Abstract
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.
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Notes
- 1.
Let one of the conjuncts be a proposition with respect to which I satisfy sensitivity (that is to say, such that if it were false I wouldn’t believe it) and the other one a proposition with respect to which I don’t, and let it be the case that if the conjunction were false then the sensitive conjunct would be false but the insensitive conjunct would be true. In that case, I may well know the conjunction (for I satisfy the sensitivity condition and, if we choose the case correctly, I can also satisfy the other conditions on knowledge posed by Nozick) but I won’t know the insensitive conjunct (precisely because it is insensitive).
- 2.
Although it is a qualified “yes,” for Sosa wants to add that I don’t have “reflective” knowledge, for I don’t know that I know that the surface is red. We will not be concerned with this aspect of the jokester case in what follows.
- 3.
Williamson himself also adopts a non-reductive attitude toward safety.
- 4.
Frankfurt’s own “identification view,” for example, denies that modal conditions are ever relevant (see Frankfurt (1971)).
- 5.
See Sartorio (forthcoming). As Sartorio notices, the supervenience claim (like PAP itself) is most plausibly understood as a constraint on the satisfaction of the metaphysical conditions on freedom—it is a further issue whether the epistemic conditions (such as whether the subject had evidence that bad outcomes would result from his actions) also satisfy a similar supervenience claim.
- 6.
Hetherington distinguishes between responsibility for and responsibility in. One can be responsible for forming unjustified beliefs, and so this is not the notion of responsibility that is fit to explain epistemic justification. Rather, the only plausible reduction is that epistemic justification is a matter of being epistemically responsible in forming a belief. And while Hetherington admits that one may be epistemically responsible for holding a certain belief even if one couldn’t have helped but form it, he seems to think that one cannot be epistemically responsible in forming a belief if one couldn’t have helped but form it. But taking into account this complication in Hetherington’s reasoning does nothing to alleviate my puzzlement—why would the fact that it is possible for me to fail to form the right belief show that I am not responsible in forming it?
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Comesaña, J. (2013). Safety and Epistemic Frankfurt Cases. In: Turri, J. (eds) Virtuous Thoughts: The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 119. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5934-3_9
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