Look before you leap. - Proverb. He who hesitates is lost. - Another proverb.

This paper advances the debate over the question whether false beliefs may nevertheless have warrant, the property that yields knowledge when conjoined with true belief. The paper’s first main part—which spans Sections 2–4—assesses the best argument for Warrant Infallibilism, the view that only true beliefs can have warrant. I show that this argument’s key premise conflicts with an extremely plausible claim about warrant. Sections 5–6 constitute the paper’s second main part. Section 5 presents an overlooked puzzle about warrant, and uses (...) that puzzle to generate a new argument for Warrant Fallibilism, the view that false beliefs can have warrant. Section 6 evaluates this pro-Fallibilism argument, finding ultimately that it defeats itself in a surprising way. I conclude that neither Infallibilism nor Fallibilism should now constrain theorizing about warrant. (shrink)

We propose a Bayesian framework for the attribution of knowledge, and apply this framework to generate novel predictions about knowledge attribution for different types of “Gettier cases”, in which an agent is led to a justified true belief yet has made erroneous assumptions. We tested these predictions using a paradigm based on semantic integration. We coded the frequencies with which participants falsely recalled the word “thought” as “knew” (or a near synonym), yielding an implicit measure of conceptual activation. Our experiments (...) confirmed the predictions of our Bayesian account of knowledge attribution across three experiments. We found that Gettier cases due to counterfeit objects were not treated as knowledge (Experiment 1), but those due to intentionally-replaced evidence were (Experiment 2). Our findings are not well explained by an alternative account focused only on luck, because accidentally-replaced evidence activated the knowledge concept more strongly than did similar false belief cases (Experiment 3). We observed a consistent pattern of results across a number of different vignettes that varied the quality and type of evidence available to agents, the relative stakes involved, and surface details of content. Accordingly, the present findings establish basic phenomena surrounding people’s knowledge attributions in Gettier cases, and provide explanations of these phenomena within a Bayesian framework. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses the problem of determining the epistemic worth of mystical based insights. Appropriating the widely accepted justified true belief theory of knowledge, it can be easily demonstrated that mystical knowledge does not satisfy the conditions of the JTB account. The question can be raised as to whether the failure of liberative knowing to qualify as "knowledge" is due to a nonepistemic character of liberation itself, or is it due to an overly stringent, inac-curate set of criteria given in (...) the JTB theory. ;The strategy adopted to answer this question is to determine the adequacy of the JTB theory. One way to judge the adequacy of a theory is to ascertain whether it adequately describes the phenom-enon it is formulated to give an account of. Here, one must determine whether the JTB theory is consonant with common usage of what constitutes "knowledge." It was determined that there are a number of modes of knowing, e.g., moral, aesthetic, intuitive, religious, which appear to be outlawed by the JTB account, yet are commonly recognized as constituting knowledge. ;On the basis of this determination, an overhaul of the JTB theory of knowledge was begun. The principal feature of this new account was to recognize that there exist numerous distinct modes of know-ing, and each mode contains its own distinct conditions that define it. Any account of knowledge must then take on a piecemeal approach which attempts to outline the various modes of knowing. There are obviously overlapping characteristics, but they do not constitute a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. This stance opens the way to a consideration of whether a mystical based knowledge is possible. Ultimately, the question of acceptance or rejection of liber-ative knowing comes down to the particular epistemological hierarchy of knowing modalities each individual adopts. One needs to consider the assorted factors or grounds that leads one to adopt or dismiss liberative knowing into one's hierarchy of knowing modalities. But one cannot attempt to dismiss one mode, such as liberative knowing, on the basis of not satisfying the criteria applicable for another mode, such as factual knowing. In the past, arguments rejecting the epis-temic content of liberative knowing have violated this prohibition. (shrink)