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Is Knowledge Closed Under Known Entailment? The Case Against Closure

In Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Blackwell. pp. 13-26 (2013)

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  1. Trust Responsibly: Non-Evidential Virtue Epistemology.Jakob Ohlhorst - 2023 - New York City: Routledge.
    This book offers a defence of Wrightean epistemic entitlement, one of the most prominent approaches to hinge epistemology. It also systematically explores the connections between virtue epistemology and hinge epistemology. -/- According to hinge epistemology, any human belief set is built within and upon a framework of pre-evidential propositions – hinges – that cannot be justified. Epistemic entitlement argues that we are entitled to trust our hinges. But there remains a problem. Entitlement is inherently unconstrained and arbitrary: We can be (...)
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  • An Ecumenical Mooreanism.Jonathan Fuqua - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (5):2019-2040.
    The purpose of this paper is to get clear on how we should think about Mooreanism. I will argue that Mooreanism is best understood as a metaphilosophical response to skepticism rather than a particular position on specialized debates in first-order epistemology. This ecumenical understanding of Mooreanism implies that a broad array of epistemologists is free to be Moorean. In Sect. 2 I discuss several non-Moorean responses to skepticism. In Sect. 3 I provide an exposition of Mooreanism itself. In Sect. 4 (...)
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  • (1 other version)Knowledge is closed under analytic content.Samuel Z. Elgin - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):5339-5353.
    I am concerned with epistemic closure—the phenomenon in which some knowledge requires other knowledge. In particular, I defend a version of the closure principle in terms of analyticity; if an agent S knows that p is true and that q is an analytic part of p, then S knows that q. After targeting the relevant notion of analyticity, I argue that this principle accommodates intuitive cases and possesses the theoretical resources to avoid the preface paradox.
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  • Dretske & McDowell on perceptual knowledge, conclusive reasons, and epistemological disjunctivism.Peter J. Graham & Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen - 2020 - Philosophical Issues 30 (1):148-166.
    If you want to understand McDowell's spatial metaphors when he talks about perceptual knowledge, place him side-by-side with Dretske on perceptual knowledge. Though McDowell shows no evidence of reading Dretske's writings on knowledge from the late 1960s onwards (McDowell mentions "Epistemic Operators" once in passing), McDowell gives the same four arguments as Dretske for the conclusion that knowledge requires "conclusive" reasons that rule of the possibility of mistake. Despite various differences, we think it is best to read McDowell as re-discovering (...)
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  • Mark McBride, Basic Knowledge and Conditions on Knowledge, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017, 228 pp., £16.95 , ISBN 978‐1‐78374‐283‐7. [REVIEW]Artūrs Logins - 2019 - Dialectica 73 (1-2):280-285.
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  • (1 other version)Confirmation, transitivity, and Moore: the Screening-Off Approach.William Roche & Tomoji Shogenji - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (3):797-817.
    It is well known that the probabilistic relation of confirmation is not transitive in that even if E confirms H1 and H1 confirms H2, E may not confirm H2. In this paper we distinguish four senses of confirmation and examine additional conditions under which confirmation in different senses becomes transitive. We conduct this examination both in the general case where H1 confirms H2 and in the special case where H1 also logically entails H2. Based on these analyses, we argue that (...)
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  • (1 other version)Knowledge is Closed Under Analytic Content.Samuel Elgin - manuscript
    I am concerned with epistemic closure—the phenomenon in which some knowledge requires other knowledge. In particular, I defend a version of the closure principle in terms of analyticity; if an agent S knows that p is true, then S knows that all analytic parts of p are true as well. After targeting the relevant notion of analyticity, I argue that this principle accommodates intuitive cases and possesses the theoretical resources to avoid the preface paradox. I close by arguing that contextualists (...)
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  • Authority without privilege: How to be a Dretskean conciliatory skeptic on self-knowledge.Michael Roche & William Roche - 2021 - Synthese 198 (2):1071-1087.
    Dretske is a “conciliatory skeptic” on self-knowledge. Take some subject S such that S thinks that P and S knows that she has thoughts. Dretske’s theory can be put as follows: S has a privileged way of knowing what she thinks, but she has no privileged way of knowing that she thinks it. There is much to be said on behalf of conciliatory skepticism and Dretske’s defense of it. We aim to show, however, that Dretske’s defense fails, in that if (...)
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  • Can probability theory explain why closure is both intuitive and prone to counterexamples?Marcello Di Bello - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (9):2145-2168.
    Epistemic closure under known implication is the principle that knowledge of "p" and knowledge of "p implies q", together, imply knowledge of "q". This principle is intuitive, yet several putative counterexamples have been formulated against it. This paper addresses the question, why is epistemic closure both intuitive and prone to counterexamples? In particular, the paper examines whether probability theory can offer an answer to this question based on four strategies. The first probability-based strategy rests on the accumulation of risks. The (...)
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  • Amodal completion and knowledge.Grace Helton & Bence Nanay - 2019 - Analysis 79 (3):415-423.
    Amodal completion is the representation of occluded parts of perceived objects. We argue for the following three claims: First, at least some amodal completion-involved experiences can ground knowledge about the occluded portions of perceived objects. Second, at least some instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge are not sensitive, that is, it is not the case that in the nearest worlds in which the relevant claim is false, that claim is not believed true. Third, at least some instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge (...)
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  • Knowledge Grounded on Pure Reasoning.Luis Rosa - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (1):156-173.
    In this paper I deal with epistemological issues that stem from the hypothesis that reasoning is not only a means of transmitting knowledge from premise-beliefs to conclusion-beliefs, but also a primary source of knowledge in its own right. The idea is that one can gain new knowledge on the basis of suppositional reasoning. After making some preliminary distinctions, I argue that there are no good reasons to think that purported examples of knowledge grounded on pure reasoning are just examples of (...)
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  • Sensitivity, Induction, and Miracles.Kevin Wallbridge - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (1):118-126.
    Sosa, Pritchard, and Vogel have all argued that there are cases in which one knows something inductively but does not believe it sensitively, and that sensitivity therefore cannot be necessary for knowledge. I defend sensitivity by showing that inductive knowledge is sensitive.
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  • Closure Failure and Scientific Inquiry.Sherri Roush - 2017 - Res Philosophica 94 (2):1-25.
    Deduction is important to scientific inquiry because it can extend knowledge efficiently, bypassing the need to investigate everything directly. The existence of closure failure—where one knows the premises and that the premises imply the conclusion but nevertheless does not know the conclusion—is a problem because it threatens this usage. It means that we cannot trust deduction for gaining new knowledge unless we can identify such cases ahead of time so as to avoid them. For philosophically engineered examples we have “inner (...)
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  • (1 other version)Pluralism about Knowledge.Robin McKenna - 2017 - In Coliva Annalisa & Pedersen Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding (eds.), Epistemic Pluralism. Londra, Regno Unito: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 171-198.
    In this paper I consider the prospects for pluralism about knowledge, that is, the view that there is a plurality of knowledge relations. After a brief overview of some views that entail a sort of pluralism about knowledge, I focus on a particular kind of knowledge pluralism I call standards pluralism. Put roughly, standards pluralism is the view that one never knows anything simpliciter. Rather, one knows by this-or-that epistemic standard. Because there is a plurality of epistemic standards, there is (...)
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  • (1 other version)Knowledge for Nothing.Patrick Greenough - 2020 - In Peter Graham & Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (eds.), Epistemic Entitlement. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    Let Entitlement Epistemology be the theory of knowledge which says that entitlement—a special kind of unearned warrant to accept or believe—can help us successfully address a range of sceptical arguments. Prominent versions of this theory urge that epistemology should not be concerned with knowledge (and similar externalist states) but rather with justification, warrant, and entitlement (at least insofar as these are conceived of as internalist states). Knowledge does not come first, half-way, or even last in epistemological theorising—rather, it ought to (...)
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  • On Sharon and Spectre’s argument against closure.Juan Comesaña - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (4):1039-1046.
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  • Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing.Duncan Pritchard - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (3):70-90.
    Support is canvassed for a novel solution to the sceptical problem regarding our knowledge of the external world. Key to this solution is the claim that what initially looks like a single problem is in fact two logically distinct problems. In particular, there are two putative sceptical paradoxes in play here, which each trade on distinctive epistemological theses. It is argued that the ideal solution to radical scepticism would thus be a biscopic proposal—viz., a two-pronged, integrated, undercutting treatment of both (...)
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  • Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology.Annalisa Coliva - 2015 - London, England: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology provides a novel account of the structure of epistemic justification. Its central claim builds upon Wittgenstein's idea in On Certainty that epistemic justifications hinge on some basic assumptions and that epistemic rationality extends to these very hinges. It exploits these ideas to address major problems in epistemology, such as the nature of perceptual justifications, external world skepticism, epistemic relativism, the epistemic status of basic logical laws, of the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature, of our (...)
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  • Perceptual knowledge and relevant alternatives.J. Adam Carter & Duncan Pritchard - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (4):969-990.
    A very natural view about perceptual knowledge is articulated, one on which perceptual knowledge is closely related to perceptual discrimination, and which fits well with a relevant alternatives account of knowledge. It is shown that this kind of proposal faces a problem, and various options for resolving this difficulty are explored. In light of this discussion, a two-tiered relevant alternatives account of perceptual knowledge is offered which avoids the closure problem. It is further shown how this proposal can: accommodate our (...)
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  • Undercutting Underdetermination‐Based Scepticism.Natalie Alana Ashton - 2015 - Theoria 81 (4):333-354.
    According to Duncan Pritchard, there are two kinds of radical sceptical problem; the closure-based problem, and the underdetermination-based problem. He argues that distinguishing these two problems leads to a set of desiderata for an anti-sceptical response, and that the way to meet all of these desiderata is by supplementing a form of Wittgensteinian contextualism with disjunctivist views about factivity. I agree that an adequate response should meet most of the initial desiderata Pritchard puts forward, and that some version of Wittgensteinian (...)
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  • Contextualism in Epistemology.Robin McKenna - 2015 - Analysis 75 (3):489-503.
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  • On synchronic dogmatism.Rodrigo Borges - 2015 - Synthese 192 (11):3677-3693.
    Saul Kripke argued that the requirement that knowledge eliminate all possibilities of error leads to dogmatism . According to this view, the dogmatism puzzle arises because of a requirement on knowledge that is too strong. The paper argues that dogmatism can be avoided even if we hold on to the strong requirement on knowledge. I show how the argument for dogmatism can be blocked and I argue that the only other approach to the puzzle in the literature is mistaken.
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  • An Argument for External World Skepticism from the Appearance/Reality Distinction.Moti Mizrahi - 2016 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (4):368-383.
    In this paper, I argue that arguments from skeptical hypotheses for external world skepticism derive their support from a skeptical argument from the distinction between appearance and reality. This skeptical argument from the appearance/reality distinction gives the external world skeptic her conclusion without appealing to skeptical hypotheses and without assuming that knowledge is closed under known entailments. If this is correct, then this skeptical argument from the appearance/reality distinction poses a new skeptical challenge that cannot be resolved by denying skeptical (...)
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  • Closure of A Priori Knowability Under A Priori Knowable Material Implication.Jan Heylen - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (2):359-380.
    The topic of this article is the closure of a priori knowability under a priori knowable material implication: if a material conditional is a priori knowable and if the antecedent is a priori knowable, then the consequent is a priori knowable as well. This principle is arguably correct under certain conditions, but there is at least one counterexample when completely unrestricted. To deal with this, Anderson proposes to restrict the closure principle to necessary truths and Horsten suggests to restrict it (...)
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  • The Rational Significance of Desire.Avery Archer - 2013 - Dissertation, Columbia University
    My dissertation addresses the question "do desires provide reasons?" I present two independent lines of argument in support of the conclusion that they do not. The first line of argument emerges from the way I circumscribe the concept of a desire. Complications aside, I conceive of a desire as a member of a family of attitudes that have imperative content, understood as content that displays doability-conditions rather than truth-conditions. Moreover, I hold that an attitude may provide reasons only if it (...)
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  • On the Truth-Conduciveness of Coherence.William Roche - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (3):647-665.
    I argue that coherence is truth-conducive in that coherence implies an increase in the probability of truth. Central to my argument is a certain principle for transitivity in probabilistic support. I then address a question concerning the truth-conduciveness of coherence as it relates to (something else I argue for) the truth-conduciveness of consistency, and consider how the truth-conduciveness of coherence bears on coherentist theories of justification.
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  • (1 other version)Confirmation, transitivity, and Moore: the Screening-Off Approach.William Roche & Tomoji Shogenji - 2013 - Philosophical Studies (3):1-21.
    It is well known that the probabilistic relation of confirmation is not transitive in that even if E confirms H1 and H1 confirms H2, E may not confirm H2. In this paper we distinguish four senses of confirmation and examine additional conditions under which confirmation in different senses becomes transitive. We conduct this examination both in the general case where H1 confirms H2 and in the special case where H1 also logically entails H2. Based on these analyses, we argue that (...)
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  • The Argument from Abomination.Michael Veber - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (5):1185-1196.
    The conclusive reasons view of knowledge entails the “abominable conjunction” that I know that I have hands but I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat. The argument from abomination takes this as a reason to reject the view. This paper aims to buttress the argument from abomination by adding a new sort to this list: the logical abominations. These include: “I know that argument is sound and that sound arguments have true conclusions but I (...)
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  • Wittgenstein and the groundlessness of our believing.Duncan Pritchard - 2012 - Synthese 189 (2):255-272.
    In his final notebooks, published as On Certainty , Wittgenstein offers a distinctive conception of the nature of reasons. Central to this conception is the idea that at the heart of our rational practices are essentially arational commitments. This proposal marks a powerful challenge to the standard picture of the structure of reasons. In particular, it has been thought that this account might offer us a resolution of the traditional scepticism/anti-scepticism debate. It is argued, however, that some standard ways of (...)
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  • Varieties of failure (of warrant transmission: what else?!).Annalisa Coliva - 2012 - Synthese 189 (2):235-254.
    In the contemporary expanding literature on transmission failure and its connections with issues such as the Closure principle, the nature of perceptual warrant, Moore’s proof of an external world and the effectiveness of Humean scepticism, it has often been assumed that there is just one kind of it: the one made familiar by the writings of Crispin Wright and Martin Davies. Although it might be thought that one kind of failure is more than enough, Davies has recently challenged this view: (...)
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  • (1 other version)Common sense as evidence: Against revisionary ontology and skepticism.Thomas Kelly - 2008 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32 (1):53-78.
    In this age of post-Moorean modesty, many of us are inclined to doubt that philosophy is in possession of arguments that might genuinely serve to undermine what we ordinarily believe. It may perhaps be conceded that the arguments of the skeptic appear to be utterly compelling; but the Mooreans among us will hold that the very plausibility of our ordinary beliefs is reason enough for supposing that there must be something wrong in the skeptic’s arguments, even if we are unable (...)
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  • Contrastivism, evidence, and scepticism.Duncan Pritchard - 2008 - Social Epistemology 22 (3):305 – 323.
    I offer a critical treatment of the contrastivist response to the problem of radical scepticism. In particular, I argue that if contrastivism is understood along externalist lines then it is unnecessary, while if it is understood along internalist lines then it is intellectually dissatisfying. Moreover, I claim that a closer examination of the conditions under which it is appropriate to claim knowledge reveals that we can accommodate many of the intuitions appealed to by contrastivists without having to opt for this (...)
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  • Single premise deduction and risk.Maria Lasonen-Aarnio - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 141 (2):157 - 173.
    It is tempting to think that multi premise closure creates a special class of paradoxes having to do with the accumulation of risks, and that these paradoxes could be escaped by rejecting the principle, while still retaining single premise closure. I argue that single premise deduction is also susceptible to risks. I show that what I take to be the strongest argument for rejecting multi premise closure is also an argument for rejecting single premise closure. Because of the symmetry between (...)
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  • Dretske and Informational Closure.Yves Bouchard - 2022 - Minds and Machines 32 (2):311-322.
    Christoph Jäger has argued that Dretske’s information-based account of knowledge is committed to both knowledge and information closure under known entailment. However, in a reply to Jäger, Dretske defended his view on the basis of a discrepancy between the relation of information and the relation of logical implication. This paper shares Jäger’s criticism that Dretske’s externalist notion of information implies closure, but provides an analysis based on different grounds. By means of a distinction between two perspectives, the mathematical perspective and (...)
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  • Knowledge Closure and Knowledge Openness: A Study of Epistemic Closure Principles.Levi Spectre - 2009 - Stockholm: Stockholm University.
    The principle of epistemic closure is the claim that what is known to follow from knowledge is known to be true. This intuitively plausible idea is endorsed by a vast majority of knowledge theorists. There are significant problems, however, that have to be addressed if epistemic closure – closed knowledge – is endorsed. The present essay locates the problem for closed knowledge in the separation it imposes between knowledge and evidence. Although it might appear that all that stands between knowing (...)
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  • Are There Heavyweight Perceptual Reasons?Chris Ranalli - forthcoming - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism:1-26.
    Genia Schönbaumsfeld has recently argued for the view that our ordinary perceptual reasons provide support for heavyweight metaphysical and epistemological views, such as that there is a mind-independent physical world. Call this the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis. In this paper, I argue that we should reject the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis. I also argue that the rejection of the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis is compatible with the Factive Perceptual Reasons Thesis, the thesis that our perceptual reasons for our ordinary beliefs can be factive, (...)
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  • Knowledge, justification, and (a sort of) safe belief.Daniel Whiting - 2020 - Synthese 197 (8):3593-3609.
    An influential proposal is that knowledge involves safe belief. A belief is safe, in the relevant sense, just in case it is true in nearby metaphysically possible worlds. In this paper, I introduce a distinct but complementary notion of safety, understood in terms of epistemically possible worlds. The main aim, in doing so, is to add to the epistemologist’s tool-kit. To demonstrate the usefulness of the tool, I use it to advance and assess substantive proposals concerning knowledge and justification.
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  • Dretske on Self-Knowledge and Contrastive Focus: How to Understand Dretske’s Theory, and Why It Matters.Michael Roche & William Roche - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (5):975-992.
    Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge is interesting but peculiar and can seem implausible. He denies that we can know by introspection that we have thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But he allows that we can know by introspection what we think, feel, and experience. We consider two puzzles. The first puzzle, PUZZLE 1, is interpretive. Is there a way of understanding Dretske’s theory on which the knowledge affirmed by its positive side is different than the knowledge denied by its negative side? The (...)
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  • Evidence and the openness of knowledge.Assaf Sharon & Levi Spectre - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (4):1001-1037.
    The paper argues that knowledge is not closed under logical inference. The argument proceeds from the openness of evidential support and the dependence of empirical knowledge on evidence, to the conclusion that knowledge is open. Without attempting to provide a full-fledged theory of evidence, we show that on the modest assumption that evidence cannot support both a proposition and its negation, or, alternatively, that information that reduces the probability of a proposition cannot constitute evidence for its truth, the relation of (...)
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  • Experience and Reason.Fabian Dorsch - 2011 - Rero Doc.
    This collection brings together a selection of my recently published or forthcoming articles. What unites them is their common concern with one of the central ambitions of philosophy, namely to get clearer about our first-personal perspective onto the world and our minds. Three aspects of that perspective are of particular importance: consciousness, intentionality, and rationality. The collected essays address metaphysical and epistemological questions both concerning the nature of each of these aspects and concerning the various connections among them. More generally, (...)
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  • Shutting dretske’s door.Nicholas Shackel - 2006 - Erkenntnis 64 (3):393-401.
    Dretske proposes a theory of knowledge in terms of a theory of information, but wishes to deny that empirical knowledge settles the large question of scepticism. This leads him to deny the closure of knowledge under known entailment. In a recent paper Jäger argues that Dretske's theory of information entails closure for knowledge, 'at least for the kind of propositions here at issue'. If Jäger is right, Dretske is seriously embarrassed and must give something up. In this paper I show (...)
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  • Safety, Closure, and the Flow of Information.Jens Kipper - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (5):1109-1126.
    In his earlier writings, Fred Dretske proposed an anti-skeptical strategy that is based on a rejection of the view that knowledge is closed under known entailment. This strategy is seemingly congenial with a sensitivity condition for knowledge, which is often associated with Dretske’s epistemology. However, it is not obvious how Dretske’s early account meshes with the information-theoretic view developed in Knowledge and the Flow of Information. One aim of this paper is to elucidate the connections between these accounts. First I (...)
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  • Skepticism and Epistemic Closure: Two Bayesian Accounts.Luca Moretti & Tomoji Shogenji - 2017 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 7 (1):1-25.
    This paper considers two novel Bayesian responses to a well-known skeptical paradox. The paradox consists of three intuitions: first, given appropriate sense experience, we have justification for accepting the relevant proposition about the external world; second, we have justification for expanding the body of accepted propositions through known entailment; third, we do not have justification for accepting that we are not disembodied souls in an immaterial world deceived by an evil demon. The first response we consider rejects the third intuition (...)
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  • Wright Back to Dretske, or Why You Might as Well Deny Knowledge Closure.Marc Alspector-Kelly - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (3):570-611.
    Fred Dretske notoriously claimed that knowledge closure sometimes fails. Crispin Wright agrees that warrant does not transmit in the relevant cases, but only because the agent must already be warranted in believing the conclusion in order to acquire her warrant for the premise. So the agent ends up being warranted in believing, and so knowing, the conclusion in those cases too: closure is preserved. Wright's argument requires that the conclusion's having to be warranted beforehand explains transmission failure. I argue that (...)
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  • Epistemic Closure and Epistemic Logic I: Relevant Alternatives and Subjunctivism.Wesley H. Holliday - 2015 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 44 (1):1-62.
    Epistemic closure has been a central issue in epistemology over the last forty years. According to versions of the relevant alternatives and subjunctivist theories of knowledge, epistemic closure can fail: an agent who knows some propositions can fail to know a logical consequence of those propositions, even if the agent explicitly believes the consequence (having “competently deduced” it from the known propositions). In this sense, the claim that epistemic closure can fail must be distinguished from the fact that agents do (...)
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  • Towards closure on closure.Fred Adams, John A. Barker & Julia Figurelli - 2012 - Synthese 188 (2):179-196.
    Tracking theories of knowledge are widely known to have the consequence that knowledge is not closed. Recent arguments by Vogel and Hawthorne claim both that there are no legitimate examples of knowledge without closure and that the costs of theories that deny closure are too great. This paper considers the tracking theories of Dretske and Nozick and the arguments by Vogel and Hawthorne. We reject the arguments of Vogel and Hawthorne and evaluate the costs of closure denial for tracking theories (...)
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  • Radical Scepticism Without Epistemic Closure.Sven Rosenkranz - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (3):692-718.
    This paper contributes to the current debate about radical scepticism and the structure of warrant. After a presentation of the standard version of the radical sceptic’s challenge, both in its barest and its more refined form, three anti-sceptical responses, and their respective commitments, are being identified: the Dogmatist response, the Conservativist response and the Dretskean response. It is then argued that both the Dretskean and the Conservativist are right that the anti-sceptical hypothesis cannot inherit any perceptual warrants from ordinary propositions (...)
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  • Closure, Defeasibility and Conclusive Reasons.Claudio Almeida - 2007 - Acta Analytica 22 (4):301-319.
    It is argued, on the basis of new counterexamples, that neither knowledge nor epistemic justification (or epistemic rationality ) can reasonably be thought to be closed under logical implication. The argument includes an attempt to reconcile the fundamental intuitions of the opposing parties in the debate.
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  • Skeptical Theism, Moral Skepticism, and Divine Deception.Joshua Seigal - 2010 - Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 15 (2):251-274.
    Skeptical theism - a strategy for dealing with so-called ‘evidential arguments from evil’ - is often held to lead to moral skepticism. In this paper I look at some of the responses open to the skeptical theist to the contention that her position leads to moral skepticism, and argue that they are ultimately unsuccessful, since they leave the skeptical theist with no grounds for ruling out the possibility of maximal divine deception. I then go on to argue that the situation (...)
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  • Why safety doesn’t save closure.Marc Alspector-Kelly - 2011 - Synthese 183 (2):127-142.
    Knowledge closure is, roughly, the following claim: For every agent S and propositions P and Q, if S knows P, knows that P implies Q, and believes Q because it is so implied, then S knows Q. Almost every epistemologist believes that closure is true. Indeed, they often believe that it so obviously true that any theory implying its denial is thereby refuted. Some prominent epistemologists have nevertheless denied it, most famously Fred Dretske and Robert Nozick. There are closure advocates (...)
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