Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T07:07:09.066Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

AGAINST THE ITERATED KNOWLEDGE ACCOUNT OF HIGH-STAKES CASES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2017

Jie Gao
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

One challenge for moderate invariantists is to explain why we tend to deny knowledge to subjects in high stakes when the target propositions seem to be inappropriate premises for practical reasoning. According to an account suggested by Williamson, our intuitive judgments are erroneous due to an alleged failure to acknowledge the distinction between first-order and higher-order knowledge: the high-stakes subject lacks the latter but possesses the former. In this paper, I provide three objections to Williamson's account: (i) his account delivers counterintuitive verdicts about what it is appropriate for a high-stakes subject to do; (ii) the high-stakes subject doesn't need iterated knowledge in order to be regarded as appropriately relying on the relevant proposition in practical reasoning; (iii) Williamson's account doesn't provide a good explanation of why the high-stakes subject would be blameworthy if she were relying on the relevant proposition in her practical reasoning.

Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 92 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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.)

References

REFERENCES

Broome, J. 2013. Rationality Through Reasoning. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Brown, J. 2008. ‘Subject-Sensitive Invariantism and the Knowledge Norm for Practical Reasoning.’ Noûs, 42: 167–89.Google Scholar
Cohen, S. 1999. ‘Contextualism, Skepticism, and the Structure of Reasons.’ Philosophical Perspectives, 13: 57–89.Google Scholar
Crisp, T. 2005. ‘Hawthorne on Knowledge and Practical Reasoning.’ Analysis, 65: 138–40.Google Scholar
DeRose, K. 1992. ‘Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52: 913–29.Google Scholar
DeRose, K. 2009. The Case for Contextualism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fantl, J. and McGrath, M. 2002. ‘Evidence, Pragmatics, and Justification’. Philosophical Review, 111: 67–94.Google Scholar
Fantl, J. and McGrath, M. 2009. Knowledge in an Uncertain World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gerken, M. 2011. ‘Warrant and Action.’ Synthese, 178: 529–47.Google Scholar
Gerken, M. 2015. ‘The Role of Knowledge Acriptions in Epistemic Assessment.’ European Journal of Philosophy, 23: 141–61.Google Scholar
Gerken, M. Forthcoming. On Folk Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Greco, D. 2014. ‘Could KK Be OK?’ Journal of Philosophy, 111: 169–97.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, J. 2004. Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, J. and Stanley, J. 2008. ‘Knowledge and Action.’ Journal of Philosophy, 105: 571–90.Google Scholar
Joyce, J. 2005. ‘How Probabilities Reflect Evidence.’ Philosophical Perspectives, 19: 153–78.Google Scholar
Kinderman, P., Dunbar, R. and Bentall, R. 1998. ‘Theory-of-Mind Deficits and Causal Attributions.’ British Journal of Psychology, 89: 191–204.Google Scholar
Markovits, J. 2011. ‘Internal Reasons and the Motivating Intuition.’ In Brady, M. (ed.), New Waves in Metaethics, pp. 141–65. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
McKenna, R. 2015. ‘Assertion, Complexity, and Sincerity.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 93: 1–17.Google Scholar
Reed, B. 2010. ‘A Defense of Stable Invariantism.’ Noûs, 44: 224–44.Google Scholar
Stanley, J. 2005. ‘Fallibilism and Concessive Knowledge Attributions.’ Analysis, 65: 126–31.Google Scholar
Stiller, J. and Dunbar, R. 2007. ‘Perspective-Taking and Memory Capacity Predict Social Network Size.’ Social Networks, 29: 93–104.Google Scholar
Weatherson, B. 2005. ‘Can We Do without Pragmatic Encroachment?’ Philosophical Perspectives, 19: 417–43.Google Scholar
Williamson, T. 2000. Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Williamson, T. 2005. ‘Contextualism, Subject-Sensitive Invariantism and Knowledge of Knowledge.’ Philosophical Quarterly, 55: 213–35.Google Scholar