Abstract
In a recent paper, Helton and Nanay (Analysis, 79(3), 415–423, 2019) present a new argument against two modal accounts of knowledge—safety and sensitivity. Their argument is based on the phenomenon of amodal completion (i.e. the phenomenon of representing occluded parts of a perceived object). According to them, amodal completion experience can ground knowledge; but in some instances, such knowledge is neither sensitive nor safe. Thus, they conclude that neither sensitivity nor safety is a necessary condition for knowledge. This paper pushes back. In particular, I defend the following three theses. First, Helton and Nanay’s argument for the claim that amodal completion itself can ground knowledge is unsound. Second, their objection against sensitivity is best construed as merely another instantiation of the old objection against sensitivity regarding inductive knowledge. Thus, sensitivity theorists have nothing to worry about over and above the old objection. Third, safety theorists can plausibly defend their account, insofar as they acknowledge that one’s ‘awareness’ of (close) error-possibilities can affect the epistemic status of one’s belief. My conclusion is that reflections on the phenomenon of amodal completion fail to generate any new objections against modal accounts of knowledge.
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Notes
See Chudnoff (2018b, 524-525).
Unfortunately, Helton and Nanay do not explain why this is counterintuitive.
That said, Chudnoff’s view can be plausibly extended so as to handle the objection. Thus, one could allow background information of different sorts—which include, but are not restricted to, background information about the type of an object—to constitute justification for amodal completion-based beliefs. As will be shown, such a view can plausibly deal with Helton and Nanay’s thought experiment.
Notice that the subject being a typical perceiver is stipulated in Helton and Nanay’s scenario.
To clarify, neither Chudnoff nor I think that one must consciously use background information in an inference to justify amodal completion-based beliefs. The same point also applies to inductive knowledge in general: one does not need to consciously use her inductive basis as a premise in an inference in order to acquire inductive knowledge.
Without such an inductive basis, it is hard to see how Ernie could know that the bag will be in the basement. See Pritchard (2012, 253).
Cf. Wallbridge (2018) for more complications regarding this example.
In fact, what will be shown in the following pages may not be the only solution. Consider Pritchard’s (2007, 292; 2012, 255) more refined version of safety:
Safety(weighed): If one knows that p, then one’s belief in p is not only true in the actual world, but also true in all very close possible worlds and most close possible worlds (where one forms the belief with the same method as in the actual world).
Safety(weighed) gives different ‘weight’ to possible worlds of different closeness. For those worlds that are very close to the actual world, it dictates that knowledge is completely incompatible with false beliefs in those worlds, but for those possible worlds that are relatively far-off, knowledge is more tolerant of errors. Pritchard argues that this version of safety can handle both the lottery problem and Garbage Chute. In the former, presumably the possible world where one wins the lottery is very close to the actual world. After all, all that needs to be changed in that world is that the lottery balls fall in a slightly different configuration such that the subject’s ticket numbers win (Pritchard 2007, 292). And so, Safety(weighed) plausibly predicts that the subject’s belief that she will lose is unsafe. On the other hand, in Garbage Chute, insofar as Ernie’s belief constitutes knowledge, the chute that delivers the garbage bag should be functioning properly (otherwise why would we think that he knows?). But with a properly functioning chute, many details would have to be changed for the bag to not reach the basement (Cf. Pritchard 2012, 255). Thus, the world where Ernie forms a false belief is not very close to the actual world, rendering his belief plausibly safe, according to Safety(weighed).
Now, presumably Safety(weighed) can also handle the pumpkin example. To illustrate, consider the following two types of scenarios: (a) Suppose that the deformed pumpkins are located relatively far away from the subject and the pumpkin that she actually sees, such that she could not easily have encountered those deformed pumpkins. (That is, the possible worlds where the subject sees the deformed pumpkins are not very close to the actual world.) (b) Suppose that the deformed pumpkins are located very close to the subject and the pumpkin that she actually sees, such that she could easily have formed a false belief by perceiving the deformed pumpkins. Under (a), I find the intuition that the subject knows to be relatively strong. After all, there seems to be no principled reason to think that a small number of deformed pumpkins that the subject could not easily have encountered would prevent her from knowing that the pumpkin she actually sees is spherical. Under (b), however, the intuition that the subject knows seems much weaker. After all, there is a sense in which the subject’s true belief here is formed luckily. In particular, it seems lucky that the subject’s eyes happen to land on the normally shaped pumpkin, as opposed to those deformed ones in the very near vicinity. Now, notice that Safety(weighed) gives correct predictions to both scenarios. In (a), the belief is safe according to Safety(weighed), corresponding to the intuition that the subject knows. In (b), the belief is unsafe according to Safety(weighed), which explains why we are not inclined (or at least less inclined) to attribute knowledge in this scenario. I thank an anonymous referee for encouraging me to discuss Safety(weighed) here.
I further defend Lack-of-Awareness in my manuscript (Zhao, H., Safety and Awareness of Error-Possibility, unpublished), where I argue that Lack-of-Awareness can be plausibly developed to accommodate misleading defeater, normative defeater, etc.
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Amy Milton and an anonymous referee for helpful feedback on this paper.
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Zhao, H. Revisiting Amodal Completion and Knowledge. Philosophia 48, 847–856 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00150-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00150-z