In his recent Knowledge and its Limits , Timothy Williamson argues that no non-trivial mental state is such that being in that state suffices for one to be in a position to know that one is in it. In short, there are no "luminous" mental states. His argument depends on a "safety" requirement on knowledge, that one's confident belief could not easily have been wrong if it is to count as knowledge. We argue that the safety requirement is ambiguous; on one interpretation it is obviously true but useless to his argument, and on the other interpretation it is false.
Over the past few decades, quite a few philosophers, impressed by Bayesian theories of rational decision, have taken such theories to exhaust the contribution that philosophy can make to our understanding of practical reasons and of rational action. But, in the last few years especially, some influential non-Bayesian work in epistemology has attempted to contribute to our understanding of practical rationality and action. The non-Bayesian work that I have in mind has attempted to connect our knowledge with our reasons for action, and this connection has been forged in at least three distinct (but mutually consistent) ways.First, according to Hyman 1999, S knows that p if and only if there is some action such that S is able to perform that action for the reason that p. 1 (To specify the reason why a creature did something is not, or anyhow not always, to specify the reason for which she did it; Hyman is interested only in the latter notion. I tell you that the reason why I mispronounce "s" is that I have a speech impediment, but it doesn't follow that there is any reason for which I mispronounce "s".) To illustrate Hyman's point: suppose that the piping plover engages in broken wing display behavior for the reason that a predator is approaching her young. From this supposition it follows, according to Hyman, that the piping plover knows that a predator is approaching her young. Of course, it does not follow that the piping plover is able to use this known fact as a premise in practical reasoning: that would require powers of reasoning that may well be beyond the capacities of the plover. Nor does it follow from our supposition that the piping plover can treat this known fact-viz., that a predator is approaching its young-as a reason for acting: so treating it would require powers of metacognitive representation that may well be beyond the capacities of the plover. 2
A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs about the external world. These considerations do not threaten the truth of our ordinary attributions of evidence, however, for such attributions are context‐sensitive in their semantics. It is argued that this solution to the problem of the external world enjoys all of the benefits. and suffers none of the problems, of other solutions to the problem of the external world.
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