Lecture Notes on KNOWLEDGE Brian Weatherson 2015 Notes to Students These are the course notes for the first two-thirds of Philosophy 383: Knowledgeand Reality, in Winter 2015 at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. They are not meant to replace reading original sources. As the syllabus makesclear, there are other readings that you should be doing most weeks. You should do even more reading than that on the topics you are writing papers on. Contents 1 Introduction to Knowledge and Reality 3 1.1 Arguments for Scepticism ............................ 3 1.2 Analysis of Knowledge .............................. 5 1.3 Epistemology and the Social .......................... 8 I Scepticism 10 2 Pyrrhonian Scepticism 11 2.1 The Pyrrhonian Sceptical Challenge ...................... 11 2.2 Responses to the Pyrrhonian Challenge .................... 13 2.3 Foundationalism .................................. 14 3 Easy Knowledge 16 3.1 Cohen’s Challenge ................................. 16 3.2 The Easy Knowledge Argument ........................ 17 3.3 Responses to Cohen’s Argument ........................ 17 3.4 For Next Time ................................... 21 4 Demons and Disasters 22 4.1 Academic Scepticism ............................... 22 4.2 Varieties of Sceptical Argument ........................ 23 4.3 Why Care about Scepticism? .......................... 26 5 Scepticism and Intuitions 28 5.1 Scepticism and Closure ............................. 29 5.2 Scepticism and Sensitivity ............................ 30 6 Dialectic and Discrimination 33 6.1 Dialectic ....................................... 33 6.2 Discrimination ................................... 34 7 Evidence 38 7.1 Williamson on Evidence and Knowability . 38 7.2 Perceptual and Phenomenal Models of Evidence . 40 7.3 Evidence, Metaphysics and Methodology . 43 8 The Semantic Response to Scepticism 47 8.1 Semantic Externalism ............................... 47 8.2 Externalism and Scepticism ........................... 49 8.3 False Beliefs and Inconsistent Hypotheses . 51 9 Humean Scepticism 54 9.1 Methods Argument ................................ 54 9.2 A Priori and A Posteriori ............................. 55 9.3 Hume on Induction ............................... 56 9.4 What is the Sceptical Hypothesis? ....................... 57 9.5 Against A Priori Knowledge ........................... 57 9.6 Against A Posteriori Knowledge ........................ 58 9.7 Summing Up .................................... 59 II Analysis of Knowledge 60 10 Introduction, and Challenges to Necessity 61 10.1 The JTB Analysis ................................. 62 10.2 Knowledge without Truth ............................ 63 10.3 Knowledge without Belief ............................ 64 10.4 Justification ..................................... 66 11 Counterexamples to Sufficiency 68 11.1 Russell’s Stopped Clock ............................. 68 11.2 Dharmottara’s Examples ............................. 69 11.3 Gettier’s Target ................................... 71 11.4 Gettier’s First Case: Ten Coins ......................... 71 11.5 Case Two: Brown in Barcelona ......................... 72 11.6 Knowledge from Falsehood ........................... 73 11.7 True in the Wrong Way ............................. 74 11.8 Summing Up .................................... 75 12 More Counterexamples to JTB 76 12.1 Zagzebski’s Generalisation ............................ 76 12.2 Double Luck .................................... 77 12.3 Fake Barns ..................................... 78 12.4 Lotteries ....................................... 79 12.5 Margins ....................................... 81 12.6 Moving Forward .................................. 82 13 Sensitivity 83 13.1 Counterfactual Conditionals .......................... 83 13.2 Sensitivity ...................................... 85 13.3 Methods ....................................... 86 13.4 Advantages of the Sensitivity Account .................... 86 13.5 Scepticism and Closure ............................. 88 14 Kripke’s Response to Nozick 90 14.1 Barns, Real and Fake ............................... 90 14.2 Placebos and Rationality ............................. 91 14.3 Red and Green Barns ............................... 92 14.4 Negative Knowledge ............................... 93 14.5 Knowledge of the Future ............................. 94 14.6 Summary ...................................... 95 15 Safety 96 15.1 Williamson ..................................... 96 15.2 Lewis ......................................... 97 15.3 Sosa .......................................... 98 15.4 Method Safety and Content Safety . 100 15.5 A Safety-Based Analysis .............................101 16 Virtue Epistemology 103 16.1 Sosa’s Virtue Epistemology . 104 16.2 Sosa’s Theory and Gettier-Like Cases . 106 16.3 Other Puzzles for Sosa’s Theory . 109 16.4 Conclusion .....................................111 III Social Epistemology 112 17 Testimony 113 17.1 Testimonial Scepticism ..............................115 17.2 Reductionism ...................................116 18 Transfer and Its Discontents 120 18.1 Features of the Transfer Model . 120 18.2 Qualifications to the Transfer Model . 122 18.3 First Objection to Transfer: Creationist Teacher . 123 18.4 Second Objection to Transfer Model: Whale Spotting . 125 19 Reductionism, Children and Strangers 127 19.1 Global and Local Justifications . 127 19.2 Strangers .......................................128 19.3 Children .......................................129 19.4 Children - Poverty of Stimulus . 130 19.5 Children - Processing Power . 131 20 False Beliefs and False Reports 133 20.1 False Beliefs .....................................133 20.2 Children’s Attitude To Testimony . 135 20.3 Hearing and Believing ..............................137 21 Knowing about Knowing 139 21.1 Behaviorism ....................................141 21.2 Hard Cases and Experiments . 142 21.3 Hard Cases and Knowledge First . 143 22 Testimonial Injustice 146 22.1 Ethics and Epistemology .............................146 22.2 Basic Case ......................................148 22.3 Harms and Wrongs ................................148 22.4 Three Varieties ...................................149 22.5 Varieties of Prejudice ...............................150 23 Stereotypes and Injustice 152 23.1 Stereotypes .....................................152 23.2 Prejudice ......................................153 23.3 Putting the Two Together ............................154 23.4 Mistakes and Wrongs ...............................155 Bibliography 157 Last revised: April 14, 2015 Chapter 1 Introduction to Knowledge and Reality In this course we’re going to investigate three topics: 1. Arguments for Scepticism. 2. The Analysis of Knowledge. 3. Knowledge and Society In this chapter, I’ll briefly introduce the three topics, and say a little about whywefind each of them interesting. 1.1 Arguments for Scepticism There is an important kind of sceptical argument that traces back, in modernWest- ern philosophy, to Descartes (1641/1996a). (Though we will consider ways in which similar considerations arise in earlier philosophy, as well as in philosophy in other tra- ditions.) Consider some thing that you know, e.g., that you have hands. Now consider some scenario where you are tricked into thinking that is true. To use Descartes’s own idea, imagine that an evil demon implants in you the idea that you are sitting in a com- fortable chair, in a human sized and shaped body, reading some epistemology notes, etc. Meanwhile, none of this is true; you are an immaterial soul in an immaterial world, and totally without hands. There is some intuitive support for the idea that we can’t rule out such ascenario. And there is also intuitive support for the idea that if we can’t rule out such a scenario, then we don’t know that we have hands. After all, knowing something suffices for ruling out alternative possibilities. So, we might think, we don’t know we have hands. Now that argument is too quick on many levels. For one thing, I don’t find the initial intuition that strong. I can easily rule out the scenario, I think, by simply look- ing at the world and seeing that it is material. And even if I found the intuition more compelling, I would think it is much less compelling than the negation of the conclu- sion it is trying to draw. If I had to choose between the intuition that I know a lot about the world, and the intuition that I can’t rule out this Cartesian demon, I would certainly ditch the sceptical intuition. 4 Introduction to Knowledge and Reality But the sceptical argument isn’t merely an appeal to intuition. There are many ways to motivate the sceptical premise, i.e., that we can’t rule out the scenario of the Cartesian demon. Looking at those ways is interesting for three reasons. First, we might find scepticism more appealing than we did when it was supported byaraw intuition. Second, we might find some limited forms of scepticism at least somewhat appealing. But finally, we might learn what plausible sounding principles we haveto jettison if we are to remain anti-sceptics in good standing. We will look at five ways of developing the sceptical intuition into a full argument. One of these ways is dialectical. Whatever our reasons are for being anti-sceptical, they don’t seem sufficient to convince a sceptic. Indeed, they don’t even seem sufficient to move anyone who feels the pull of scepticism, but can’t bring herself to accept it. Perhaps there is an argument here, starting