Williamson On the Margins of Knowledge: A Criticism
- PDF / 609,499 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 61 Downloads / 188 Views
Williamson On the Margins of Knowledge: A Criticism Ciro De Florio1 · Vincenzo Fano2 Accepted: 27 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In this paper, we argue that Williamson’s arguments against luminosity and the KK principle do not work, at least in a scientific context. Both of these arguments are based on the presence of a so-called “buffer zone” between situations in which one is in a position to know p and situations in which one is in a position to know ¬p. In those positions belonging to the buffer zone ¬p holds, but one is not in a position to know ¬p. The presence of this buffer zone triggers two types of sorites arguments. We show that this kind of argument does not hold in a scientific context, where the buffer zone is controlled by a quantitative measurement of the experimental error. Keywords KK principle · Limits of knowledge · Luminosity · Measurement
1 Introduction It is difficult to overestimate the importance that Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits (hereafter, K&L) had and still has in the philosophy community. As is well known, Williamson extensively argues against the classical analysis of knowledge as justified true belief. According to Williamson (2000, p. 6) “knowledge” is a mental state: sometimes we are in a position to know, i.e. “knowledge is a primitive kind of mental event.” In this perspective, knowledge is a part of the world. However, K&L is not only a “long argument” in favor of the conception that knowledge is a fundamental mental state; it contains legions of sub-arguments as well connected to crucial and very often provocative issues in the philosophy of knowledge. Williamson’s book is deeply rooted in a progressive program in philosophy that probably started with Hintikka’s seminal Knowledge and Belief (see Hintikka 2010). Hintikka shows that philosophical reflection benefits from the powerful instrument of formal logic in order to adequately characterize fundamental concepts such as knowledge, belief, justification, and reliability.1 Moreover, the intended domains to which those very sophisticated logical frameworks apply usually belong to common sense knowledge. We believe, 1
See for instance Fagin et al. (2004).
* Vincenzo Fano [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy, Università Cattolica di Milano, Milan, Italy
2
Department of Pure and Applied Sciences, Università Carlo Bo di Urbino, Urbino, Italy
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
C. De Florio, V. Fano
however, that in scientific contexts many of the most important problems in epistemology acquire a different structure. Does this mean that the entire debate in formal epistemology applied to everyday contexts must be abandoned? Of course not. But, on the other hand, formal epistemology, even its non-Bayesian part, could be implemented and extended if opened to the immense pool of scientific knowledge. Here let us first define the two contexts: everyday knowledge and scientific knowledge. Common sense knowledge contexts involve instances of either perception or self-knowledge, and in such contexts,
Data Loading...
