Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T12:54:35.619Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 4 - Denying Premise 2

Warrant Transmission

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2019

Marc Alspector-Kelly
Affiliation:
Western Michigan University
Get access

Summary

Premise 2 of the argument by counterexample claims that transmission fails in Dretske cases: S can’t acquire a warrant for Q by inference from P, even if she is warranted in believing P. To deny this is to claim that transmission always succeeds in Dretske cases. I argue that it doesn’t. After pointing out that it is unintuitive that transmission does succeed in such cases, I show that transmission failure also follows from a highly intuitive general principle limiting warrant acquisition: if the putative method of warrant-acquisition itself ensures that, whenever a proposition R is true, that method will inevitably deliver the result that R is false, then that method cannot deliver a warrant for the claim that R is false. I call this the “NIFN” – no inevitable false negatives – rule. The zebra case violates NIFN, which implies that transmission fails in that case. I distinguish NIFN from appeal to sensitivity, indicating that standard objections to sensitivity as a condition of warrant don’t undermine appeal to NIFN. I then defend NIFN against objections based on the generality problem and method externalism, and generalize the application of NIFN to other Dretske cases.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Denying Premise 2
  • Marc Alspector-Kelly, Western Michigan University
  • Book: Against Knowledge Closure
  • Online publication: 04 May 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108604093.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Denying Premise 2
  • Marc Alspector-Kelly, Western Michigan University
  • Book: Against Knowledge Closure
  • Online publication: 04 May 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108604093.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Denying Premise 2
  • Marc Alspector-Kelly, Western Michigan University
  • Book: Against Knowledge Closure
  • Online publication: 04 May 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108604093.004
Available formats
×