It has been argued that an advantage of the safety account over the sensitivity account is that the safety account preserves epistemic closure, while the sensitivity account implies epistemic closure failure. However, the argument fails to take the method-relativity of the modal conditions on knowledge, viz., sensitivity and safety, into account. In this paper, I argue that the sensitivity account and the safety account are on a par with respect to epistemic closure once the method-relativity of the modal conditions is (...) taken into account. Therefore, epistemic closure is no longer an arbiter in the debate. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Helton and Nanay, 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. 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 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. (shrink)

The sensitivity account of knowledge is a modal epistemology, according to which S knows that p only if S's belief in p is sensitive in the sense that S would not believe that p if p were false. There are different ways to state the sensitivity condition by means of a possible worlds heuristic. The sensitivity account is thus rendered into different versions. This paper examines cases of knowledge and cases of luckily true beliefs (e.g., the Gettier cases) and argues (...) that no version of the sensitivity account accommodates all cases. Therefore, the account is unsuccessful as an account of knowledge. (shrink)

According to the sensitivity account of knowledge, if one knows that p, then (roughly) were p false, one would not believe that p. One important issue regarding sensitivity is whether or not it preserves inductive knowledge. Critics including Jonathan Vogel, Ernest Sosa, and Duncan Pritchard argue that it does not. Proponents including Kevin Wallbridge insist that it does. In this paper, I first draw attention to an often-neglected distinction between two different versions of sensitivity—a distinction that has important implications for (...) the debate regarding inductive knowledge. In particular, I distinguish between the sensitivity principle originally defended by Robert Nozick and another version that has been the focus of many recent discussions. With the distinction in place, it is shown that a sensitivity theorist cannot preserve inductive knowledge while being unscathed. For neither account can simultaneously preserve inductive knowledge while properly handling the Gettier problem. Overall, sensitivity theorists are in trouble. (shrink)

In epistemology, the concept of knowledge is of distinctive interest. This fact is also reflected in the discussion of epistemic value, which focuses to a large extend on the value problem of knowledge. This discussion suggests that knowledge has an outstanding value among epistemic standings because its value exceeds the value of its constitutive parts. I will argue that the value of knowledge is not outstanding by presenting epistemic standings of checking, transferring knowledge, and proving in court, whose values exceed (...) the value of knowledge in certain contexts. Moreover, the values of these other epistemic standings do not always rely on the value of knowledge. In terms of value, knowledge is not an outstanding epistemic concept. Hence, in terms of value we cannot find support for the privileged position that knowledge enjoys in epistemology. (shrink)

In this Précis, I provide an overview of my Monograph Knowing and Checking: An Epistemological Investigation (Melchior 2019), which is subject to a book symposium organized by the University of Maribor. This volume in Acta Analytica contains contributions by Peter Baumann, Kelly Becker, Marian David, Nenad Miščević, Robert Weston Siscoe, and Danilo Šuster along with my replies.

Discrimination is a central epistemic capacity but typically, theories of discrimination only use discrimination as a vehicle for analyzing knowledge. This paper aims at developing a self-contained theory of discrimination. Internalist theories of discrimination fail since there is no compelling correlation between discriminatory capacities and experiences. Moreover, statistical reliabilist theories are also flawed. Only a modal theory of discrimination is promising. Versions of sensitivity and adherence that take particular alternatives into account provide necessary and sufficient conditions on discrimination. Safety in (...) contrast is not sufficient for discrimination as there are cases of safety that are clearly instances of discrimination failure. The developed account of discrimination between objects will be extended to discrimination between kinds and between types. (shrink)

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 (...) are not safe, that is, it is not the case that in all or nearly all near worlds where the relevant claim is believed true, that claim is in fact true. Thus, certain instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge refute both the view that knowledge is necessarily sensitive and the view that knowledge is necessarily safe. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe some of the highlights of Melchior’s checking account and then suggest that its explanatory value could be enhanced with a less analyzed concept of checking. This thought inspires a rearguard defense of sensitivity, by no means aiming to rescue it from all its well-known problems, wherein it is suggested that sensitivity fares better as a necessary condition for knowledge when all the bells and whistles with which it has been adorned over the years are stripped (...) away. Finally, I investigate a recognizably Moorean position involving methods that can be construed as sensitive, such that persons using them can claim to have checked that skeptical hypotheses are false. (shrink)

One common attitude toward abstract objects is a kind of platonism: a view on which those objects are mind-independent and causally inert. But there's an epistemological problem here: given any naturalistically respectable understanding of how our minds work, we can't be in any sort of contact with mind-independent, causally inert objects. So platonists, in order to avoid skepticism, tend to endorse epistemological theories on which knowledge is easy, in the sense that it requires no such contact—appeals to Boghossian’s notion of (...) epistemic analyticity are particularly common here, as are appeals to some broadly pragmatic account of the good standing of basic beliefs. I argue, though, that these appeals are hopeless: an argument adapted from the Benacerraf–Field challenge shows that, even if some such theory can deliver the verdict that our beliefs about abstract objects have some prima facie good standing, this good standing will inevitably be defeated. (shrink)