Counterfactual skepticism says that most ordinary counterfactuals are false. While few endorse counterfactual skepticism, the precise costs of the view are disputed and not generally well-understood. I have two aims in this paper. My first and primary aim is to establish, on grounds acceptable to all parties, that counterfactual skepticism is not benign. I argue it leads to significant skepticism about the future: if counterfactual skepticism is true, then we can have only very limited knowledge about the future. I give (...) three arguments to this conclusion, taking as premises principles connecting knowledge of indicative conditionals to knowledge of disjunctions; and principles linking knowledge of indicative conditionals to knowledge of counterfactual conditionals.My second aim is to examine the consequences for non-skeptical theories. My arguments indicate that not only are many ordinary counterfactuals true, but that we also know them. How can this be reconciled with the very real tension between counterfactuals and chance? I consider two solutions, one purely epistemic and one contextualist. Together they suggest something like contextualism about knowledge is required to fully resolve the skeptical threat. (shrink)

Cases of inexact observations have been used extensively in the recent literature on higher-order evidence and higher-order knowledge. I argue that the received understanding of inexact observations is mistaken. Although it is convenient to assume that such cases can be modeled statically, they should be analyzed as dynamic cases that involve change of knowledge. Consequently, the underlying logic should be dynamic epistemic logic, not its static counterpart. When reasoning about inexact knowledge, it is easy to confuse the initial situation, the (...) observation process, and the result of the observation; I analyze the three separately. This dynamic approach has far reaching implications: Williamson’s influential argument against the KK principle loses its force, and new insights can be gained regarding synchronic and diachronic introspection principles. (shrink)

The KK thesis says (roughly) that if S knows that P, then S knows that S knows that P. Though controversial, KK may be able to neatly explain an otherwise puzzling datum: namely, that assertions of the form “P, but I don’t know if I know that P” are infelicitous. If KK is true, those assertions are unknowable, and hence guaranteed to violate a knowledge norm on assertion. For many, the fact that KK (if true) can so explain that datum (...) is a strong consideration in its favor. This paper undermines that argument for KK. It first goes on the offensive, arguing that the more plausible “weak KK” gives a worse explanation of the datum. It then proposes an explanation which does not rely on any version of KK, but rather a "believe that you know" norm on assertion. Together, these moves undermine the linguistic argument for KK, and so significantly weaken the case for KK. (shrink)