Tag Archives: knowledge

Aaran BURNS ABSTRACT: The sceptic says things like “nobody knows anything at all,” “nobody knows that they have hands,” and “nobody knows that the table exists when they aren’t looking at it.” According to many recent anti-sceptics, the sceptic means to deny ordinary knowledge attributions. Understood this way, the sceptic is open to the charge, made often by Contextualists and …

Jeffrey HOOPS ABSTRACT: In recent discussions in this journal, Moti Mizrahi defends the claim that knowledge equals epistemic certainty. Howard Sankey finds Mizrahi’s argument to be problematic, since, as he reads it, this would entail that justification must guarantee truth. In this article, I suggest that an account of the normativity of justification is able to bridge the gap between …

Gregory STOUTENBURG ABSTRACT: Epistemic probability theories of luck come in two versions. They are easiest to distinguish by the epistemic property they claim eliminates luck. One view says that the property is knowledge. The other view says that the property is being guaranteed by a subject’s evidence. Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen defends the Knowledge Account (KA). He has recently argued that his …

Hans ROTT ABSTRACT: An idea going back to Plato’s Meno is that knowledge is stable. Recently, a seemingly stronger and more exciting thesis has been advanced, namely that rational belief is stable. I sketch two stability theories of knowledge and rational belief, and present an example intended to show that knowledge need not be stable and rational belief need not …

Moti MIZRAHI ABSTRACT: This is a reply to Howard Sankey’s comment (“Factivity or Grounds? Comment on Mizrahi”) on my paper, “You Can’t Handle the Truth: Knowledge = Epistemic Certainty,” in which I present an argument from the factivity of knowledge for the conclusion that knowledge is epistemic certainty. While Sankey is right that factivity does not entail epistemic certainty, the …

Howard SANKEY ABSTRACT: This reply provides further grounds to doubt Mizrahi’s argument for an infallibilist theory of knowledge. It is pointed out that the fact that knowledge requires both truth and justification does not entail that the level of justification required for knowledge be sufficient to guarantee truth. In addition, an argument presented by Mizrahi appears to equivocate with respect …

James SIMPSON ABSTRACT: In a recent discussion note in this journal, Moti Mizrahi offers us the following argument for the conclusion that knowledge requires epistemic certainty: If S knows that p on the grounds that e, then p cannot be false given e. If p cannot be false given e, then e makes p epistemically certain. Therefore, if S knows …

Howard SANKEY ABSTRACT: This note is a comment on a recent paper in this journal by Moti Mizrahi. Mizrahi claims that the factivity of knowledge entails that knowledge requires epistemic certainty. But the argument that Mizrahi presents does not proceed from factivity to certainty. Instead, it proceeds from a premise about the relationship between grounds and knowledge to the conclusion …

Michael J. SHAFFER ABSTRACT: It is an under-appreciated fact that Quine’s rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction¾when coupled with some other plausible and related views¾implies that there are serious difficulties in demarcating empirical theories from pure mathematical theories within the Quinean framework.  This is a serious problem because there seems to be a principled difference between the two disciplines that cannot …

Moti MIZRAHI ABSTRACT: In this discussion note, I put forth an argument from the factivity of knowledge for the conclusion that knowledge is epistemic certainty. If this argument is sound, then epistemologists who think that knowledge is factive are thereby also committed to the view that knowledge is epistemic certainty. Download PDF