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Knowledge is Believing Something Because It's True

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2020

Tomas Bogardus Open the ORCID record for Tomas Bogardus [Opens in a new window]  and
Will Perrin
Tomas Bogardus*
Affiliation:
Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, USA
Will Perrin
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: tomas.bogardus@pepperdine.edu
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Abstract

Modalists think that knowledge requires forming your belief in a “modally stable” way: using a method that wouldn't easily go wrong (i.e. safety), or using a method that wouldn't have given you this belief had it been false (i.e. sensitivity). Recent Modalist projects from Justin Clarke-Doane and Dan Baras defend a principle they call “Modal Security,” roughly: if evidence undermines your belief, then it must give you a reason to doubt the safety or sensitivity of your belief. Another recent Modalist project from Carlotta Pavese and Bob Beddor defends “Modal Virtue Epistemology”: knowledge is a belief that is maximally modally robust across “normal” worlds. We'll offer new objections to these recent Modalist projects. We will then argue for a rival view, Explanationism: knowing something is believing it because it's true. We will show how Explanationism offers a better account of undermining defeaters than Modalism, and a better account of knowledge.

Keywords

Epistemologyknowledgemodal securitysensitivitysafetyexplanationismexplanationjustificationGettier cases
Type
Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 178 - 196
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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