The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology by Oxford Press

Author:Oxford Press [Press, Oxford]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

14. To qualify as not only necessary but also sufficient, our condition would need to be modified so as to require that the guiding indication be “fundamental” for that subject at that time: that is, not based on a deeper, more general indication. (Also we would need to take into account the requirement that one's belief be so guided virtuously; and considerations of perspective must also be given their due.) 15. This sort of problem is also presented by Jonathan Vogel in “Tracking, Closure, and Inductive Knowledge,” in The Possibility of Knowledge, ed. S. Luper-Foy (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987), and is endorsed by Stewart Cohen in his “Contextualist Solutions to Epistemological Problems: Skepticism, Gettier, and the Lottery,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (1998): 289–306.

16. “How to Resolve the Pyrrhonian Problematic: A Lesson from Descartes,” Philosophical Studies 85 (1997): 229–249.

17. Concerning the zebra we should distinguish between a case where the animal seen might too easily be a striped mule: where, for example, that zoo might too easily, and maybe does already, display striped mules instead of zebras. In such a situation clearly one does not know it to be really a zebra one sees. The safety requirement explains this through the fact that even if it looked like a zebra, and one believed accordingly, it might too easily be not a zebra but a striped mule. So far so good. But what if the zoo in question is incorruptible and would never descend to such deceit. Now the safety requirement seems satisfied, and we are able to say that one knows it to be a zebra one sees. Or, at least one can say that as far as the safety requirement is concerned. The safety requirement is after all just a necessary condition. So the mere fact that a belief satisfies that requirement does not commit us to counting it a case of knowledge.

end p.285

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.