he must have known that his views about our epistemic relation to the external world would be carefully scrutinized for signs of scepticism. So Locke is very strongly motivated to cast his own view as non-sceptical, even if it is, in fact, a sceptical view. Second, Locke describes “sensitive knowledge” as a kind of “assurance”, which he later defines as a kind of belief based on the highest degree of probability, and points out that knowledge and assurance are indistinguishable for all practical purposes. (Whether you know or are assured of the existence of tables and chairs should make no difference to the way in which you act.) So, if we are looking at practical issues in particular, it turns out that the lines between knowledge and assurance are already blurred.

Comment on Call for Proposals and Applications: The Philosophy and Theology of Intellectual Humility Project at Saint Louis University by John Greco

John Greco — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:24:57 +0000

Here is a link to more information, including the RFP: http://www.slu.edu/department-of-philosophy/intellectual-humility

Comment on Stump on Franciscan Knowledge and De Te Knowledge of Persons by Ted

Ted — Sat, 11 May 2013 18:24:09 +0000

Eleonore has a very nice paper on second-person experience “Presence and Omnipresence” in a volume of essays devoted to Phil Quinn *Liberal Faith*. I don’t know how much of that paper is in her new book, but the paper is a rich exploration of the kind of union between close friends.

Comment on Stump on Franciscan Knowledge and De Te Knowledge of Persons by Jon Kvanvig

Jon Kvanvig — Sat, 11 May 2013 18:12:56 +0000

Very cute, Juan!

Comment on Stump on Franciscan Knowledge and De Te Knowledge of Persons by Juan

Juan — Sat, 11 May 2013 18:10:44 +0000

Well, a proof can either proceed by ruling out all alternatives or be constructive. Those of the first kind are not good, so a proof must be constructive.

(Sorry, couldn’t contain myself.)

Comment on New Entry at SEP: Logical Pluralism by Claudio

Claudio — Sat, 11 May 2013 12:22:11 +0000

Ted,

That’s too discreet, actually, posted as a reply on a thread on another SEP entry. Congrats on your SEP entry and thanks for the heads-up!

Jon,

Wouldn’t it be good to promote publications like Ted’s, of substantial interest to epistemology, as a matter of policy, routinely, thoroughly and loudly, at Certain Doubts? How can we help in the task, if there really is a problem here? (I don’t mean to propose that you be burdened with another task, needless to say, and I understand there may be a problem of CD’s being flooded with references to less-than-interesting work.)

My shameless — or maybe not-so-shameless — bit as an example: Last year, Stephen Hetherington and I edited a Synthese issue entitled Topics in contemporary epistemology (Synthese 188.2, 2012). And, since it came out, I’ve been thinking that I owe it to the contributors to promote the issue at CD, but strong feelings about the aforementioned shamelessness problem get in the way. Maybe I did owe it to them, perceived shamelessness or no perceived shamelessness. And hopefully I don’t any longer, now that I’m taking a ride on Ted’s reply!

Comment on Stump on Franciscan Knowledge and De Te Knowledge of Persons by Jon Kvanvig

Jon Kvanvig — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:35:59 +0000

I should also point out this: even if the taxonomy I suggest were perfect (i.e., partitioning logical space with nothing left out), I’d still be a bit unhappy. I don’t like arguments for X that proceed by ruling out all the alternatives. That is, I like constructive proofs. But I didn’t bring that up in the post because I don’t see any good argument that a proof must be constructive.

Comment on New Entry at SEP: Logical Pluralism by Ted Parent

Ted Parent — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:03:47 +0000

As a bit of shameless self-promotion, here’s another just-published SEP entry of epistemological interest:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-knowledge-externalism/