Fallibilism Evidence And Knowledge
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Fallibilism: Evidence and Knowledge
Author: Jessica Brown
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2018-04-05
What strength of evidence is required for knowledge? Ordinarily, we often claim to know something on the basis of evidence which doesn't guarantee its truth. For instance, one might claim to know that one sees a crow on the basis of visual experience even though having that experience does not guarantee that there is a crow (it might be a rook, or one might be dreaming). As a result, those wanting to avoid philosophical scepticism have standardly embraced "fallibilism": one can know a proposition on the basis of evidence that supports it even if the evidence doesn't guarantee its truth. Despite this, there's been a persistent temptation to endorse "infallibilism", according to which knowledge requires evidence that guarantees truth. For doesn't it sound contradictory to simultaneously claim to know and admit the possibility of error? Infallibilism is undergoing a contemporary renaissance. Furthermore, recent infallibilists make the surprising claim that they can avoid scepticism. Jessica Brown presents a fresh examination of the debate between these two positions. She argues that infallibilists can avoid scepticism only at the cost of problematic commitments concerning evidence and evidential support. Further, she argues that alleged objections to fallibilism are not compelling. She concludes that we should be fallibilists. In doing so, she discusses the nature of evidence, evidential support, justification, blamelessness, closure for knowledge, defeat, epistemic akrasia, practical reasoning, concessive knowledge attributions, and the threshold problem.
Fallibilism
Fallibilists claim that one can know a proposition on the basis of evidence that supports it even if the evidence doesn't guarantee its truth. Jessica Brown offers a compelling defence of this view against infallibilists, who claim that it is contradictory to claim to know and yet to admit the possibility of error.
Skepticism and Fallibilism
Author: Jonathan L. Kvanvig
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2024-12-26
There are two common responses to skepticism, the epistemological claim that knowledge is at least non-existent and perhaps also unachievable, and both are to be avoided. So Jonathan Kvanvig argues here. The first response is to succumb to it, trying then to find some adequate basis for life that foregoes presumptions of knowledge. The second response is dismissive, viewing it as an overwrought, hyperbolic response to human limitations, so wrongheaded that nothing beyond a laconic response is needed before returning to important philosophical tasks. Avoiding these responses requires theory development on the part of skepticism and a way of characterizing sensitive fallibilism in contrast to complacent versions of it. These two tasks take up the majority of the chapters, several of which show how theory development on behalf of the skeptic needs to proceed. The hardest part of this project is to characterize the skeptical ideal for matters that we investigate through the use of defeasible reasoning, where the idea of finding an infallibilist standard looks impossible. In spite of this appearance, it is possible to characterize this ideal in terms of reasoning that puts one in full control over the possibility of error. The other task involves characterizing fallibilism in terms of this notion of full control over the possibilities of error, and then developing a version of this view that doesn't require such full control while at the same time acknowledging, predicting, and explaining how and why such full control appears whenever the language of knowledge is used. The result is an approximationist version of fallibilism that acknowledges that our knowledge is never ideal but is nonetheless close enough to the ideal to be present.