Knowledge and Relevant Alternatives Author(s): Palle Yourgrau Source: Synthese, Vol. 55, No. 2, Justification and Empirical Knowledge, Parts III and IV (May, 1983), pp. 175-190 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20115867 Accessed: 02-03-2017 17:34 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Synthese This content downloaded from 130.132.173.151 on Thu, 02 Mar 2017 17:34:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms PALLE YOURGRAU KNOWLEDGE AND RELEVANT ALTERNATIVES ABSTRACT. Traditionally, skeptics as well as their opponents have agreed that in order to know that p one must be able, by some preferred means, to rule out all the alternatives to p. Recently, however, some philosophers have attempted to avert skepticism not (merely) by weakening the preferred means but rather by articulating a subset of the alternatives to p - the so-called relevant alternatives - and insisting that knowledge that p requires only that we be able (by the preferred means) to rule out members of the set. In this paper I argue that a precise formulation of this new approach reveals it inadequate as a solution to skepticism.