Abstract
Lewis thought concessive knowledge attributions (e.g., ‘I know that Harry is a
zebra, but it might be that he’s just a cleverly disguised mule’) caused serious
trouble for fallibilists. As he saw it, CKAs are overt statements of the fallibilist
view and they are contradictory. Dougherty and Rysiew have argued that CKAs
are pragmatically defective rather than semantically defective. Stanley thinks that
their pragmatic response to Lewis fails, but the fallibilist cause is not lost because
Lewis was wrong about the commitments of fallibilism. There are problems with
Dougherty and Rysiew’s response to Stanley and there are problems with Stanley’s
response to Lewis. I’ll offer a defense of fallibilism of my own and show that fallibilists needn’t worry about CKAs.
zebra, but it might be that he’s just a cleverly disguised mule’) caused serious
trouble for fallibilists. As he saw it, CKAs are overt statements of the fallibilist
view and they are contradictory. Dougherty and Rysiew have argued that CKAs
are pragmatically defective rather than semantically defective. Stanley thinks that
their pragmatic response to Lewis fails, but the fallibilist cause is not lost because
Lewis was wrong about the commitments of fallibilism. There are problems with
Dougherty and Rysiew’s response to Stanley and there are problems with Stanley’s
response to Lewis. I’ll offer a defense of fallibilism of my own and show that fallibilists needn’t worry about CKAs.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 603-619 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH |
| Volume | 83 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 17 Feb 2011 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2011 |