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Useful False Beliefs

In Quentin Smith (ed.), Epistemology: new essays. New York : Oxford University Press,: Oxford University Press. pp. 25-63 (2008)

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  1. Knowledge from Blindspots.Rhys Borchert, Juan Comesaña & Tim Kearl - 2023 - In Rodrigo Borges & Ian Schnee (eds.), Illuminating Errors: New Essays on Knowledge from Non-Knowledge. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 76-91.
    No False Lemmas (NFL) says: necessarily, S’s belief that p is knowledge only if it is not inferred from any falsehood. Its proponents argue that alleged counterexamples to NFL are really cases of knowledge despite falsehood, wherein the false premise is inessential to the inference; perhaps some nearby truth does the justificatory heavy-lifting. We argue that there can be cases of inferential knowledge from a blindspot premise. Given that in such cases the relevant falsehood is essential to the inference, one (...)
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  • First-Class and Coach-Class Knowledge.Spencer Paulson - 2023 - Episteme 20 (3):736-756.
    I will discuss a variety of cases such that the subject's believing truly is somewhat of an accident, but less so than in a Gettier case. In each case, this is because her reasons are not ultimately undefeated full stop, but they are ultimately undefeated with certain qualifications. For example, the subject's reasons might be ultimately defeated considered in themselves but ultimately undefeated considered as a proper part of an inference to the best explanation that is undefeated without qualification. In (...)
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  • Evidence, reasons, and knowledge in the reasons-first program.Paul Silva & Sven Bernecker - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 181 (2):617-625.
    Mark Schroeder’s Reasons First is admirable in its scope and execution, deftly demonstrating the theoretical promise of extending the reasons-first approach from ethics to epistemology. In what follows we explore how (not) to account for the evidence-that relation within the reasons-first program, we explain how factive content views of evidence can be resilient in the face of Schroeder’s criticisms, and we explain how knowledge from falsehood threatens Schroeder’s view of knowledge. Along the way we sketch a reliabilist account of the (...)
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  • Knowledge from Falsehood, Ignorance of Necessary Truths, and Safety.Bin Zhao - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (2):833-845.
    According to the safety account of knowledge, one knows that p only if one’s belief could not easily have been false. An important issue for the account is whether we should only examine the target belief when evaluating whether a belief is safe or not. In this paper, it is argued that, if we should only examine the target belief, then the account fails to account for ignorance of necessary truths. But, if we should also examine beliefs in other relevant (...)
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  • Can Infinitists Handle the Finite Mind Objection and the Distinction Objection?Bin Zhao - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (5):2275-2291.
    This paper examines two objections to the infinitist theory of epistemic justification, namely “the finite mind objection” and “the distinction objection.” It criticizes Peter Klein’s response to the distinction objection and offers a more plausible response. It is then argued that this response is incompatible with Klein’s response to the finite mind objection. Infinitists, it would seem, cannot handle both objections when taken together.
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  • What Does It Take to Know that You Know?Noah Gordon - 2021 - Acta Analytica 36 (3):443-449.
    In some recent work, John N.Williams defends a new objection to the defeasibility theory of knowledge. But the objection is of wider interest, since Williams also suggests that this style of objection may undermine other theories of knowledge. I distinguish two versions of Williams’ objection. I then show that the first version relies on false conceptual principles, and the second relies on a specific and dubious conception of the goal of the analysis of knowledge.
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  • Reconsidering the Alleged Cases of Knowledge from Falsehood.Kok Yong Lee - 2020 - Philosophical Investigations 44 (2):151-162.
    A number of philosophers have recently proposed several alleged cases of “knowledge from falsehood,” i.e., cases of inferential knowledge epistemised by an inference with a false crucial premise. This paper examines such cases and argues against interpreting them as cases of knowledge from falsehood. Specifically, I argue that the inferences in play in such cases are in no position to epistemise their conclusions.
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  • Internalism and the Nature of Justification.Jonathan Egeland Harouny - 2020 - Dissertation, Stockholm University
    There are many important dimensions of epistemic evaluation, one of which is justification. We don’t just evaluate beliefs for truth, reliability, accuracy, and knowledge, but also for justification. However, in the epistemological literature, there is much disagreement about the nature of justification and how it should be understood. One of the controversies that has separated the contemporary epistemological discourse into two opposing camps has to do with the internalism-externalism distinction. Whereas internalists defend certain core assumptions about justification from the pre-Gettier (...)
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  • Knowledge from Falsehood: An Experimental Study.John Turri - 2019 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 8 (3):167-178.
    Philosophers have debated whether it is possible to knowledgeably infer a conclusion from a false premise. For example, if a fan believes that the actress’s dress is blue, but the dress is actually green, can the fan knowledgeably infer “the dress is not red” from “the dress is blue”? One aspect of this debate concerns what the intuitively correct verdict is about specific cases such as this. Here I report a simple behavioral experiment that helps answer this question. The main (...)
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  • The demon that makes us go mental: mentalism defended.Jonathan Egeland - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (12):3141-3158.
    Facts about justification are not brute facts. They are epistemic facts that depend upon more fundamental non-epistemic facts. Internalists about justification often argue for mentalism, which claims that facts about justification supervene upon one’s non-factive mental states, using Lehrer and Cohen’s :191–207, 1983) New Evil Demon Problem. The New Evil Demon Problem tells you to imagine yourself the victim of a Cartesian demon who deceives you about what the external world is like, and then asks whether you nevertheless have justification (...)
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  • (1 other version)Epistemic Luck.Mylan Engel Jr - 2011 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:1-41.
    Epistemic luck is a generic notion used to describe any of a number of ways in which it can be accidental, coincidental, or fortuitous that a person has a true belief. For example, one can form a true belief as a result of a lucky guess, as when one believes through guesswork that “C” is the right answer to a multiple-choice question and one’s belief just happens to be correct. One can form a true belief via wishful thinking; for example, (...)
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  • Better Understanding Through Falsehood.Benjamin T. Rancourt - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (3):382-405.
    Can understanding be based on false beliefs? I argue that it can. I first argue that the best way to understand the question is that it is whether one can increase one's degree of understanding by adopting an overall less accurate body of beliefs. I identify three sufficient conditions for one body of beliefs to be more accurate than another. Next, I appeal to two widely used methods of comparing degrees of understanding. With these methods, I show that understanding can (...)
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  • Justified Belief from Unjustified Belief.Peter Murphy - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (4):602-617.
    Under what conditions is a belief inferentially justified? A partial answer is found in Justification from Justification : a belief is inferentially justified only if all of the beliefs from which it is essentially inferred are justified. After reviewing some important features of JFJ, I offer a counterexample to it. Then I outline a positive suggestion for how to think about inferentially justified beliefs while still retaining a basing condition. I end by concluding that epistemologists need a model of inferentially (...)
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  • I Know I am Not Gettiered.Michael Veber - 2013 - Analytic Philosophy 54 (4):401-420.
    In a Normal Case, a subject has a justified true belief that P and also knows that P. In a Gettier Case, a subject has a justified true belief that P but does not know that P. The received view (endorsed by Lycan and others) is that if one is in a Normal Case then one cannot know that he is not in a Gettier case. I argue that the received view is mistaken and I discuss the implications this has (...)
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  • No Evidence is False.Clayton Littlejohn - 2013 - Acta Analytica 28 (2):145-159.
    If evidence is propositional, is one’s evidence limited to true propositions or might false propositions constitute evidence? In this paper, I consider three recent attempts to show that there can be ‘false evidence,’ and argue that each of these attempts fails. The evidence for the thesis that evidence consists of truths is much stronger than the evidence offered in support of the theoretical assumptions that people have relied on to argue against this thesis. While I shall not defend the view (...)
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  • No Luck With Knowledge? On a Dogma of Epistemology.Peter Baumann - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (3):523-551.
    Current epistemological orthodoxy has it that knowledge is incompatible with luck. More precisely: Knowledge is incompatible with epistemic luck . This is often treated as a truism which is not even in need of argumentative support. In this paper, I argue that there is lucky knowledge. In the first part, I use an intuitive and not very developed notion of luck to show that there are cases of knowledge which are “lucky” in that sense. In the second part, I look (...)
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  • A weaker condition for transitivity in probabilistic support.William A. Roche - 2012 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 2 (1):111-118.
    Probabilistic support is not transitive. There are cases in which x probabilistically supports y , i.e., Pr( y | x ) > Pr( y ), y , in turn, probabilistically supports z , and yet it is not the case that x probabilistically supports z . Tomoji Shogenji, though, establishes a condition for transitivity in probabilistic support, that is, a condition such that, for any x , y , and z , if Pr( y | x ) > Pr( y (...)
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  • Safety’s coordination problems.Julien Dutant & Sven Rosenkranz - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (5):1317-1343.
    The safety conception of knowledge holds that a belief constitutes knowledge iff relevantly similar beliefs—its epistemic counterparts—are true. It promises an instructive account of why certain general principles of knowledge hold. We focus on two such principles that anyone should endorse: the closure principle that knowledge is downward closed under competent conjunction elimination, and the counter-closure principle that knowledge is upward closed under competent conjunction introduction. We argue that anyone endorsing the former must also endorse the latter on pains of (...)
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  • The diachronic threshold problem.Rodrigo Borges - 2021 - Philosophical Studies.
    The paper introduces a new problem for fallibilist and infallibilist epistemologies – the diachronic threshold problem. As the name suggests, this is a problem similar to the well–known threshold problem for fallibilism. The new problem affects both fallibilism and infallibilism, however. The paper argues that anyone who worries about the well known problem for fallibilism should also worry about this new, diachronic version of the problem.
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  • (1 other version)I—Alan Millar: Why Knowledge Matters.Alan Millar - 2011 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1):63-81.
    An explanation is given of why it is in the nature of inquiry into whether or not p that its aim is fully achieved only if one comes to know that p or to know that not-p and, further, comes to know how one knows, either way. In the absence of the latter one is in no position to take the inquiry to be successfully completed or to vouch for the truth of the matter in hand. An upshot is that (...)
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  • Knowledge despite falsehood.Martin Montminy - 2014 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (3-4):463-475.
    I examine the claim, made by some authors, that we sometimes acquire knowledge from falsehood. I focus on two representative cases in which a subject S infers a proposition q from a false proposition p. If S knows that q, I argue, S's false belief that p is not essential to S's cognition. S's knowledge is instead due to S's belief that p′, a proposition in the neighbourhood of p that S believes . S thus knows despite her false belief. (...)
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  • Keeping Track of the Gettier Problem.Sven Bernecker - 2011 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (2):127-152.
    This paper argues that for someone to know proposition p inferentially it is not enough that his belief in p and his justification for believing p covary with the truth of p through a sphere of possibilities. A further condition on inferential knowledge is that p's truth-maker is identical with, or causally related to, the state of affairs the justification is grounded in. This position is dubbed ‘identificationism.’.
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  • An attempt at a general solution to the problem of deviant causal chains.Shane Ward - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (2):374-395.
    Deviant causal chain problems arise in many settings. The most famous instance of the problem is the Gettier problem, but the problem also arises in the philosophy of action and perception. Usually, attempts to tackle these problems try to solve them individually. This paper takes a different approach: I propose a general solution to the problem. I begin by providing a solution to the deviant causal chain problem for skillful performance, and I argue that the solution can be extended to (...)
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  • (1 other version)I—why Knowledge Matters.Alan Millar - 2011 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1):63-81.
    An explanation is given of why it is in the nature of inquiry into whether or not p that its aim is fully achieved only if one comes to know that p or to know that not-p and, further, comes to know how one knows, either way. In the absence of the latter one is in no position to take the inquiry to be successfully completed or to vouch for the truth of the matter in hand. An upshot is that (...)
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  • Knowledge from Falsehood and Truth-Closeness.Sven Bernecker - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (4):1623-1638.
    The paper makes two points. First, any theory of knowledge must explain the difference between cases of knowledge from falsehood and Gettier cases where the subject relies on reasoning from falsehood. Second, the closeness-to-the-truth approach to explaining the difference between knowledge-yielding and knowledge-suppressing falsehoods does not hold up to scrutiny.
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  • Knowledge as Objectively Justified Belief.Byeong D. Lee - 2022 - Acta Analytica 37 (3):397-414.
    According to Lehrer’s defeasibility account of knowledge, we can understand knowledge as undefeated justified true belief. But this account faces many serious problems. One important problem is that from one’s subjective point of view, one can hardly bridge the gap between one’s personal justification and objective truth. Another important problem is that this account can hardly accommodate the externalist intuition that the epistemic status of a belief is not entirely determined by factors that are internal to the subject’s perspective. The (...)
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  • (1 other version)Ii—millar On The Value Of Knowledge.Jonathan L. Kvanvig - 2011 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1):83-99.
    Alan Millar's paper involves two parts, which I address in order, first taking up the issues concerning the goal of inquiry, and then the issues surrounding the appeal to reflective knowledge. I argue that the upshot of the considerations Millar raises count in favour of a more important role in value-driven epistemology for the notion of understanding and for the notion of epistemic justification, rather than for the notions of knowledge and reflective knowledge.
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  • Knowledge with and Without Belief.Michael Veber - 2014 - Metaphilosophy 45 (1):120-132.
    This article argues for the thesis that the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification should be extended to knowledge. A consequence of this thesis is that there is a type of knowledge that requires belief and a type that does not. A familiar example strikingly similar to the sort of example used to introduce the propositional/doxastic justification makes a prima facie case. Additional theoretical advantages are revealed when the distinction is applied within the context of some recent epistemological debates. These (...)
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  • Some Evidence is False.Alexander Arnold - 2013 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (1):165 - 172.
    According to some philosophers who accept a propositional conception of evidence, someone's evidence includes a proposition only if it is true. I argue against this thesis by appealing to the possibility of knowledge from falsehood.
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  • (1 other version)When does falsehood preclude knowledge?Neil Feit & Andrew Cullison - 2011 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (3):283-304.
    Falsehood can preclude knowledge in many ways. A false proposition cannot be known. A false ground can prevent knowledge of a truth, or so we argue, but not every false ground deprives its subject of knowledge. A falsehood that is not a ground for belief can also prevent knowledge of a truth. This paper provides a systematic account of just when falsehood precludes knowledge, and hence when it does not. We present the paper as an approach to the Gettier problem (...)
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  • Meaning, Evidence, and Objectivity.Olivia Sultanescu - 2020 - In Syraya Chin-Mu Yang & Robert H. Myers (eds.), Donald Davidson on Action, Mind and Value. Springer. pp. 171-184.
    This chapter addresses the question of what makes expressions meaningful according to the conception of meaning offered by Donald Davidson. It addresses this question by reflecting on Kathrin Glüer’s recent response to it. It argues that Glüer misconstrues both the evidence for meaning that the radical interpreter must rely on and the way in which the principle of charity must be deployed. The articulation of the correct construal of the evidence and the principle reveals the thoroughly non-reductionist aspect of Davidson’s (...)
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  • Defeasibility and Gettierization: A Reminder.Claudio de Almeida & J. R. Fett - 2016 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (1):152-169.
    For some of us, the defeasibility theory of knowledge remains the most plausible approach to the Gettier Problem. Epistemological fashion and faded memories notwithstanding, persuasive objections to the theory are very hard to find. The most impressive of those objections to the theory that have hitherto gone unanswered are examined and rejected here. These are objections put forward by Richard Feldman, Richard Foley, and John Turri. While these are all interesting, the objection recently put forward by Turri is, we think, (...)
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  • Engineered Knowledge, Fragility and Virtue Epistemology.Dan O’Brien - 2019 - Philosophia 47 (3):757-774.
    There is a clean image of knowledge transmission between thinkers that involves sincere and reliable speakers, and hearers who carefully assess the epistemic credentials of the testimony that they hear. There is, however, a murkier side to testimonial exchange where deception and lies hold sway. Such mendacity leads to sceptical worries and to discussion of epistemic vice. Here, though, I explore cases where deceit and lies are involved in knowledge transmission. This may sound surprising or even incoherent since lying usually (...)
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  • Fugu for Logicians.Roy Sorensen - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (1):131-144.
    What do you get when you cross a fallacy with a good argument? A fugu, that is, a valid argument that tempts you to reach its conclusion invalidly. You have yielded to the temptation more than you realize. If you are a teacher, you may have served many fugus. They arise systematically through several mechanisms. Fugus are interesting intermediate cases that shed light on the following issues: bare evidentialism, false pleasure, philosophy of education, and the ethics of argument. Normally, a (...)
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  • Contextualism and Counter-Closure.Federico Luzzi - 2012 - Dialectica 66 (1):187-199.
    I argue that DeRose's attributor contextualism cannot straightforwardly preserve the widespread view that, when a subject believes q solely on the basis of competent deduction from p, knowledge of q requires knowledge of p. I present a novel challenge to the compatibility of this widespread view with DeRose's contextualism, then argue that the tension can be resolved in only one of two ways: if DeRose rejects the widespread view or if DeRose accepts the existence of a range of contextualism-specific Gettier-style (...)
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  • Counter-Closure.Federico Luzzi - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4):673-683.
    The focus of this paper is the prima facie plausible view, expressed by the principle of Counter-Closure, that knowledge-yielding competent deductive inference must issue from known premises. I construct a case that arguably falsifies this principle and consider five available lines of response that might help retain Counter-Closure. I argue that three are problematic. Of the two remaining lines of response, the first relies on non-universal intuitions and forces one to view the case I construct as exhibiting a justified, true (...)
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  • (1 other version)II—Jonathan L. Kvanvig: Millar on the Value of Knowledge.Jonathan L. Kvanvig - 2011 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1):83-99.
    Alan Millar's paper (2011) involves two parts, which I address in order, first taking up the issues concerning the goal of inquiry, and then the issues surrounding the appeal to reflective knowledge. I argue that the upshot of the considerations Millar raises count in favour of a more important role in value-driven epistemology for the notion of understanding and for the notion of epistemic justification, rather than for the notions of knowledge and reflective knowledge.
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  • Why Assertion and Practical Reasoning Must be Governed By the Same Epistemic Norm.Martin Montminy - 2013 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (1):57-68.
    I argue that assertion and practical reasoning must be governed by the same epistemic norm. This is because the epistemic rule governing assertion derives from the epistemic rule governing practical reasoning, together with a plausible rule regarding assertion, according to which assertion must manifest belief.
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  • What Scientific Progress Is Not: Against Bird’s Epistemic View.Darrell Patrick Rowbottom - 2010 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 24 (3):241-255.
    This paper challenges Bird’s view that scientific progress should be understood in terms of knowledge, by arguing that unjustified scientific beliefs (and/or changes in belief) may nevertheless be progressive. It also argues that false beliefs may promote progress.
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  • EPISTEMOLOGIA DO TESTEMUNHO: críticas à refutação do reducionismo local quanto ao desempenho justificacional do testemunho.Ronaldo Miguel Da Silva - 2014 - Cadernos Do Pet Filosofia 5 (9):17-32.
    A epistemologia do testemunho tem reacendido forte interesse entre a classe dos atuais epistemólogos. Tem sido redescoberta a sua indispensabilidade epistêmica e reassumida a posição de que o testemunho é uma fonte de crenças penetrante e natural, no qual muitas das crenças nele fundamentadas constituem conhecimento e estão justificadas. Reducionistas e antirreducionistas se alternam, repetidamente, para explicar o papel epistêmico do testemunho na justificação da crença testemunhal, gerando um acirrado debate na epistemologia contemporânea. Advogada do Reducionismo local, Elizabeth Fricker refuta (...)
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  • Understanding what was said.Guy Longworth - 2018 - Synthese 195 (2):815-834.
    On the most prominent account, understanding what was said is always propositional knowledge of what was said. I develop a more minimal alternative, according to which understanding is sometimes a distinctive attitude towards what was said—to a first approximation, entertaining what was said. The propositional knowledge account has been supported on the basis of its capacity to explain testimonial knowledge transmission. I argue that it is not so supported.
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  • Knowledge, Assertion, and Inference.Peter Baumann - 2014 - Acta Analytica 29 (4):487-490.
    This paper argues that three plausible principles are mutually inconsistent: One ought to assert only what one knows; If it is proper to assert some proposition q, then it is, barring special and not very common circumstances, proper to assert any proposition p from which q has been competently inferred; and Some propositions are both properly assertible and known by competent inference from propositions which one does not know. Each pair of two principles constitutes an argument against the remaining principle, (...)
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