Juan Comesaña

Williamson on Gettier Cases and Epistemic Logic

Abstract Timothy Williamson has fruitfully exploited formal resources to shed considerable light on the nature of knowledge. In the paper under examination, Williamson turns his attention to Gettier cases, showing how they can be motivated formally. At the same time, he disparages the kind of justification he thinks gives rise to these cases. He favors instead his own notion of justification for which Gettier cases cannot arise. We take issue both with his disparagement of the kind of justification that figures in Gettier cases and the specifics of the formal motivation.

Williamson on Gettier Cases in Epistemic Logic and the Knowledge Norm for Rational Belief: A Reply to a Reply to a Reply

In our reply to Williamson, we offered models where traditional Gettier cases arise but which differ from Williamson’s models in three related respects: first, non-traditional, fake-barn style Gettier cases do not arise in our models; second, knowledge iterates in our models; and, finally, our models do not have the Moorish consequences of Williamson’s models. Predictably, Williamson thinks that our models have no value whatsoever. Our reasons for preferring them ‘evaporate’, he says, and they have ‘epistemologically absurd consequences’. We think that Williamson exaggerates. We first address the allegedly absurd consequences our models have. These are based on the fact that they allow for what Williamson calls ‘cliff-edge knowledge’: ‘Say that one has cliff-edge knowledge of the real value of the parameter when it is in fact e if and only if one either knows that it is at least e

Could there be exactly two things

Many philosophers think that, necessarily, any material objects have a fusion (let’s call that doctrine “Universalism”). In this paper I point out a couple of strange consequences of Universalism and related doctrines, and suggest that they are strange enough to constitute a powerful argument against those views.

Safety and Epistemic Frankfurt Cases

Much work in epistemology in the aftermath of Gettier’s counterexample to the justified true belief account of knowledge was concerned with the possible existence of modal conditions on knowledge, conditions which related the proposition believed with the fact that made it true. Sosa was an adherent of such a position, putting forward a safety condition on knowledge. Lately, however, Sosa’s stance with respect to safety has become much more subtle. This chapter has two aims. First, I want to trace the evolution of Sosa’s thought on safety. Second, I want to examine the issue of whether there are epistemic analogues of Frankfurt cases. The two aims are connected: I suggest that we should interpret Sosa as having abandoned the safety condition altogether because of the existence of epistemic Frankfurt cases.

Empirical justification and defeasibility

Two truisms about empirical justification are that experience plays a crucial role in it (hence the name) and that it is defeasible. There are, of course, different ways of developing these truisms into philosophical theories. I favor one particular view about the role of experience in empirical justification which may be thought to lead to problems in accommodating its defeasibility. My aim in this paper is to argue that the problems are illusory, based on an entrenched misconception how defeaters work.

Defeasibility Without Inductivism

Four principles widely accepted in contemporary epistemology, lead to a contradiction. According to one such principle, it is possible to be justified in believing a proposition on the basis of evidence that does not entail it., call this “inductivism”. In this paper, I want to examine one solution to the problem which has not received much attention in the literature: abandoning skepticism. Many authors have assumed that only inductive evidence is defeasible. If the assumption is correct, then giving up Inductivism entails giving up the defeasibility of justification. This result should be particularly unpalatable to virtue epistemologists, for it suggests an untenable kind of dogmatism on the part of subjects who are justified. I argue, however, that a belief can be defeasibly justified even if the evidence entails it. It is open to anyone, including the virtue epistemologist, to give up Inductivism as a solution to the problem.

Can Contemporary Semantics Help the Pyrrhonian Get a Life

Under one interpretation, Pyrrhonian skeptics advocate universal suspension of judgment. This gives rise to an ancient and influential objection, which I will call “Hume’s objection.” Hume’s objection, in a nutshell, is the following: life requires action, and action requires belief. But, given that the Pyrrhonian advocates universal suspension of judgment, and thus universal absence of belief, the Pyrrhonian is condemned to inaction, and therefore to suicide. In principle, two answers are available to the Pyrrhonian: he can deny that action requires belief, or he can reject the interpretation of his position according to which it advocates universal suspension of judgment. Both interpretations have been resourcefully advanced as historically correct. In this paper, however, I am not interested in the (anachronistically stated) historical question: how did the Pyrrhonians answer Hume’s objection? Rather, I am interested in the philosophical question: are any of the answers available to the Pyrrhonian theoretically satisfying? I am particularly interested in whether some contemporary developments in the semantics of knowledge attribution (such as contextualism and contrastivism) can help make any of those answers more plausible. My answer, I’m afraid, is “No.”