Safety, domination, and differential support
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Safety, domination, and differential support Charles Neil1 Received: 3 March 2018 / Accepted: 9 January 2019 © The Author(s) 2019
Abstract In a recent paper “Safety, Sensitivity, and Differential Support” (Synthese, December 2017), Jose Zalabardo argues that (contra Sosa in Philos Perspect 33(13):141–153, 1999) sensitivity can be differentially supported as the correct requirement for propositional knowledge. Zalabardo argues that safety fails to dominate sensitivity; specifically: some cases of knowledge failure can only be explained by sensitivity. In this paper, I resist Zalabardo’s conclusion that domination failure confers differential support for sensitivity. Specifically, I argue that counterexamples to sensitivity undermine differential support for sensitivity. Using Zalabardo’s modal framework, I consider a less demanding modal condition, what I call weak sensitivity, and I explain how weak sensitivity avoids an influential counterexample to sensitivity. However, I argue that we can subvert that counterexample only by abandoning Zalabardo’s case for domination failure. So either way, we cannot differentially support sensitivity. Keywords Safety · Sensitivity · Modal epistemology · Differential support · Epistemic luck The paper is structured as follows: §1. I foreground standard modal versions of the safety and sensitivity conditions. I retrace Zalabardo’s argument that sensitivity entails safety. §2. I argue that domination failure alone doesn’t confer differential support for sensitivity; counterexamples to sensitivity affect differential support. §3. I distinguish between weak sensitivity and strong sensitivity. I argue that safety fails to dominate sensitivity only if we endorse strong sensitivity, which succumbs to counterexamples which undermine differential support for sensitivity.
I am grateful to two referees for this journal for their helpful comments.
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Charles Neil [email protected] Department of Philosophy, University College London, London, UK
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Synthese
1 Domination and translation keys Consider two venerable conditions for (propositional) knowledge, the sensitivity and safety conditions.1 Let us say that a subject S has a sensitive belief in some proposition p just in case: “were it not the case that p, then S would not believe that p”2 Formally: Sensitivity: ∼ p ⇒∼ Bp (Throughout this paper, let “⇒” denote the subjunctive conditional and let “→” denote the material conditional). Nozick (1981) regards sensitivity as a necessary condition for knowledge. In contrast, Sosa (1999) argues that sensitivity should be replaced with the following subjunctive condition, which he calls safety: “S would believe that p only if it were so that p”3 Formally, Sosa writes safety as the contrapositive of sensitivity, as follows: Safety: Bp ⇒ p As Sosa reminds us, sensitivity and safety are not equivalent because subjunctive conditionals do not contrapose.4 Sosa argues that sensitivity cannot be differentially supported as the correct requirement for propositional knowledge. He does so in
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