Abominable KK Failures

Abstract

KK is the thesis that if you can know p, you can know that you can know p. Though it’s unpopular, a flurry of considerations has recently emerged in its favour. Here we add fuel to the fire: standard resources allow us to show that any failure of KK will lead to the knowability and assertability of abominable indicative conditionals of the form ‘If I don’t know it, p’. Such conditionals are manifestly not assertable—a fact that KK defenders can easily explain. I survey a variety of KK-denying responses and find them wanting. Those who object to the knowability of such conditionals must either (i) deny the possibility of harmony between knowledge and belief, or (ii) deny well-supported connections between conditional and unconditional attitudes. Meanwhile, those who grant knowability owe us an explanation of such conditionals’ unassertability—yet no successful explanations are on offer. Upshot: we have new evidence for KK.

Indicative conditionals without iterative epistemology

“…Given MI, the diagnosis is straightforward: they couldn't possibly be true. Without MI, it is less clear why they seem so ditional are in tension with an anti-iterative conception of knowledge is Dorst (2019). The principles that are at the center of his argument include neither MI nor WCNC, though the kinds of considerations we cite in favor of MI in §2 are akin to some of those that appear in his discussion.…”

“…; Stalnaker (2009); Almotahari and Glick (2010); Mchugh (2010); Cresto (2012); Cohen and Comesaña (2013); Fernández (2013); Greco (2014a,b, 2015b); Das and Salow (2018); Goodman and Salow (2018);Dorst (2019). And for critiques see, e.g.…”

“…22To my knowledge, the only other theorist to argue in print that certain apparent platitudes about the indicative conditional are in tension with an anti‐iterative conception of knowledge is Dorst (2019). The principles that are at the center of his argument include neither mi nor wcnc , though the kinds of considerations we cite in favor of mi in §2 are akin to some of those that appear in his discussion.…”

The KK principle and rotational symmetry

“…Recently, there has been some pushback in defence of KK, with its epicentre at MIT (Greco, 2014; Stalnaker, 2015; Das & Salow, 2018; Goodman & Salow, 2018; Dorst, 2019, but also McHugh, 2010). Notably, much of this movement has developed within an epistemological approach not unsympathetic in spirit to that of the original critique of KK: a broadly externalist, reliabilist conception of knowledge, a willingness to treat knowledge on its own terms rather than reduce it to some sort of belief with privileges, and an openness to applying the techniques of formal epistemology.…”

Knowledge in the face of conspiracy conditionals

“…9 Support for this idea, at least 7 Though see the discussion of so-called 'echoing' and 'concessive' uses of the indicative conditional in §3. Also see Dorst (2019a) for some evidence to the contrary. 8 A similar line of reasoning suggests that it should be generally impermissible to assert p or q when either disjunct is known, as well as If p, q when the consequent q is known.…”