At the threshold of knowledge

Daniel Rothschild; Levi Spectre

doi:10.1007/s11098-017-0876-7

At the threshold of knowledge

Daniel Rothschild, Levi Spectre

Philosophy discipline

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

We explore consequences of the view that to know a proposition your rational credence in the proposition must exceed a certain threshold. In other words, to know something you must have evidence that makes rational a high credence in it. We relate such a threshold view to Dorr et al.’s (Philosophical Studies 170(2):277–287, 2014) argument against the principle they call fair coins: “If you know a coin won’t land tails, then you know it won’t be flipped.” They argue for rejecting fair coins because it leads to a pervasive skepticism about knowledge of the future. We argue that the threshold view of evidence and knowledge gives independent grounds to reject fair coins.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	449-460
Number of pages	12
Journal	Philosophical Studies
Volume	175
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0876-7
State	Published - 1 Feb 2018

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledgements Many thanks to Matti Eklund, Anandi Hattiangadi, Harvey Lederman, and an anonymous referee for this journal for their invaluable comments. This paper was presented at the Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University, Sweden. Spectre’s research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 463/12). Rothschild’s research was supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (Grant Nos. AH/M009602/1 and AH/ N001877/1).

Funding Information:
Many thanks to Matti Eklund, Anandi Hattiangadi, Harvey Lederman, and an anonymous referee for this journal for their invaluable comments. This paper was presented at the Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University, Sweden. Spectre?s research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 463/12). Rothschild?s research was supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (Grant Nos. AH/M009602/1 and AH/ N001877/1).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

Keywords

Epistemological skepticism about the future
Evidence
Inference
Knowledge
Probability
Rational-belief
Thresholds
Tolerance principle

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10.1007/s11098-017-0876-7

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At the threshold of knowledge

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Keywords

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