On Relativizing the Sensitivity Condition to Belief-Formation Methods

American Philosophical Quarterly 61 (2):165-175 (2024)
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Abstract

According to the sensitivity account of knowledge, S knows that p only if S's belief in p is sensitive in the sense that S would not believe that p if p were false. It is widely accepted that the sensitivity condition should be relativized to belief-formation methods to avoid putative counterexamples. A remaining issue for the account is how belief-formation methods should be individuated. In this paper, I argue that while a coarse-grained individuation is still susceptible to counterexamples, a fine-grained individuation makes the target belief trivially insensitive. Therefore, there is no principled way of individuating belief-formation methods that helps the sensitivity account to accommodate different cases.

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Bin Zhao
Peking University

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Discrimination and perceptual knowledge.Alvin I. Goldman - 1976 - Journal of Philosophy 73 (November):771-791.
Solving the skeptical problem.Keith DeRose - 1995 - Philosophical Review 104 (1):1-52.
The generality problem for reliabilism. E. Conee & R. Feldman - 1998 - Philosophical Studies 89 (1):1-29.
Reliabilism Leveled.Jonathan Vogel - 2000 - Journal of Philosophy 97 (11):602.

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