When can skepticism be properly ignored?

[Mr_Reasonable]

Here’s an article that I think would benefit most of the convertations here involving epistemology. Too often those that take place here become a matter of people talking past one another trying more to push thier own view than to understand the debate they’re actually trying to have. Maybe if we were to keep up with current events in philosophy we could have better discussions about it. So the article is called “elusive knowledge”. I’ll post a little bit of it, and if anyone’s interested then feel free to respond. Please do so in a coherent way and stay on subject. There’s no sense in fucking up a perfectly good thread by trying to talk about something that you don’t understand. If you’re going to post here, don’t be a jackass. Read the article first.

Thanks.

-Smears

[Mr_Reasonable]

We know a lot. I know what food penguins eat. I know that phones used to ring,
but nowadays squeal, when someone ca11s up. I know that Essendon won the 1993
Grand Fina1. I know that here is a hand, and here is another.
We have a11 sorts of everyday knowledge, and we have it in abundance. To doubt
that would be absurd. At any rate, to doubt it in any serious and lasting way
would be absurd; and even philosophical and temporary doubt, under the influence
of argument, is more than a little peculiar. It is a Moorean fact that we know a
lot. It is one of those things that we know better than we know the premises of
any philosophical argument to the contrary.
Besides knowing a lot that is everyday and trite, I myself think that we know a
lot that is interesting and esoteric and controversia1. We know a lot about
things unseen: tiny particles and pervasive fields, not to mention one another’s
underwear. Sometimes we even know what an author meant by his writings. But
on these questions, let us agree to disagree peacefu11y with the champions of
“post-knowledgeism.” The most trite and ordinary parts of our knowledge wi11 be
problem enough.
For no sooner do we engage in epistemology–the systematic philosophical
examination of knowledge–than we meet a compelling argument that we know next
to nothing. The sceptical argument is nothing new or fancy. It is just this: it
seems as if knowledge must be by definition infallible. If you claim that S
knows that P, and yet you grant that S cannot eliminate a certain possibility in
which not-P, it certainly seems as if you have granted that S does not after a11
know that P. To speak of fallible knowledge, of knowledge despite uneliminated
possibilities of error, just sounds contradictory.
Blind Freddy can see where this wi11 lead. Let your paranoid fantasies rip–CIA
plots, ha11ucinogens in the tap water, conspiracies to deceive, old Nick
himself–and soon you find that uneliminated possibilities of error are
everywhere. Those possibilities of error are farfetched, of course, but
possibilities all the same. They bite into even our most everyday knowledge. We
never have infallible knowledge.
Never–well, hardly ever. Some say we have infallible knowledge of a few simple,
axiomatic necessary truths; and of our own present experience. They say that I
simply cannot be wrong that a part of a part of something is itself a part of
that thing; or that it seems to me now (as I sit here at the keyboard) exactly
as if I am hearing clicking noises on top of a steady whirring. Some say so.
Others deny it. No matter; let it be granted, at least for the sake of the
argument. It is not nearly enough. If we have only that much infallible
knowledge, yet knowledge is by definition infallible, then we have very little
knowledge indeed–not the abundant everyday knowledge we thought we had. That is
still absurd.
So we know a lot; knowledge must be infallible; yet we have fallible knowledge
or none (or next to none). We are caught between the rock of fallibilism and the
whirlpool of scepticism. Both are mad!
Yet fallibilism is the less intrusive madness. It demands less frequent
corrections of what we want to say. So, if forced to choose, I choose
fallibilism. (And so say all of us.) We can get used to it, and some of us have
done. No joy there–we know that people can get used to the most crazy
philosophical sayings imaginable. If you are a contented fallibilist, I implore
you to be honest, be naive, hear it afresh. “He knows, yet he has not eliminated
all possibilities of error.” Even if you’ve numbed your ears, doesn’t this
overt, explicit fallibilism still sound wrong?
Better fallibilism than scepticism; but it would be better still to dodge the
choice. I think we can. We will be alarmingly close to the rock, and also
alarmingly close to the whirlpool, but if we steer with care, we can–just
barely–escape them both. Maybe epistemology is the culprit. Maybe this
extraordinary pastime robs us of our knowledge. Maybe we do know a lot in daily
life; but maybe when we look hard at our knowledge, it goes away. But only when
we look at it harder than the sane ever do in daily life; only when we let our
paranoid fantasies rip. That is when we are forced to admit that there always
are uneliminated possibilities of error, so that we have fallible knowledge or
none. Much that we say is context-dependent, in simple ways or subtle ways.
Simple: “it’s evening” is truly said when, and only when, it is said in the
evening. Subtle: it could well be true, and not just by luck, that Essendon
played rottenly, the Easybeats played brilliantly, yet Essendon won. Different
contexts evoke different standards of evaluation. Talking about the Easybeats we
apply lax standards, else we could scarcely distinguish their better days from
their worse ones. In talking about Essendon, no such laxity is required.
Essendon won because play that is rotten by demanding standards suffices to beat
play that is brilliant by lax standards.
Maybe ascriptions of knowledge are subtly context-dependent, and maybe
epistemology is a context that makes them go false. Then epistemology would be
an investigation that destroys its own subject matter. If so, the sceptical
argument might be flawless, when we engage in epistemology-and only then! 1
If you start from the ancient idea that justification is the mark that
distinguishes knowledge from mere opinion (even true opinion), then you well
might conclude that ascriptions of knowledge are context-dependent because
standards for adequate justification are context-dependent. As follows: opinion,
even if true, deserves the name of knowledge only if it is adequately supported
by reasons; to deserve that name in the especially demanding context of
epistemology, the arguments from supporting reasons must be especially
watertight; but the special standards of justification that this special context
demands never can be met (well, hardly ever). In the strict context of
epistemology we know nothing, yet in laxer contexts we know a lot.
But I myself cannot subscribe to this account of the context-dependence of
knowledge, because I question its starting point. I don’t agree that the mark of
knowledge is justification.2 First, because justification is not sufficient:
your true opinion that you will lose the lottery isn’t knowledge, whatever the
odds. Suppose you know that it is a fair lottery with one winning ticket and
many losing tickets, and you know how many losing tickets there are. The greater
the number of losing tickets, the better is your justification for believing you
will lose. Yet there is no number great enough to transform your fallible
opinion into knowledge–after all, you just might win. No justification is good
enough–or none short of a watertight deductive argument, and all but the
sceptics will agree that this is too much to demand.3
Second, because justification is not always necessary. What (non-circular)
argument supports our reliance on perception, on memory, and on testimony?4 And
yet we do gain knowledge by these means. And sometimes, far from having
supporting arguments, we don’t even know how we know. We once had evidence, drew
conclusions, and thereby gained knowledge; now we have forgotten our reasons,
yet still we retain our knowledge. Or we know the name that goes with the face,
or the sex of the chicken, by relying on subtle visual cues, without knowing
what those cues may be.
The link between knowledge and justification must be broken. But if we break
that link, then it is not–or not entirely, or not exactly–by raising the
standards of justification that epistemology destroys knowledge. I need some
different story.
To that end, I propose to take the infallibility of knowledge as my starting
point.5 Must infallibilist epistemology end in scepticism? Not quite. Wait and
see. Anyway, here is the definition. Subject S knows proposition P iff (that is,
if and only if) P holds in every possibility left uneliminated by S’s evidence;
equivalently, iff S’s evidence eliminates every possibility in which not-P.
The definition is short, the commentary upon it is longer. In the first place,
there is the proposition, P. What I choose to call “propositions” are
individuated coarsely, by necessary equivalence. For instance, here is only one
necessary proposition. It holds in every possibility; hence in every possibility
left uneliminated by S’s evidence, no matter who S may be and no matter what his
evidence may be. So the necessary proposition is known always and everywhere.
Yet this known proposition may go unrecognised when presented in impenetrable
linguistic disguise, say as the proposition that every even number is the sum of
two primes. Likewise, the known proposition that I have two hands may go
unrecognised when presented as the proposition that the number of my ands is the
least number n such that every even number is the sum of n primes. (Or if you
doubt the necessary existence of numbers, switch to an example involving
equivalence by logic alone.) These problems of disguise shall not concern us
here. Our topic is modal, not hyperintensional, epistemology.6
Next, there are the possibilities. We needn’t enter here into the question
whether these are concreta, abstract constructions, or abstract simples.
Further, we needn’t decide whether they must always be maximally specific
possibilities, or whether they need only be specific enough for the purpose at
hand. A possibility will be specific enough if it cannot be split into subcases
in such a way that anything we have said about possibilities, or anything we are
going to say before we are done, applies to some subcases and not to others. For
instance, it should never happen that proposition P holds in some but not all
subcases; or that some but not all sub-cases are eliminated by S’s evidence.
But we do need to stipulate that they are not just possibilities as to how the
whole world is; they also include possibilities as to which part of the world is
oneself, and as to when it now is. We need these possibilities de se et nunc
because the propositions that may be known include propositions de se et nunc.7
Not only do I know that there are hands in this world somewhere and somewhen. I
know that I have hands. or anyway I have them now. Such propositions aren’t just
made true or made false by the whole world once and for all. They are true for
some of us and not for others, or true at some times and not others, or both.
Further, we cannot limit ourselves to “real” possibilities that conform to the
actual laws of nature, and maybe also to actual past history. For propositions
about laws and history are contingent, and mayor may not be known.
Neither can we limit ourselves to “epistemic” possibilities for S–possibilities
that S does not know not to obtain. That would drain our definition of content.
Assume only that knowledge is closed under strict implication… (We shall
consider the merits of this assumption later.) Remember that we are not
distinguishing between equivalent propositions. Then knowledge of a conjunction
is equivalent to knowledge of every conjunct. P is the conjunction of all
propositions not- W, where W is a possibility in which not-P. That suffices to
yield an equivalence: S knows that P iff, for every possibility W in which not-
P, S knows that not-w. Contraposing and cancelling a double negation: iff every
possibility which S does not know not to obtain is one in which P. For short:
iff P holds throughout S’s epistemic possibilities. Yet to get this far, we need
no substantive definition of knowledge at all! To turn this into a substantive
definition, in fact the very definition we gave before, we need to say one more
thing: S’s epistemic possibilities are just those possibilities that are
uneliminated by S’s evidence.
So, next, we need to say what it means for a possibility to be eliminated or
not. Here I say that the uneliminated possibilities are those in which the
subject’s entire perceptual experience and memory are just as they actually are.
There is one possibility that actually obtains (for the subject and at the time
in question); call it actuality. Then a possibility W is uneliminated iff the
subject’s perceptual experience and memory in W exactly match his perceptual
experience and memory in actuality. (If you want to include other alleged forms
of basic evidence, such as the evidence of our extrasensory faculties, or an
innate disposition to believe in God, be my guest. If they exist, they should be
included. If not, no harm done if we have included them conditionally.)
Note well that we do not need the “pure sense-datum language” and the
“incorrigible protocol statements” that for so long bedevilled foundationalist
epistemology. It matters not at all whether there are words to capture the
subject’s perceptual and memory evidence, nothing more and nothing less. If
there are such words, it matters not at all whether the subject can hit upon
them. The given does not consist of basic axioms to serve as premises in
subsequent arguments. Rather, it consists of a match between possibilities.
When perceptual experience E (or memory) eliminates a possibility W. that is not
because the propositional content of the experience conflicts with W. (Not even
if it is the narrow content.) The propositional content of our experience could,
after all, be false. Rather, it is the existence of the experience that
conflicts with W: W is a possibility in which the subject is not having
experience E. Else we would need to tell some fishy story of how the experience
has some sort of infallible, ineffable, purely phenomenal propositional
content… Who needs that? Let E have propositional content P. Suppose even–
something I take to be an open question–that E is, in some sense, fully
characterized by P. Then I say that E eliminates W iff W is a possibility in
which the subject’s experience or memory has content different from P. I do not
say that E eliminates W iff W is a possibility in which P is false.

[Mr_Reasonable]

Maybe not every kind of sense perception yields experience; maybe, for instance,
the kinaesthetic sense yields not its own distinctive sort of sense experience
but only spontaneous judgements about the position of one’s limbs. If this is
true, then the thing to say is that kinaesthetic evidence eliminates all
possibilities except those that exactly resemble actuality with respect to the
subject’s spontaneous kinaesthetic judgements. In saying this, we would treat
kinaesthetic evidence more on the model of memory than on the model of more
typical senses.
Finally, we must attend to the word “every.” What does it mean to say that every
possibility in which not-P is eliminated? An idiom of quantification, like
“every,” is normally restricted to some limited domain. If I say that every
glass is empty, so it’s time for another round, doubtless I and my audience are
ignoring most of all the glasses there are in the whole wide world throughout
all of time. They are outside the domain. They are irrelevant to the truth of
what was said.
Likewise, if I say that every uneliminated possibility is one in which P, or
words to that effect, I am doubtless ignoring some of all the uneliminated
alternative possibilities that there are. They are outside the domain, they are
irrelevant to the truth of what was said.
But, of course, I am not entitled to ignore just any possibility I please. Else
true ascriptions of knowledge, whether to myself or to others, would be cheap
indeed. I may properly ignore some uneliminated possibilities; I may not
properly ignore others. Our definition of knowledge requires a sotto voce
proviso. S knows that P iff S’s evidence eliminates every possibility in which
not-P–Psst!–except for those possibilities that we are properly ignoring.
Unger suggests an instructive parallel.8 Just as P is known iff there are no
uneliminated possibilities of error, so likewise a surface is flat iff there are
no bumps on it. We must add the proviso: Psst!-- except for those bumps that we
are properly ignoring. Else we will conclude, absurdly, that nothing is flat.
(Simplify by ignoring departures from flatness that consist of gentle
curvature.) We can restate the definition. Say that we presuppose proposition Q
iff we ignore all possibilities in which not-Q. To close the circle: we ignore
just those possibilities that falsify our presuppositions. Proper presupposition
corresponds, of course, to proper ignoring. Then S knows that P iff S’s evidence
eliminates every possibility in which not-P–Psst!–except for those
possibilities that conflict with our proper presuppositions.9
The rest of (modal) epistemology examines the sotto voce proviso. It asks: what
may we properly presuppose in our ascriptions of knowledge? Which of all the
uneliminated alternative possibilities may not properly be ignored? Which ones
are the "“relevant alternatives”?–relevant, that is, to what the subject does
and doesn’t know?10 In reply, we can list several rules.11 We begin with three
prohibitions: rules to tell us what possibilities we may not properly ignore.
First, there is the Rule of Actuality. The possibility that actually obtains is
never properly ignored; actuality is always a relevant alternative; nothing
false may properly be presupposed. It follows that only what is true is known,
wherefore we did not have to include truth in our definition of knowledge. The
rule is “externalist”–the subject himself may not be able to tell what is
properly ignored. In judging which of his ignorings are proper, hence what he
knows, we judge his success in knowing-not how well he tried.
When the Rule of Actuality tells us that actuality may never be properly
ignored, we can ask: whose actuality? Ours, when we ascribe knowledge or
ignorance to others? Or the subject’s? In simple cases, the question is silly.
(In fact, it sounds like the sort of pernicious nonsense we would expect from
someone who mixes up what is true with what is believed.) There is just one
actual world, we the ascribers live in that world, the subject lives there too,
so the subject’s actuality is the same as ours.
But there are other cases, less simple, in which the question makes perfect
sense and needs an answer. Someone mayor may not know who he is; someone may or
may not know what time it is. Therefore I insisted that the propositions that
may be known must include propositions de se et nunc; and likewise that the
possibilities that may be eliminated or ignored must include possibilities de se
et nunc. Now we have a good sense in which the subject’s actuality may be
different from ours. I ask today what Fred knew yesterday. In particular, did he
then know who he was? Did he know what day it was? Fred’s actuality is the
possibility de se et nunc of being Fred on September 19th at such-and-such
possible world; whereas my actuality is the possibility de se et nunc of being
David on September 20th at such-and-such world. So far as the world goes, there
is no difference: Fred and I are worldmates, his actual world is the same as
mine. But when we build subject and time into the possibilities de se et nunc,
then his actuality yesterday does indeed differ from mine today.
What is more, we sometimes have occasion to ascribe knowledge to those who are
off at other possible worlds. I didn’t read the newspaper yesterday. What would
I have known if I had read it? More than I do in fact know. (More and less: I do
in fact know that I left the newspaper unread, but if I had read it, I would not
have known that I had left it unread.) I-who-did-not-read-the-newspaper am here
at this world, ascribing knowledge and ignorance. The subject to whom I am
ascribing that knowledge and ignorance, namely I-as-I-would-have-been-if-I-hadread-
the-newspaper, is at a different world. The worlds differ in respect at
least of a reading of the newspaper. Thus the ascriber’s actual world is not the
same as the subject’s. (I myself think that the ascriber and the subject are two
different people: the subject is the ascriber’s otherworldly counterpart. But
even if you think the subject and the ascriber are the same identical person,
you must still grant that this person’s actuality qua subject differs from his
actuality qua ascriber.)

[Mr_Reasonable]

Or suppose we ask modal questions about the subject: what must he have known,
what might he have known? Again we are considering the subject as he is not
here, but off at other possible worlds. Likewise if we ask questions about
knowledge of knowledge: what does he (or what do we) know that he knows?
So the question “whose actuality?” is not a silly question after all. And when
the question matters, as it does in the cases just considered, the right answer
is that it is the subject’s actuality, not the ascriber’s, that never can be
properly ignored.
Next, there is the Rule of Belief. A possibility that the subject believes to
obtain is not properly ignored, whether or not he is right to so believe.
Neither is one that he ought to believe to obtain–one that evidence and
arguments justify him in believing–whether or not he does so believe.
That is rough. Since belief admits of degree, and since some possibilities are
more specific than others, we ought to reformulate the rule in terms of degree
of belief, compared to a standard set by the unspecificity of the possibility in
question. A possibility may not be properly ignored if the subject gives it, or
ought to give it, a degree of belief that is sufficiently high, and high not
just because the possibility in question is unspecific.
How high is “sufficiently high”? That may depend on how much is at stake. When
error would be especially disastrous, few possibilities may be properly ignored.
Then even quite a low degree of belief may be “sufficiently high” to bring the
Rule of Belief into play. The jurors know that the accused is guilty only if his
guilt has been proved beyond reasonable doubt. 12
Yet even when the stakes are high, some possibilities still may be properly
ignored. Disastrous though it would be to convict an innocent man, still the
jurors may properly ignore the possibility that it was the dog, marvellously
well-trained, that fired the fatal shot. And, unless they are ignoring other
alternatives more relevant than that, they may rightly be said to know that the
accused is guilty as charged. Yet if there had been reason to give the dog
hypothesis a slightly less negligible degree of belief–if the world’s greatest
dog-trainer had been the victim’s mortal enemy–then the alternative would be
relevant after all.
This is the only place where belief and justification enter my story. As already
noted, I allow justified true belief without knowledge, as in the case of your
belief that you will lose the lottery. I allow knowledge without justification,
in the cases of face recognition and chicken sexing. I even allow knowledge
without belief, as in the case of the timid student who knows the answer but has
no confidence that he has it right, and so does not believe what he knows. 13
Therefore any proposed converse to the Rule of Belief should be rejected. A
possibility that the subject does not believe to a sufficient degree, and ought
not to believe to a sufficient degree, may nevertheless be a relevant
alternative and not properly ignored.
Next, there is the Rule of Resemblance. Suppose one possibility saliently
resembles another. Then if one of them may not be properly ignored, neither may
the other. (Or rather, we should say that if one of them may not properly be
ignored in virtue of rules other than this rule, then neither may the other.
Else nothing could be properly ignored; because enough little steps of
resemblance can take us from anywhere to anywhere.) Or suppose one possibility
saliently resembles two or more others, one in one respect and another in
another, and suppose that each of these may not properly be ignored (in virtue
of rules other than this rule). Then these resemblances may have an additive
effect, doing more together than any one of them would separately.
We must apply the Rule of Resemblance with care. Actuality is a possibility
uneliminated by the subject’s evidence. Any other possibility W that is likewise
uneliminated by the subject’s evidence thereby resembles actuality in one
salient respect: namely, in respect of the subject’s evidence. That will be so
even if W is in other respects very dissimilar to actuality–even if, for
instance, it is a possibility in which the subject is radically deceived by a
demon. Plainly, we dare not apply the Rules of Actuality and Resemblance to
conclude that any such W is a relevant alternative–that would be capitulation
to scepticism. The Rule of Resemblance was never meant to apply to this
resemblance! We seem to have an ad hoc exception to the Rule, though one that
makes good sense in view of the function of attributions of knowledge. What
would be better, though, would be to find a way to reformulate the Rule so as to
get the needed exception without ad hocery. I do not know how to do this.
It is the Rule of Resemblance that explains why you do not know that you will
lose the lottery, no matter what the odds are against you and no matter how sure
you should therefore be that you will lose. For every ticket, there is the
possibility that it will win. These possibilities are saliently similar to one
another: so either everyone of them may be properly ignored, or else none may.
But one of them may not properly be ignored: the one that actually obtains.
The Rule of Resemblance also is the rule that solves the Gettier problems: other
cases of justified true belief that are not knowledge.]4
(1)I think that Nogot owns a Ford, because I have seen him driving one; but
unbeknownst to me he does not own the Ford he drives, or any other Ford.
Unbeknownst to me, Havit does own a Ford, though I have no reason to think so
because he never drives it, and in fact I have often seen him taking the tram.
My justified true belief is that one of the two owns a Ford. But I do not know
it; I am right by accident. Diagnosis: I do not know, because I have not
eliminated the possibility that Nogot drives a Ford he does not own whereas
Havit neither drives nor owns a car. This possibility may not properly be
ignored. Because, first. actuality may not properly be ignored; and, second.
this possibility saliently resembles actuality. It resembles actuality perfectly
so far as Nogot is concerned; and it resembles actuality well so far as Havit is
concerned, since it matches actuality both with respect to Havit’s carless
habits and with respect to the general correlation between carless habits and
carlessness. In addition, this possibility saliently resembles a third
possibility: one in which Nogot drives a Ford he owns while Havit neither drives
nor owns a car. This third possibility may not properly be ignored, because of
the degree to which it is believed. This time, the resemblance is perfect so far
as Havit is concerned, rather good so far as Nogot is concerned.
(2) The stopped clock is right twice a day. It says 4:39. as it has done for
weeks. I look at it at 4:39; by luck I pick up a true belief. I have ignored the
uneliminated possibility that I looked at it at 4:22 while it was stopped saying
4:39. That possibility was not properly ignored. It resembles actuality
perfectly so far as the stopped clock goes.
(3) Unbeknownst to me, I am travelling in the land of the bogus barns; but my
eye falls on one of the few real ones. I don’t know that I am seeing a barn,
because I may not properly ignore the possibility that I am seeing yet another
of the abundant bogus barns. This possibility saliently resembles actuality in
respect of the abundance of bogus barns, and the scarcity of real ones,
hereabouts.
(4) Donald is in San Francisco, just as I have every reason to think he is. But,
bent on deception, he is writing me letters and having them posted to me by his
accomplice in Italy. If I had seen the phoney letters, with their Italian stamps
and postmarks, I would have concluded that Donald was in Italy. Luckily, I have
not yet seen any of them. I ignore the uneliminated possibility that Donald has
gone to Italy and is sending me letters from there. But this possibility is not
properly ignored, because it resembles actuality both with respect to the fact
that the letters are coming to me from Italy and with respect to the fact that
those letters come, ultimately, from Donald. So I don’t know that Donald is in
San Francisco.
Next, there is the Rule of Reliability. This time, we have a presumptive rule
about what may be properly ignored; and it is by means of this rule that we
capture what is right about causal or reliabilist theories of knowing. Consider
processes whereby information is transmitted to us: perception, memory, and
testimony. These processes are fairly reliable. 14 Within limits, we are
entitled to take them for granted. We may properly presuppose that they work
without a glitch in the case under consideration. Defeasibly–very defeasibly!–
a possibility in which they fail may properly be ignored.
My visual experience, for instance, depends causally on the scene before my
eyes, and what I believe about the scene before my eyes depends in turn on my
visual experience. Each dependence covers a wide and varied range of
alternatives.16 Of course, it is possible to hallucinate–even to hallucinate in
such a way that all my perceptual experience and memory would be just as they
actually are. That possibility never can be eliminated. But it can be ignored.
And if it is properly ignored–as it mostly is–then vision gives me knowledge.
Sometimes, though, the possibility of hallucination is n properly ignored; for
sometimes we really do hallucinate. The Rule of Reliability may be defeated by
the Rule of Actuality. Or it may be defeated by the Rules of Actuality and of
Resemblance working together, in a Gettier problem: if I am not hallucinating,
but unbeknownst to me I live in a world where people mostly do hallucinate and I
myself have only narrowly escaped, then the uneliminated possibility of
hallucination is too close to actuality to be properly ignored.
We do not, of course, presuppose that nowhere ever is there a failure of, say,
vision. The general presupposition that vision is reliable consists, rather, of
a standing disposition to presuppose, concerning whatever particular case may be
under consideration, that we have no failure in that case.
In similar fashion, we have two permissive Rules of Method. We are entitled to
presuppose–again, very defeasibly–that a sample is representative; and that
the best explanation of our evidence is the true explanation. That is, we are
entitled properly to ignore possible failures in these two standard methods of
nondeductive inference. Again, the general rule consists of a standing
disposition to presuppose reliability in whatever particular case may come
before us.
Yet another permissive rule is the Rule of Conservatism. Suppose that those
around us normally do ignore certain possibilities, and it is common knowledge
that they do. (They do, they expect each other to, they expect each other to
expect each other to, . . . ) Then–again, very defeasibly!–these generally
ignored possibilities may properly be ignored. We are permitted, defeasibly, to
adopt the usual and mutually expected presuppositions of those around us.
(It is unclear whether we need all four of these permissive rules. Some might be
subsumed under others. Perhaps our habits of treating samples as representative,
and of inferring to the best explanation, might count as normally reliable
processes of transmission of information. Or perhaps we might subsume the Rule
of Reliability under the Rule of Conservatism, on the ground that the reliable
processes whereby we gain knowledge are familiar, are generally relied upon, and
so are generally presupposed to be normally reliable. Then the only extra work
done by the Rule of Reliability would be to cover less familiar–and merely
hypothetical?–reliable processes, such as processes that relied on extrasensory
faculties. Likewise, mutatis mutandis. we might subsume the Rules of Method
under the Rule of Conservatism. Or we might instead think to subsume the Rule of
Conservatism under the Rule of Reliability, on the ground that what is generally
presupposed tends for the most part to be true, and the reliable processes
whereby this is so are covered already by the Rule of Reliability. Better
redundancy than incompleteness, though. So. leaving the question of redundancy
open, I list all four rules.)
Our final rule is the Rule of Attention. But it is more a triviality than a
rule. When we say that a possibility is properly ignored, we mean exactly that;
we do not mean that it could have been properly ignored. Accordingly, a
possibility not ignored at all is ipso facto not properly ignored. What is and
what is not being ignored is a feature of the particular conversational context.
No matter how far-fetched a certain possibility may be, no matter how properly
we might have ignored it in some other context, if in this context we are not in
fact ignoring it but attending to it, then for us now it is a relevant
alternative. It is in the contextually determined domain. If it is an
uneliminated possibility in which not-P, then it will do as a counter-example to
the claim that P holds in every possibility left uneliminated by S’s evidence.
That is, it will do as a counter-example to the claim that S knows that P.
Do some epistemology. Let your fantasies rip. Find uneliminated possibilities of
error everywhere. Now that you are attending to them. just as I told you to, you
are no longer ignoring them, properly or otherwise. So you have landed in a
context with an enormously rich domain of potential counter-examples to
ascriptions of knowledge. In such an extraordinary context, with such a rich
domain, it never can happen (well, hardly ever) that an ascription of knowledge
is true. Not an ascription of knowledge to yourself (either to your present self
or to your earlier self, untainted by epistemology); and not an ascription of
knowledge to others. That is how epistemology destroys knowledge. But it does so
only temporarily.
The pastime of epistemology does not plunge us forevermore into its special
context. We can still do a lot of proper ignoring, a lot of knowing, and a lot
of true ascribing of knowledge to ourselves and others, the rest of the time.
What is epistemology all about? The epistemology we’ve just been doing, at any
rate, soon became an investigation of the ignoring of possibilities. But to
investigate the ignoring of them was ipso facto not to ignore them. Unless this
investigation of ours was an altogether atypical sample of epistemology, it will
be inevitable that epistemology must destroy knowledge. That is how knowledge is
elusive. Examine it, and straightway it vanishes.
Is resistance useless? If you bring some hitherto ignored possibility to our
attention, then straightway we are not ignoring it at all, so a fortiori we are
not properly ignoring it. How can this alteration of our conversational state be
undone? If you are persistent, perhaps it cannot be undone–at least not so long
as you are around. Even if we go off and play backgammon, and afterward start
our conversation afresh, you might turn up and call our attention to it all over
again.
But maybe you called attention to the hitherto ignored possibility by mistake.
You only suggested that we ought to suspect the butler because you mistakenly
thought him to have a criminal record. Now that you know he does not–that was
the previous butler–you wish you had not mentioned him at all. You know as well
as we do that continued attention to the possibility you brought up impedes our
shared conversational purposes. Indeed, it may be common knowledge between you
and us that we would all prefer it if this possibility could be dismissed from
our attention. In that case we might quickly strike a tacit agreement to speak
just as if we were ignoring it; and after just a little of that, doubtless it
really would be ignored.

[Mr_Reasonable]

Sometimes our conversational purposes are not altogether shared, and it is a
matter of conflict whether attention to some far-fetched possibility would
advance them or impede them. What if some farfetched possibility is called to
our attention not by a sceptical philosopher, but by counsel for the defence? We
of the jury may wish to ignore it, and wish it had not been mentioned. If we
ignored it now, we would bend the rules of cooperative conversation; but we may
have good reason to do exactly that. (After all, what matters most to us as
jurors is not whether we can truly be said to know; what really matters is what
we should believe to what degree, and whether or not we should vote to convict.)
We would ignore the far-fetched possibility if we could–but can we? Perhaps at
first our attempted ignoring would be make-believe ignoring, or self-deceptive
ignoring; later, perhaps, it might ripen into genuine ignoring. But in the
meantime, do we know? There may be no definite answer. We are bending the rules,
and our practices of context-dependent attributions of knowledge were made for
contexts with the rules unbent.
If you are still a contented fallibilist, despite my plea to hear the sceptical
argument afresh, you will probably be discontented with the Rule of Attention.
You will begrudge the sceptic even his very temporary victory. You will claim
the right to resist his argument not only in everyday contexts, but even in
those peculiar contexts in which he (or some other epistemologist) busily calls
your attention to farfetched possibilities of error. Further, you will claim the
right to resist without having to bend any rules of cooperative conversation. I
said that the Rule of Attention was a triviality: that which is not ignored at
all is not properly ignored. But the Rule was trivial only because of how I had
already chosen to state the sotto voce proviso. So you, the contented
fallibilist, will think it ought to have been stated differently. Thus, perhaps:
“Psst!–except for those possibilities we could properly have ignored”. And then
you will insist that those far-fetched possibilities of error that we attend to
at the behest of the sceptic are nevertheless possibilities we could properly
have ignored. You will say that no amount of attention can, by itself, turn them
into relevant alternatives.
If you say this, we have reached a standoff. I started with a puzzle: how can it
be, when his conclusion is so silly, that the sceptic’s argument is so
irresistible? My Rule of Attention, and the version of the proviso that made
that Rule trivial, were built to explain how the sceptic manages to sway us–why
his argument seems irresistible, however temporarily. If you continue to find it
eminently resistible in all contexts, you have no need of any such explanation.
We just disagree about the explanandum phenomenon.
I say S knows that P iff P holds in every possibility left uneliminated by S’s
evidence–Psst!–except for those possibilities that we are properly ignoring.
“We” means: the speaker and hearers of a given context; that is, those of us who
are discussing S’s knowledge together. It is our ignorings, not S’s own
ignorings, that matter to what we can truly say about S’s knowledge. When we are
talking about our own knowledge or ignorance, as epistemologists so often do,
this is a distinction without a difference. But what if we are talking about
someone else?
Suppose we are detectives; the crucial question for our solution of the crime is
whether S already knew, when he bought the gun, that he was vulnerable to
blackmail. We conclude that he did. We ignore various far-fetched possibilities,
as hard-headed detectives should. But S does not ignore them. S is by profession
a sceptical epistemologist. He never ignores much of anything. If it is our own
ignorings that matter to the truth of our conclusion, we may well be right that
S already knew. But if it is S’s ignorings that matter, then we are wrong,
because S never knew much of anything. I say we may well be right; so it is our
own ignorings that matter, not S’s.
But suppose instead that we are epistemologists considering what S knows. If we
are well-informed about S (or if we are considering a well-enough specified
hypothetical case), then if S attends to a certain possibility, we attend to S’s
attending to it. But to attend to 5’s attending to it is ipso facto to attend to
it ourselves. In that case, unlike the case of the detectives. the possibilities
we are properly ignoring must be among the possibilities that S himself ignores.
We may ignore fewer possibilities than S does, but not more.
Even if S himself is neither sceptical nor an epistemologist, he may yet be
clever at thinking up farfetched possibilities that are uneliminated by his
evidence. Then again, we well-informed epistemologists who ask what S knows will
have to attend to the possibilities that S thinks up. Even if S’s idle clever
ness does not lead S himself to draw sceptical conclusions, it nevertheless
limits the knowledge that we can truly ascribe to him when attentive to his
state of mind. More simply: his cleverness limits his knowledge. He would have
known more, had he been less imaginative. 17
Do I claim you can know P just by presupposing it?! Do I claim you can know that
a possibility W does not obtain just by ignoring it? Is that not what my
analysis implies, provided that the presupposing and the ignoring are proper?
Well, yes. And yet I do not claim it. Or rather, I do not claim it for any
specified P or W. I have to grant, in general, that knowledge just by
presupposing and ignoring is knowledge; but it is an especially elusive sort of
knowledge, and consequently it is an unclaimable sort of knowledge. You do not
even have to practise epistemology to make it vanish. Simply mentioning any
particular case of this knowledge, aloud or even in silent thought, is a way to
attend to the hitherto ignored possibility. and thereby render it no longer
ignored, and thereby create a context in which it is no longer true to ascribe
the knowledge in question to yourself or others. So. just as we should think,
presuppositions alone are not a basis on which to claim knowledge.
In general, when S knows that P some of the possibilities in which not-P are
eliminated by S’s evidence and others of them are properly ignored. There are
some that can be eliminated, but cannot properly be ignored. For instance, when
I look around the study without seeing Possum the cat, I thereby eliminate
various possibilities in which Possum is in the study; but had those
possibilities not been eliminated, they could not properly have been ignored.
And there are other possibilities that never can be eliminated, but can properly
be ignored. For instance, the possibility that Possum is on the desk but has
been made invisible by a deceiving demon falls normally into this class (though
not when I attend to it in the special context of epistemology).
There is a third class: not-P possibilities that might either be eliminated or
ignored. Take the farfetched possibility that Possum has somehow managed to get
into a closed drawer of the desk-maybe he jumped in when it was open, then I
closed it without noticing him. That possibility could be eliminated by opening
the drawer and making a thorough examination. But if uneliminated, it may
nevertheless be ignored, and in many contexts that ignoring would be proper. If
I look all around the study, but without checking the closed drawers of the
desk, I may truly be said to know that Possum is not in the study–Dr at any
rate, there are many contexts in which that may truly be said. But if I did
check all the closed drawers, then I would know better that Possum is not in the
study. My knowledge would be better in the second case because it would rest
more on the elimination of not-P possibilities, less on the ignoring of
them.18,19
Better knowledge is more stable knowledge: it stands more chance of surviving a
shift of attention in which we begin to attend to some of the possibilities
formerly ignored. If, in our new shifted context, we ask what knowledge we may
truly ascribe to our earlier selves, we may find that only the better knowledge
of our earlier selves still deserves the name. And yet, if our former ignorings
were proper at the time, even the worse knowledge of our earlier selves could
truly have been called knowledge in the former context.
Never–well, hardly ever–does our knowledge rest entirely on elimination and
not at all on ignoring. So hardly ever is it quite as good as we might wish. To
that extent. the lesson of scepticism is right–and right permanently, not just
in the temporary and special context of epistemology.20
What is it all for? Why have a notion of knowledge that works in the way I
described? (Not a compulsory question. Enough to observe that short-cuts–like
satisficing, like having indeterminate degrees of belief–that we resort to
because we are not smart enough to live up to really high, perfectly Bayesian,
standards of rationality. You cannot maintain a record of exactly which
possibilities you have eliminated so far, much as you might like to. It is
easier to keep track of which possibilities you have eliminated if you–Psst!–
ignore many of all the possibilities there are. And besides, it is easier to
list some of the propositions that are true in all the uneliminated, unignored
possibilities than it is to find propositions that are true in all and only the
uneliminated, unignored possibilities.
If you doubt that the word “know” bears any real load in science or in
metaphysics, I partly agree. The serious business of science has to do not with
knowledge per se; but rather, with the elimination of possibilities through the
evidence of perception, memory, etc., and with the changes that one’s belief
system would (or might or should) undergo under the impact of such eliminations.
Ascriptions of knowledge to yourself or others are a very sloppy way of
conveying very incomplete information about the elimination of possibilities. It
is as if you had said:
The possibilities eliminated, whatever else they may also include, at least
include all the not-P possibilities; or anyway, all of those except
for some we are presumably prepared to ignore just at the moment.
The only excuse for giving information about what really matters in such a
sloppy way is that at least it is easy and quick! But it is easy and quick;
whereas giving full and precise information about which possibilities have been
eliminated seems to be extremely difficult, as witness the futile search for a
“pure observation language.” If I am right about how ascriptions of knowledge
work, they are a handy but humble approximation. They may yet be indispensable
in practice, in the same way that other handy and humble approximations are.
If we analyse knowledge as a modality, as we have done, we cannot escape the
conclusion that knowledge is closed under (strict) implication.21 Dretske has
denied that knowledge is closed under implication; further, he has diagnosed
closure as the fallacy that drives arguments for scepticism. As follows: the
proposition that I have hands implies that I am not a handless being, and a
fortiori that I am not a handless being deceived by a demon into thinking that I
have hands. So, by the closure principle, the proposition that I know I have
hands implies that I know that I am not handless and deceived. But I don’t know
that I am not handless and deceived–for how can I eliminate that possibility?
So, by modus tollens, I don’t know that I have hands. Dretske’s advice is to
resist scepticism by denying closure. He says that although having hands does
imply not being handless and deceived, yet knowing that I have hands does not
imply knowing that I am not handless and deceived. I do know the former, I do
not know the latter.22
What Dretske says is close to right, but not quite. Knowledge is closed under
implication. Knowing that I have hands does imply knowing that I am not handless
and deceived. Implication preserves truth-- that is, it preserves truth in any
given, fixed context. But if we switch contexts midway, all bets are off. I say
(1) pigs fly; (2) what I just said had fewer than three syllables (true); (3)
what I just said had fewer than four syllables (false). So “less than three”
does not imply “less than four”? No! The context switched midway, the semantic
value of the context-dependent phrase “what I just said” switched with it.
Likewise in the sceptical argument the context switched midway, and the semantic
value of the context-dependent word “know” switched with it. The premise “I know
that I have hands” was true in its everyday context, where the possibility of
deceiving demons was properly ignored. The mention of that very possibility
switched the context midway. The conclusion “I know that I am not handless and
deceived” was false in its context, because that was a context in which the
possibility of deceiving demons was being mentioned, hence was not being
ignored, hence was not being properly ignored. Dretske gets the phenomenon
right, and I think he gets the diagnosis of scepticism right; it is just that he
misclassifies what he sees. He thinks it is a phenomenon of logic, when really
it is a phenomenon of pragmatics. Closure, rightly understood, survives the
test. If we evaluate the conclusion for truth not with respect to the context in
which it was uttered, but instead with respect to the different context in which
the premise was uttered, then truth is preserved. And if, per impossibile, the
conclusion could have been said in the same unchanged context as the premise,
truth would have been preserved.
A problem due to Saul Kripke turns upon the closure of knowledge under
implication. P implies that any evidence against P is misleading. So, by
closure, whenever you know that P. you know that any evidence against P is
misleading. And if you know that evidence is misleading, you should pay it no
heed. Whenever we know–and we know a lot, remember–we should not heed any
evidence tending to suggest that we are wrong, But that is absurd. Shall we
dodge the conclusion by denying closure? I think not. Again, I diagnose a change
of context. At first, it was stipulated that S knew, whence it followed that S
was properly ignoring all possibilities of error. But as the story continues, it
turns out that there is evidence on offer that points to some particular
possibility of error. Then, by the Rule of Attention, that possibility is no
longer properly ignored, either by S himself or by we who are telling the story
of S. The advent of that evidence destroys S’s knowledge, and thereby destroys
S’s licence to ignore the evidence lest he be misled.
There is another reason, different from Dretske’s. why we might doubt closure.
Suppose two or more premises jointly imply a conclusion. Might not someone who
is compartmentalized in his thinking–as we all are–know each of the premises
but fail to bring them together in a single compartment? Then might he not fail
to know the conclusion? Yes; and I would not like to plead idealization-ofrationality
as an excuse for ignoring such cases. But I suggest that we might
take not the whole compartmentalized thinker, but rather each of his several
overlapping compartments, as our “subjects.” That would be the obvious remedy if
his compartmentalization amounted to a case of multiple personality disorder;
but maybe it is right for milder cases as well.23

[Mr_Reasonable]

A compartmentalized thinker who indulges in epistemology can destroy his
knowledge, yet retain it as well. Imagine two epistemologists on a bushwalk. As
they walk, they talk. They mention all manner of far-fetched possibilities of
error. By attending to these normally ignored possibilities they destroy the
knowledge they normally possess. Yet all the while they know where they are and
where they are going! How so? The compartment in charge of philosophical talk
attends to far-fetched possibilities of error. The compartment in charge of
navigation does not. One compartment loses its knowledge, the other retains its
knowledge. And what does the entire compartmentalized thinker know? Not an
altogether felicitous question. But if we need an answer, I suppose the best
thing to say is that S knows that P iff anyone of S’s compartments knows that P.
Then we can say what we would offhand want to say: yes, our philosophical
bushwalkers still know their whereabouts.
Context-dependence is not limited to the ignoring and non-ignoring of farfetched
possibilities. Here is another case. Pity poor Bill! He squanders all
his spare cash on the pokies, the races, and the lottery. He will be a wage
slave all his days. We know he will never be rich. But if he wins the lottery
(if he wins big), then he will be rich. Contrapositively: his never being rich,
plus other things we know, imply that he will lose. So, by closure, if we know
that he will never be rich, we know that he will lose. But when we discussed the
case before, we concluded that we cannot know that he will lose. All the
possibilities in which Bill loses and someone else wins saliently resemble the
possibility in which Bill wins and the others lose; one of those possibilities
is actual; so by the Rules of Actuality and of Resemblance, we may not properly
ignore the possibility that Bill wins. But there is a loophole: the resemblance
was required to be salient. Salience, as well as ignoring, may vary between
contexts. Before, when I was explaining how the Rule of Resemblance applied to
lotteries, I saw to it that the resemblance between the many possibilities
associated with the many tickets was sufficiently salient. But this time, when
we were busy pitying poor Bill for his habits and not for his luck, the
resemblance of the many possibilities was not so salient. At that point, the
possibility of Bill’s winning was properly ignored; so then it was true to say
that we knew he would never be rich. Afterward I switched the context. I
mentioned the possibility that Bill might win, wherefore that possibility was no
longer properly ignored. (Maybe there were two separate reasons why it was no
longer properly ignored, because maybe I also made the resemblance between the
many possibilities more salient.) It was true at first that we knew that Bill
would never be rich. And at that point it was also true that we knew he would
lose–but that was only true so long as it remained unsaid! (And maybe unthought
as well.) Later, after the change in context, it was no longer true that we knew
he would lose. At that point, it was also no longer true that we knew he would
never be rich.
But wait. Don’t you smell a rat? Haven’t I, by my own lights, been saying what
cannot be said? (Or whistled either.) If the story I told was true, how have I
managed to tell it? In trendyspeak, is there not a problem of reflexivity? Does
not my story deconstruct itself?
I said: S knows that P iff S’s evidence eliminates every possibility in which
not-P–Psst!–except for those possibilities that we are properly ignoring. That
“psst” marks an attempt to do the impossible–to mention that which remains
unmentioned. I am sure you managed to make believe that I had succeeded. But I
could not have done.
And I said that when we do epistemology, and we attend to the proper ignoring of
possibilities, we make knowledge vanish. First we do know, then we do not. But I
had been doing epistemology when I said that. The uneliminated possibilities
were Hot being ignored–not just then. So by what right did I say even that we
used to know?24
In trying to thread a course between the rock of fallibilism and the whirlpool
of scepticism, it may well seem as if I have fallen victim to both at once. For
do I not say that there are all those uneliminated possibilities of error? Yet
do I not claim that we know a lot? Yet do I not claim that knowledge is, by
definition, infallible knowledge?
I did claim all three things. But not all at once! Or if I did claim them all at
once, that was an expository shortcut, to be taken with a pinch of salt. To get
my message across, I bent the rules. If I tried to whistle what cannot be said,
what of it? I relied on the cardinal principle of pragmatics, which overrides
every one of the rules I mentioned: interpret the message to make it make sense-
–to make it consistent, and sensible to say.
When you have context-dependence, ineffability can be trite and unmysterious.
Hush! [moment of silence] I might have liked to say, just then, “All of us are
silent.” It was true. But I could not have said it truly, or whistled it either.
For by saying it aloud, or by whistling, I would have rendered it false.
I could have said my say fair and square, bending no rules. It would have been
tiresome, but it could have been done. The secret would have been to resort to
“semantic ascent.” I could have taken great care to distinguish between (1) the
language I use when I talk about knowledge, or whatever, and (2) the second
language that I use to talk about the semantic and pragmatic workings of the
first language. If you want to hear my story told that way, you probably know
enough to do the job for yourself. If you can, then my informal presentation has
been good enough.
NOTES

1. The suggestion that ascriptions of knowledge go false in the context of
   epistemology is to be found in Barry Stroud, “Understanding Human Knowledge in
   General” in Marjorie Clay and Keith Lehrer (eds.), Knowledge and Skepticism
   (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989); and in Stephen Hetherington, “Lacking Knowledge
   and 1ustification by Theorising About Them” (lecture at the University of New
   South Wales, August 1992). Neither of them tells the story just as I do, however
   it may be that their versions do not conflict with mine.
2. Unless, like some, we simply define “justification” as “whatever it takes to
   turn true opinion into knowledge” regardless of whether what it takes turns out
   to involve argument from supporting reasons.
3. The problem of the lottery was introduced in Henry Kyburg, Probahility and
   the Logic of Rational Belief(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961),
   and in Carl Hempel, “Deductive-Nomological vs. Statistical Explanation” in
   Herbert Feigl and Grover Maxwell (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of
   Science, Vol. II (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, (962). It has been
   much discussed since, as a problem both about knowledge and about our everyday,
   non-quantitative concept of belief.
4. The case of testimony is less discussed than the others; but see C. A. J.
   Coady, Testimony: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) pp. 79-
6. I follow Peter Unger, Ignorance: A Case for Skepticism (New York: Oxford
   University Press, 1975). But I shall not let him lead me into scepticism.
7. See Robert Stalnaker. Inquiry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984) pp. 59-99.
8. See my ‘Attitudes De Dicta and De Se’, The Philosophical Review 88 (1979) pp.
   513-543; and R. M. Chisholm, “The Indirect Reflexive” in C. Diamond and J.
   Teichman (eds.), Intention and Intentionality: Essays in Honour of G. E. M.
   Anscomhe (Brighton: Harvester, 1979).
9. Peter Unger, Ignorance, chapter II. I discuss the case, and briefly
   foreshadow the present paper, in my “Scorekeeping in a Language Game,” Journal
   of Philosophical Logic 8 (1979) pp. 339-359, esp. pp. 353-355.
10. See Robert Stalnaker, “Presuppositions,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 2
    (1973) pp. 447-457; and “Pragmatic Presuppositions” in Milton Munitz and Peter
    Unger (eds.), Semantics and Philosophy (New York: New York University Press.
    1974). See also my “Score keeping in a Language Game.” The definition restated
    in terms of presupposition resembles the treatment of knowledge in Kenneth S.
    Ferguson, Philosophical Scepticism (Cornell University doctoral dissertation,
    1980).
11. See Fred Dretske, “Epistemic Operators,” The Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970)
    pp. 1007-1022, and “The Pragmatic Dimension of Knowledge,” Philosophical Studies
    40 (1981) pp. 363-378; Alvin Goldman, "Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge:’
    The Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976) pp. 771-791; G. C. Stine, “Skepticism.
    Relevant Alternatives, and Deductive Closure,” Philosophical Studies 29 (1976)
    pp. 249-261: and Stewart Cohen. “How to be A Fallibilist,” Philosophical
    Perspectives 2 (1988) pp.91-123.
12. Some of them, but only some, taken from the authors just cited.
13. Instead of complicating the Rules of Belief as I have just done. 1 might
    equivalently have introduced a separate Rule of High Stakes saying that when
    error would be especially disastrous. few possibilities are properly ignored.
14. A. D. Woozley, "Knowing and Not Knowing:’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian
    Society 53 (1953) pp. 151-172: Colin Radford. “Knowledge–by Examples,” Analysis
    27 (1966) pp. 1-11.
15. See Edmund Gettier, “Is 1ustified True Belief Knowledge?,” Analysis 23
    (1963) pp. 121-123. Diagnoses have varied widely. The four examples below come
    from: (1) Keith Lehrer and Thomas Paxson Jr., “Knowledge: Undefeated True
    Belief,” The Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969) pp. 225-237; (2) Bertrand Russell,
    Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (London: Allen and Unwin, 1948) p. 154;
    (3) Alvin Goldman, “Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge,” op. cit.; (4)
    Gilbert Harman, Thought (Princeton. N1: Princeton University Press, 1973) p.

Though the lottery problem is another case of justified true belief without
knowledge, it is not normally counted among the Gettier problems. It is
interesting to find that it yields to the same remedy.
15. See Alvin Goldman, “A Causal Theory of Knowing,” The Journal of Philosophy
64 (1967) pp. 357-372; D. M. Armstrong, Belief, Truth and Knowledge (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1973).
16. See my “Veridical Hallucination and Prosthetic Vision,” Australasian Journal
of Philosophy 58 (1980) pp. 239-249. John Bigelow has proposed to model
knowledge-delivering processes generally on those found in vision.
17. See Catherine Elgin, “The Epistemic Efficacy of Stupidity,” Synthese 74
(1988) pp. 297-311. The “efficacy” takes many forms; some to do with knowledge
(under various rival analyses), some to do with justified belief. See also
Michael Williams, Unnatural Doubts: Epistemological Realism and the Basis of
Scepticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) pp. 352-355, on the instability of
knowledge under reflection.
18. Mixed cases are possible: Fred properly ignores the possibility W1 which Ted
eliminates; however, Ted properly ignores the possibility W2 which Fred
eliminates. Ted has looked in all the desk drawers but not the file drawers,
whereas Fred has checked the file drawers but not the desk. Fred’s knowledge
that Possum is not in the study is better in one way, Ted’s is better in
another.
19. To say truly that X is known, I must be properly ignoring any uneliminated
possibilities in which not-X; whereas to say truly that Y is better known than
X, I must be attending to some such possibilities. So I cannot say both in a
single context. If I say “X is known, but Y is better known,” the context
changes in mid-sentence: some previously ignored possibilities must stop being
ignored. That can happen easily. Saying it the other way around–“Y is better
known than X, but even X is known”–is harder, because we must suddenly start to
ignore previously unignored possibilities. That cannot be done, really; but we
could bend the rules and make believe we had done it, and no doubt we would be
understood well enough. Saying “X is flat, but Y is flatter” (that is, “X has no
bumps at all, but Y has even fewer or smaller bumps”) is a parallel case. And
again, “Y is flatter, but even X is flat” sounds clearly worse–but not
altogether hopeless.
20. Thanks here to Stephen Hetherington. While his own views about better and
worse knowledge are situated within an analysis of knowledge quite unlike mine,
they withstand transplantation.
21. A proof-theoretic version of this closure principle is common to all
“normal” modal logics: if the logic validates an inference from zero or more
premises to a conclusion, then also it validates the inference obtained by
prefixing the necessity operator to each premise and to the conclusion. Further,
this rule is all we need to take us from classical sentential logic to the least
normal modal logic. See Brian Chellas, Modal Logic: An Introduction (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980) p. 114.
22. Dretske, “Epistemic Operators.” My reply follows the lead of Stine,
“Skepticism, Relevant Alternatives, and Deductive Closure,” op. cit.; and (more
closely) Cohen, “How to be a Fallibilist,” op. cit.
23. See Stalnaker, Inquiry, pp. 79-99.
24. Worse still: by what right can I even say that we used to be in a position
to say truly that we knew? Then, we were in a context where we properly ignored
certain uneliminated possibilities of error. Now, we are in a context where we
no longer ignore them. If now I comment retrospectively upon the truth of what
was said then, which context governs: the context now or the context then? I
doubt there is any general answer, apart from the usual principle that we should
interpret what is said so as to make the message make sense

[Mr_Reasonable]

That’s called “Elusive Knowledge” and it’s by David Lewis. Just making sure to give the guy his credit.

[Yorick]

=D>

I read it. It was good!

Just to get this straight: Isn’t proper ignoring effectively consciously thinking inside the box? (or rather, fooling ones self to think there’s nothing outside the box for a moment)

I accept that this can yield good results in a healthy framework but can be very destructive as well. I think there’s several things we think we can properly ignore right now but actually cannot.

Would an alien species not “properly ignore” a whole different set of skepticisms?

Is proper ignoring not paving the way to a stale pool of knowledge, in effect created by our own presuppositions?

What would have happened to Copernicus if he had accepted the Rule of Conservatism?

(Trying to be constructive here. Don’t expect an answer from me until monday. I’m heading off now.)

[Xunzian]

Great essay. I’m still in the process of pondering it all, but my first impression is that it doesn’t actually improve upon fallibalism as I’m familiar with it (which, admittedly is mostly from one source and may therefore represent something outside the standard understanding). After all, most of the contingencies of fallibalism deal precisely with the context. To use his example, after I count my ears I know I have two of them provided that what I’ve counted can actually be considered “ears” (overcome through hermeneutics), that numbers exist (hermeneutics again), and ultimately that my senses and brain can construct something resembling reality (if indeed such a thing exists). There are known glitches in the standard way we construct reality that would seem to suggest that we ought keep these things in mind (see: the straw bending in water).

All he has done in this case is create a more fully fleshed out context, but even then he has to dip into various problem areas (at one point he adds a number of provisos collapsing into “and if that isn’t good enough for you, try some pure logic”).

So it seems to me that he has just reformulated fallibalism to be, “Given correct context, our knowledge is correct,” as opposed to, “Our knowledge is only as correct as our context.” The rules he lays out do a good job of demonstrating what a correct context looks like, but I feel like I’m missing something here.