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Modal Epistemology HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO Modal Epistemology A study of the conditions of knowledge Jaakko Hirvelä Pro gradu – tutkielma Teoreettinen filosofia Filosofian historian kulttuurin ja taiteiden tutkimuksen laitos Helsingin yliopisto Helmikuu 2014 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 2. Theory of knowledge ............................................................................................................ 2 3. Internalism and externalism .................................................................................................. 3 4. Methods................................................................................................................................. 4 4.1. Counter example method .................................................................................................. 4 4.2. Possible worlds ................................................................................................................. 6 5. Luck ...................................................................................................................................... 8 6. Epistemic luck ..................................................................................................................... 10 7. Sensitivity ........................................................................................................................... 11 7.1. Virtues of ‘sensitivity’ .................................................................................................... 11 7.2. Problems for ‘sensitivity’ ................................................................................................ 15 7.2.1. ‘Sensitivity’ and methods............................................................................................ 15 7.2.2. The problem of inductive knowledge ......................................................................... 19 7.2.3. The problem regarding necessary truths ..................................................................... 22 7.2.4. Violation of epistemic closure .................................................................................... 22 7.3. Evaluating alternative theories based on ‘sensitivity’ ..................................................... 24 7.3.1. Becker’s proposal ........................................................................................................ 24 7.3.2. Zalabardo’s proposal ................................................................................................... 25 7.3.3. DeRose’s proposal ...................................................................................................... 27 7.3.4. The tracking account ................................................................................................... 29 7.4. The verdict on ‘sensitivity’ ............................................................................................. 31 8. Safety .................................................................................................................................. 32 8.1. ’Safety’ demonstrated ..................................................................................................... 33 8.2. ‘Safety’ under threat ....................................................................................................... 35 8.2.1. Greco’s dilemma ......................................................................................................... 36 8.2.2. Problems with closure ................................................................................................. 38 8.2.3. Method relativization .................................................................................................. 39 8.2.4. Methodological issues regarding the space of possible worlds .................................. 41 8.2.5. Four fatal problems ..................................................................................................... 42 8.3. Reformulations of ‘Safety’.............................................................................................. 45 8.3.1. Safe indication ............................................................................................................ 45 8.3.2. Anti-luck virtue epistemology .................................................................................... 48 9. Global safety ....................................................................................................................... 53 9.1. Four fatal problems revisited .......................................................................................... 55 9.2. Similar proposals ............................................................................................................ 56 9.2.1. Enhanced ALVE ......................................................................................................... 57 9.2.2. ‘Safety’ and ‘adherence’ ............................................................................................. 58 9.3. Hit and run counter examples ......................................................................................... 59 9.4. Skepticism rebutted ......................................................................................................... 64 10. Role of knowledge .......................................................................................................... 68 11. Dodged problems and topics for future research ............................................................ 71 12. Concluding Remarks ....................................................................................................... 73 References: .................................................................................................................................. 73 Appendix of thought experiments: .............................................................................................. 77 1. Introduction What is knowledge? Do we know anything at all? If we do, then how have we obtained our knowledge? Why do we hold knowledge in such a high esteem? Questions such as these troubled the ancient philosophers and continue to trouble us to this very day. Plato thought that knowledge is, basically, justified true belief (JTB). This traditional analysis of knowledge was widely held until refuted in 1963 by Edmund Gettier in his groundbreaking article “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Analytic epistemology was in turmoil. What the Gettier cases showed was that a subject, S, could have a justified true belief, p, even though he did not know that p. The reason why the subjects of Gettier cases seemed to lack knowledge was because their beliefs seemed to be only luckily true. Good epistemic luck undermined the subject’s knowledge but not her being justified. Being justified in a proposition didn’t exclude the chance that one held one’s belief simply as a matter of luck. Knowledge and justification seem to come apart when one’s justified belief is true in virtue of good luck. Nowadays it is generally accepted that luck - at least luck of a certain sort - is incompatible with knowledge. Let us call this intuition the anti-luck intuition. The main goal of this thesis is to evaluate whether by eliminating epistemic luck, and thus by satisfying the anti-luck intuition, we can arrive at a plausible theory of knowledge. The notion of ‘justification’ has proved to be insufficient as a necessary and sufficient condition for knowledge. Here we shall abandon it altogether and start afresh. Could knowledge be defined simply as a non-luckily true belief? That is the question that we will pursue. The structure of this study is four folded. I will begin by clarifying the concept of epistemic luck, which is at the heart of this project. I will proceed to evaluate two widely discussed modal conditions that aim to eliminate epistemic luck. First in line is the ‘sensitivity’ condition, originally put forth by Robert Nozick. After discussing the merits of ‘sensitivity’ at length, I will turn to examine another modal condition, ‘safety’. Critical examination of ‘safety’ shows that it too is susceptible to a number of counter examples, just as ‘sensitivity’ was. In the fourth and final section I argue that the explanatory power of ‘safety’ has not been properly understood. I present and defend a novel modal condition that is developed in this study from the ashes of the ‘safety’ 1 condition. The new condition, ‘global safety’ fares much better than its predecessors regarding a number of epistemological problems. ‘Global safety’ does not need to be conjoined with other conditions, and can therefore stand on its own feet. Thus I end up defending a pure version of the ‘safety’ condition as giving the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge. This position has been quite neglected in the contemporary epistemology. 2. Theory of knowledge The goal of this thesis is to formulate a normative theory of knowledge that expresses the necessary conditions for knowledge and hopefully the sufficient conditions also. But in order to be able to evaluate whether the project succeeds at the end, we have to know what kind of theory would be satisfactory in the first place. What questions will a satisfactory theory of knowledge be able to answer and what kind of phenomena will it take into account? These questions might have an obvious answer: ‘The theory should explain what knowledge is and it should handle epistemic phenomena’.
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