KNOWLEDGE FROM KNOWLEDGE: AN ESSAY ON INFERENTIAL KNOWLEDGE BY RODRIGO MARTINS BORGES A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School|New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Philosophy Written under the direction of Peter D. Klein and approved by New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Knowledge from Knowledge: An Essay on Inferential Knowledge by Rodrigo Martins Borges Dissertation Director: Peter D. Klein Under what conditions do we have inferential knowledge? I propose and defend the following principle: S knows that p via inference only if S knows all the premises essentially involved in her inference in support of p - \KFK" for short. Even though KFK is at least tacitly endorsed by many figures in the history of philosophy, from Aristotle through Descartes, and Kant to Bertrand Russell { and, more recently, by David Armstrong { KFK has fallen into disfavor among epistemologists over the past fifty years. In response to Edmund Gettier's leg- endary paper, many have proposed views according to which one's reasoning is a source of knowledge even if one fails to know some or all premises essentially involved in one's reasoning, while others have given up offering a theory of in- ferential knowledge and have focused on reasoning as a source of justified belief instead. Unfortunately, these accounts that deal with inferential knowledge are problematic; they cannot, for example, fully explain our common practice of eval- uating negatively inferences with unknown premises. They also seem to rely on ii an overly narrow understanding of the so-called \Gettier Problem". This dis- sertation aims at updating the approach to reasoning that was popular before Gettier by building on the framework of Timothy Williamson's \knowledge-first” epistemology. The aim is to carefully elaborate the view that reasoning yields knowledge only if all the premises essentially involved are also known. iii Acknowledgements My work has benefited immensely from my exchanges with a great number of peo- ple. First and foremost, Peter Klein has been not only the best advisor anyone could hope for (supportive, patient, challenging), but he is also the best philoso- pher with whom I have ever discussed philosophy. Suffice it to say that, if I were to give full credit to Peter's supervision, I would probably have to thank him in a footnote to virtually every paragraph in this dissertation. Needless to say, he does not agree with everything I say here and I am also fully responsible for any mistakes in the text below. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Ernie Sosa, Duncan Pritchard and Claudio de Almeida. They all read different versions of some or most of the material in this dissertation and they have all contributed to making it a much better work than I could have by myself. Finally, I list (in no particular order), other people who, through conversations, written comments, emails or even facebook posts helped me write this dissertation: Luis Rosa, David Black, Tiegue Vieira, Daniel Rubio, Lisa Mirachi, Tobias Wilsch, Marcello Antosh, Bob Beddor, Thomas Blanchard, Tim Campbell, Will Fleisher, Georgi Gardiner, Luvell Anderson, Matthew Benton, Simon Goldstein, Ricardo Mena, Alex Morgan, Pamela Robinson, David Rose, Mary Salvaggio, Justin Sharber, Kurt Sylvan, Guido Melchior, Carlotta Pavese, Martha Bolton, Ruth Chang, Andy Egan, Branden Fitelson, Anthony Gillies, Alvin Goldman, Doug Husak, Jeff King, Howard McGary, Brian McLaughlin, Jeff McMahan, Jonathan Schaffer, Susanna Schellenberg, Steve Stich, Larry Temkin, Michael Veber, Linda Zagzebski, Jonathan Vogel, Anthony Brueckner, Sherri Roush, Jennifer Lackey, Juan Comesa~na,E.J Coffman, John Hawthorne, Fred iv Adams, Timothy Williamson, Peter Baumann, Stephen Hetherington, Ram Neta and Stephen Grimm. I also need to acknowledge the institutional support I re- ceived from Rutgers, particularly, from the staff in the Philosophy Department. In the very practical sense of the word \possible", this dissertation would not have been possible without the hard work and competence of Pauline Mitchell, Jean Urteil and, especially, the incomparable Mercedes Diaz. At home, my wife Lizette Nieves has been the most supportive and encouraging partner anyone can ask for. She has been very patient, and for that I will be forever grateful. I am indebted also to my father Jo~aoT. Borges, for his unconditional support all the way from Brazil. My gratitude also to Melanie Crisfield for proofreading the dissertation. The research for this dissertation was partially funded by the CAPES/Fulbright Commission through a four-year fellowship (2007-2011). I am very grateful for their support. v Dedication In loving memory of Norma Martins Borges (1942-2012). vi Table of Contents Abstract ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ii Acknowledgements ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: iv Dedication :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: vi 1. Introduction :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 1 1.1. What Knowledge Is . 2 1.2. What Is To Come . 15 2. Knowledge from Knowledge :::::::::::::::::::::: 16 2.1. Clarifying KFK . 24 3. KFK, E=K, and The Knowledge Norm of Inference :::::: 38 3.1. From E=K to KFK . 38 3.2. Objection: No Gettier Problem . 40 3.3. Objection: Dogmatism . 52 3.3.1. Dogmatism: Synchronic and Diachronic . 54 3.3.2. Harman's Argument for Diachronic Dogmatism . 57 The Junk Knowledge Response to Diachronic Dogmatism 60 3.3.3. Kripke's Argument for Synchronic Dogmatism . 66 A Failed Response to Synchronic Dogmatism . 69 3.3.4. Dogmatism Depuzzled . 74 3.3.5. A new argument for dogmatism? . 83 3.3.6. Taking Stock . 85 3.4. The Knowledge Norm of Inference . 86 vii 3.4.1. Knowledge Norms: Assertion, Action and Inference . 91 4. KFK and the Gettier Problem :::::::::::::::::::: 106 4.1. The Gettier Conjecture . 107 4.2. What counts as a Gettier case? . 109 4.3. Two Gettier Problems . 115 4.4. Some Caveats . 116 4.5. A recent ancestor of the Gettier Conjecture . 118 5. Epistemic Luck :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 123 5.1. Anti-Luck Epistemology . 123 5.2. The Appeal To The Concept Of Epistemic Luck . 125 5.3. Precisifying The Anti-Luck View . 129 5.4. Against Anti-Luck Epistemology . 131 5.4.1. Lucky But Safe True Belief: Against Epistemic Luck . 131 5.4.2. Lucky But Counterfactually Robust Events: Against Generic Luck . 133 5.5. Gettier-Lucky Knowledge? . 134 5.5.1. The Argument for \Gettierism" . 135 5.5.2. An Alleged case of Gettier-Lucky Knowledge . 136 5.5.3. What is lucky about Gettier-Lucky belief? . 140 viii 1 Chapter 1 Introduction The main goal of the following essay is to defend the principle about inferential knowledge that I call \Knowledge from knowledge": (KFK) S knows that p via inference or reasoning only if S knows all the premises essentially involved in her inference in support of p. I explain how this principle helps solve the Gettier Problem; I argue that it is entailed by the defeasibility account of knowledge and Williamson's E=K; and I show how it can motivate a plausible norm of appropriate inference. As far as I know, this thesis amounts to the most extensive exploration of KFK in the literature today. Since an essay is not a philosophical work without disputing other philoso- pher's views, I also argue against the most popular account of epistemic and non-epistemic luck. The discussion of this issue is related to KFK to the extent that KFK provides a competing explanation of the Gettier phenomenon. I argue that, on grounds independent of KFK, anti-luck epistemology does not provide an adequate account of luck, epistemic or not. In the remainder of this introduction, I will do two things. First, in the follow- ing section, I will establish some criteria for what knowledge is. Like knowledge- first epistemologists, I am suspicious of the project of analyzing \knowledge", and I take knowledge that p to entail probability 1 of p. I end the introduction with an overview of the chapters that follow. 2 An important characteristic of this thesis (some will say \an important short- coming") is that it assumes a certain form of externalism about evidence and justification (and, consequently, knowledge). So, for example, I assume that ev- idence and justification are not luminous states (i.e., in some circumstances e is evidence for h for S, or S is justified in believing that p, but S is not in a position to know that e is evidence for h, or that S is justified in believing that p). I do not directly argue in favor of this claim. Even though I discuss how I understand evidence and justification in chapters 3 and 4, for the most part I simply assume that those states are not luminous, and I use those notions to try to understand the Gettier Problem and the Dogmatist Paradox, amongst others. So, for the most part, I ask you, the reader, to accept (at least provisionally) this mild form of externalism, and to explore with me some of its consequences. If I am right, this exercise will yield important theoretical dividends we may want to use in the purchase of those assumptions. 1.1 What Knowledge Is Epistemologists traditionally answer the question \What is knowledge?" by offer- ing a definition of the concept \knowledge". I, like others,1 am suspicious of the claim that the most theoretically fruitful answer to the question \What is knowl- edge?" will take the form of a definition. In this section, I will offer the sketch of an argument in support of this suspicion, and later try to answer this central question in philosophy by arguing for plausible criteria something deserving of the name \knowledge" should satisfy. I do not have anything exceptionally deep to say about why attempting to define \knowledge" might not be the best strategy to adopt when trying to give an account of what knowledge is.