Abstract

The author contends that in the state of nature we need some detectable property of informants that correlates well with their being right about p. This yields a twofold criticism of Robert Nozick's truth‐tracking analysis of knowledge. First, it is not necessary that the informant be a good tracker in all close possible worlds, merely those that are open possibilities, those the inquirer cannot rule out as being non‐actual. Second, the inquirer cannot set herself directly to pick out a good tracker of p, so Nozick's favoured knowledge‐conferring property lacks the necessary epistemic accessibility.