Safety, Explanation, Iteration

Abstract

This paper argues for several related theses. First, the epistemological position that knowledge requires safe belief can be motivated by views in the philosophy of science, according to which good explanations show that their explananda are robust. This motivation goes via the idea—recently defended on both conceptual and empirical grounds—that knowledge attributions play a crucial role in explaining successful action. Second, motivating the safety requirement in this way creates a choice point—depending on how we understand robustness, we'll end up with different conceptions of safety in epistemology. Lastly, and most controversially, there's an attractive choice at this point that will not vindicate some of the most influential applications of the safety‐theoretic framework in epistemology, e.g., Williamson's (2000) arguments against the KK principle, and luminosity.

“Absent Contrary Indication”: On a Pernicious Form of Epistemic Luck, and its Epistemic Agency Antidote

“…Since my view does not entail such a shift, my view does not produce the widening of the class of counterfactual situations that seems to lead to the sceptical consequences identified above. Recently, some have argued that modal accounts of safety fall prey to this type of sceptical challenge (Greco, 2016) precisely on the premise that moving from firstorder safety to higher-order safety involves a jump to higher-order beliefs. If my contention (which needs to be fleshed out) is correct, the required premise is not available to mount the sceptical challenge.…”

Normality, safety and knowledge

“…Recent epistemology has seen a striking increase interest in the notion of normality , including in the analysis of justified belief (Smith 2010; 2016; Goodman and Salow 2018), defeasible reasoning (McHugh and Way 2016; Valaris 2017), and knowledge (Greco 2016; Dutant 2016; Goodman and Salow 2018; Beddor and Pavese 2020). This seems like a promising development.…”

“…4 The clearest example of such an argument is found in Beddor and Pavese (2020). Dutant (2016) also suggests understanding safety in terms of normality as a way to avoid the counterexamples, but he does not aim for an analysis of knowledge in the traditional sense Greco (2016),Goodman and Salow (2018),Dutant and Littlejohn (2020),. and Carter and Goldstein (2021) also link knowledge to normality, but their motivations are different.…”

The Uncoordinated Teachers Puzzle

“…2 See Greco (2014aGreco ( , 2014bGreco ( , 2015Greco ( , 2016, Stalnaker (2015), Das and Salow (2018), Goodman and Salow (2018) and Dorst (2019) for recent defenders of the KK principle.…”