Philosophy Compass 2/6 (2007): 781791, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00076.

Knowledge and Subjunctive Conditionals

Juan Comesaa*
University of Wisconsin Madison

Abstract

What relation must hold between a fact p and the corresponding belief that p for the belief to amount to knowledge? Many authors have recently proposed that the relation can be captured by subjunctive conditionals. In this paper I critically evaluate the main proposals along those lines.

Introduction A recent development in epistemology is the claim that there is a constitutive connection between knowledge and the truth of some subjunctive conditional. More precisely, the claim is that for a subject to know a certain proposition, some subjunctive conditional related to that subject and that proposition has to be true. In this paper I present and evaluate the main proposals of this type. Subjunctive Conditionals Subjunctive conditionals are usually marked in English by the presence of verbs in the subjunctive mood, as in the constructions . . . were (not) . . . would (not), (If it were the case that kangaroos have no tails, then it would be the case that they topple over) and . . . had (not) . . . would (not) (If it had not rained, then the yard would have been dry), and we will represent them as follows: A ! B.1 The groundwork for giving a semantics for that kind of conditionals was laid down by work on possible world semantics for modal logic (see Kripke). The main idea of such a semantics is that a necessity operator can be defined as a restricted universal quantifier over a domain of possible worlds, as follows:
" is true at a world w if and only if " is true at every world accessible from w,

where different restrictions on the accessibility relation give rise to different modal logics. For instance, if every world in the domain is accessible to every other world, then the resulting logic is the familiar S5. In what follows I will not explicitly mention the restriction to accessible worlds, because it does not matter for our purposes.
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From the definition of and the usual understanding of the material conditional, we can get the following definition of a strict conditional:
(A # B) is true at a world w if and only if (A # B) is true at every world (in other words, if and only if every world where A is true is a world where B is true).

A subjunctive conditional does not have the same truth-conditions as a strict conditional, for a subjunctive conditional can be true even if there are some worlds where the antecedent is true and the consequent false, provided that those worlds are different enough from the actual world (for instance If Mike Tyson were to fight David Letterman, then Mike Tyson would win is certainly true, even though there surely are possible worlds where Letterman wins). But if we assume that there is an overall similarity ordering of the possible worlds, then we can capture that difference between subjunctive and strict conditionals in this definition:
A ! B is true at a world w if and only if all the worlds that are most similar to w where A is true are worlds where B is true as well.2

Nozicks Account I: Sensitivity The most influential part of Nozicks book Philosophical Explanations is the one where he gives and defends an interesting definition of propositional knowledge. The definition is the following:
A subject S knows that p via method M if and only if: 1. S believes that p via M; 2. p is true; 3. If p were false, then S wouldnt believe that p via M; 4. If p were true, and S were to use M to arrive at a belief whether (or not) p, S would believe that p via M. (178)3

As can be seen, besides belief and truth Nozick imposes two further conditions on knowledge, and both of them are subjunctive conditionals. Condition 3 (which has come to be called the sensitivity condition) has been widely discussed in the literature.4 Condition 4 has been less widely discussed, but it raises an important issue that we will address. Problems for Sensitivity: Counterexamples and Closure Let us begin, then, with the sensitivity condition. Is it true that, if I know that p via method M, then if p were false then I wouldnt believe that p via method M? Or are there cases where I know that p via some method M and yet it is not the case that if p were false then I wouldnt believe that p via that method? Most philosophers (besides Nozick) that have written on the topic believe that condition 3, as it stands, is false. Some
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philosophers, though, believe that it is on the right track, and that the correct reaction to the counterexamples shouldnt be to abandon the sensitivity condition altogether, but rather to refine it. One main reason for thinking that the sensitivity condition is false as it stands stems from a family of counterexamples that can be traced back to Vogel. One of the counterexamples runs as follows:
GARBAGE CHUTE: I throw a trash bag down the garbage chute of my condo. Some moments later I believe, and know, that the trash bag is in the basement. If the trash bag were not in the basement, however, that would be because it is stuck somewhere in the chute, and I would still believe that it is in the basement. (Sosa, Skepticism and Contextualism 13)

My belief that the trash bag is in the basement is not sensitive, and yet it does amount to knowledge. Another reason for dissatisfaction with the sensitivity requirement is that it doesnt respect a very plausible closure principle.5 Notice first that it is not true that if one sensitively believes that p and competently deduces that q from p without ceasing to sensitively believe that p, then one sensitively believes that q. To take one extreme example (also due to Vogel), take the propositions that there are cookies in the jar and that I do not falsely believe that there are cookies in the jar. I sensitively believe that there are cookies in the jar (if there were none, then I wouldnt believe that there are). I can competently deduce from that proposition that I dont falsely believe that there are cookies in the jar (without ceasing to sensitively believe that there are cookies in the jar). And yet I do not sensitively believe that I dont falsely believe that there are cookies in the jar (if I did falsely believe that there are cookies in the jar, then I would still believe that there are cookies in the jar, and I would still deduce from that proposition that I dont falsely believe that there are cookies in the jar). Now, as Vogel noticed,6 the fact that the sensitivity condition is not closed under competent deduction doesnt mean that any account of knowledge that incorporates the sensitivity condition is similarly not closed in any case where a proposition is sensitively believed but a consequence of it is not, it might happen that the proposition that is sensitively believed doesnt satisfy some other condition that the account posits as necessary for knowledge. Nevertheless, on Nozicks account knowledge does fail to be closed under competent deduction, and this failure can be traced back to the sensitivity condition. This failure of the sensitivity condition of being closed under competent deduction was welcomed by Nozick, because it afforded him an explanation of both the allure and the ultimate failure of skeptical arguments. Skeptical arguments often appeal to skeptical hypotheses: propositions that claim that most of my beliefs are undetectably false. One such hypothesis is the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis: the proposition that the world is such that I am a brain in a vat being fed experiences as if I were a
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normal human being in a normal environment, and that not much more goes on in the world (lets call this proposition biv). If biv were true, then most of my beliefs would be false, but I would have no way of detecting that they are. One powerful skeptical argument uses that (or similar) skeptical hypothesis in the following way:
1. I do not know that biv is false. 2. If I do not know that biv is false, then I do not know that I have hands. Therefore, 3. I do not know that I have hands.

Armed with his account of knowledge, Nozick can explain the arguments appeal by noting that it is a valid argument (it is an instance of Modus Ponens) and its first premise is true. I do not know that biv is false, according to Nozick, because if it were true then (given that I would be a brain in a vat being fed experiences as if I were a normal human being in a normal environment) I would still believe that it is false, and so I fail the sensitivity condition with respect to that proposition. On the other hand, the arguments second premise is false. I do know that I have hands according to Nozick, because my belief that I have hands satisfies all the clauses of his definition of knowledge. In particular, that belief of mine is sensitive: if I didnt have hands, then I would not believe that I do. Therefore, premise 2 is a conditional with a true antecedent and a false consequent, and so it is false.7 But although Nozick (as well as Dretske) welcomed the fact that their accounts of knowledge dont respect a closure principle, most philosophers think that this constitutes a very serious problem for those accounts. Even setting aside the question of whether I can know that I have hands even if I dont know that I am not a biv, Nozicks account of knowledge licenses particularly egregious failures of closure. For instance, according to Nozicks account, knowledge doesnt distribute over conjunction. I can know that I am writing and I am not a brain in a vat (in particular, notice that that conjunction satisfies sensitivity, because if it were false that would be because I am not writing, in which case I wouldnt believe it), but, as explained above, I can never know that I am not a brain in a vat (see Nozick 228). Defending Sensitivity Despite the counterexamples and the fact that it violates a very plausible closure principle, some philosophers think that the condition of sensitivity is sufficiently on the right track as to be worthy of refinement as opposed to rejection. With respect to the problem that sensitivity is not closed under competent deduction, it is interesting to note that Nozick himself considered (in a few sentences) the possibility of incorporating the sensitivity condition in a recursive account that has the consequence that knowledge is closed under competent deduction. Say that if S satisfies all the conditions
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of Nozicks original account with respect to a proposition p, then S tracks that p. The new account can then be formulated as follows:
S knows that p if and only if either: 1. S tracks that p; or 2. S knows that q and S competently deduces that p from q.

Under this recursive account, a proposition is non-inferentially known if and only if it is tracked (and is not inferred from another proposition that is tracked), but propositions can also be inferentially known by being competently deduced from propositions that are tracked.8,9 With respect to the counterexamples to sensitivity, Keith DeRose has made (in passing, and without committing himself to its ultimate adequacy) a proposal that has the potential to handle some of them. DeRose says that some beliefs that are insensitive nevertheless strike us as known when their negations entail something that we take ourselves to know to be false, without explaining how we came to falsely believe it (see DeRose 23). If we follow DeRoses suggestion and amend the sensitivity condition accordingly, the result is the following:
DeRose-style sensitivity condition: S knows that p via M only if either: 1. if p were false, then S wouldnt believe that p via M; or 2. p entails some q, S takes himself to know that q (and S would continue to believe that q if p were false), and p doesnt explain why S would falsely believe that q if p were false.10

This version of the sensitivity condition has the consequence that my belief that I dont falsely believe that I have hands is sensitive. For the hypothesis that I falsely believe that I have hands doesnt explain why I falsely believe that I have hands, and I take myself to know that I have hands. In this example, we let p be the proposition that I dont falsely believe that I have hands, and q the proposition that I have hands.11 However, the new condition seems to be of no help in dealing with other kinds of counterexamples. Recall, for instance, the garbage chute case: I know that the trash bag is in the basement, despite the fact that if it were not in the basement I would still believe that it is. What we need to find if the DeRose-style sensitivity condition is going to fare better with respect to this counterexample is a proposition q such that: (i) the trash bag is not in the basement entails that q; (ii) I take myself to know that q (and I would continue to believe that q if p were false); and (iii) that the trash bag is not in the basement doesnt explain why I would falsely believe that q. A plausible candidate is the proposition that the trash bag is in the basement itself. That proposition certainly satisfies conditions (i) and (ii). But is it the case that if the trash bag were not in the basement that would not explain why I still believe that the trash bag is in the basement? Well, we judge that my belief that the trash bag is in the basement is insensitive (as the case is described) because if it were not in the basement
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it would, unbeknownst to me, be stuck in the chute on its way to the basement. So, the closest situation were the trash bag is not in the basement is one that does explain why I would still falsely believe that it is in the basement (because it is a situation where the trash bag miseladingly appears to be in the basement). Therefore, unless more is said about what it takes for a proposition to explain another, it is natural to conclude that the DeRose-style sensitivity condition fails to account for this kind of cases.12 Nozicks Account II: Adherence Remember that Nozicks account of knowledge requires not only that if the proposition believed were false then the subject wouldnt believe it (via the method by which he actually believes it), but also that, if the proposition believed were true (and the subject were to use the method that he actually uses in order to arrive at a belief ) the subject would still believe it. This condition, known as the adherence condition hasnt been as widely discussed as the sensitivity condition, but it does raise interesting issues. Perhaps the most interesting issue raised by the adherence condition is whether or not it is a trivial condition. After all, it is a subjunctive conditional whose antecedent and consequent are guaranteed to be true by the account of which the condition is a part. Subjunctive conditionals with true antecedent and true consequent (true-true conditionals in what follows) are hard to evaluate. Consider the true-true conditional: If Bush were President, he would have invaded Iraq. Our first reaction upon hearing such a conditional might well be: Whaddaya mean, If Bush were President? He is the President!, and we might well be at a loss to judge its truth-value. Now, under the semantics for subjunctives introduced in section 2, any true-true conditional is trivially true, because in the actual world both the antecedent and the consequent are true, and any world is closer to itself than any other world.13 So there are two related tasks that a friend of the adherence condition must undertake: first, he must explain why it is legitimate to impose a condition that strike us as unassertible; second, he must provide a semantics that doesnt make true-true conditionals trivially true. With respect to the second task, Nozick did offer a sketch of a semantics that doesnt have the consequence that all true-true conditionals are trivially true. One suggestion starts by defining the p-neighborhood of a world, and then defines subjunctives in terms of neighborhoods, as follows:
For any worlds w1 and w2, w2 is in the p neighborhood of w1 if and only if p is true in w2 and there are no worlds wp and wp such that: 1. p is true in wp and false in wp; 2. wp is closer to w1 than w2 is to w1; 3. wp is at least as close to w1 as wp is to w1. A ! B is true at w if and only if B is true in the A neighborhood of w. (see Nozick 6801, n8)14
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Roughly speaking, the p neighborhood of a world w is the largest stretch of worlds where p is true that is uninterrupted by any world where p is false that is closest to w. If p is true in w, then w will be in the p neighborhood of w, but if p is false in w (and possibly true), then ws p neighborhood will not include w itself. Those definitions do have the consequence that not all true-true conditionals are trivially true.15 But the difficulties with true-true conditionals are not over. Remember our first problem with such conditionals: they strike us as unassertible, and we are at a loss to judge their truth-value.16 The Nozickian semantics under consideration assures us that not all true-true conditionals will be trivially true, but in order to know which true-true conditionals are true and which are false we would now need to know, for any conditional A ! B, which are the worlds in the A neighborhood of the actual world. But this construes the relationship between the formal semantics and our pre-theoretic judgments about the truth-values of conditionals exactly backwards: the closeness relation among worlds in the model should be construed so that it delivers the truth-values that we pre-theoretically judge different conditionals to have, and it shouldnt be the case that the model introduces distinctions where we dont find any (or, of course, that it obliterates distinctions that we do find).17 We find all conditionals that we know to be true-true equally unassertible, and we are equally at a loss to judge their truthvalues. Unless this pre-theoretic reaction of ours is massaged to lead us to accept differences between conditionals that we know to be true-true, no amount of formal semantics is going to rescue the adherence condition from this problem. Besides this problem with true-true conditionals, the adherence condition is also subject to potential counterexamples. Consider, for instance, the following:
BIRD IN THE YARD: There is a pelican in the yard. I take a glance at the yard and form the belief that there is a bird in the yard. There is also a canary behind the pelican, which is too small for me to see from where I am standing. (Sosas Replies in Greco 280)

It seems clear that in the situation described I know that there is a bird in the yard. But there are worlds in the bird-in-the-yard neighborhood of the actual world where I do not believe that there is a bird in the yard (namely, those worlds where the pelican is gone but the canary is still there). Therefore, I do not satisfy the adherence condition.18 Sosas Account: Safety Under the standard semantics for subjunctives, those conditionals are not equivalent to their contrapositives. Thus, suppose that we flip a coin to decide whether you or I will struck this match, heads you strike it, tails I strike it. The coin comes up heads, you strike the match and it lights.
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In this situation, it is true that if I had struck the match, then it would have lit. But it need not be true that if the match hadnt lit then I wouldnt have struck it. If the match hadnt lit, then that could have been because it was wet (although it actually wasnt), and either of us could have struck it. In the possible worlds terminology, the closest possible world where I struck the match is a world where it lights, but there are possible worlds where the match doesnt light and I strike it that are as close to actuality as are worlds where the match doesnt light and you strike it. After noticing the failure of subjunctives to contrapose, Ernest Sosa had proposed that we should replace Nozicks sensitivity condition with its contrapositive, which Sosa calls a safety condition. The following formulation seems to capture Sosas intent:
Safety: Ss belief that p based on e is safe if and only if S would not easily believe that p based on e without it being so that p (in symbols, S believes that p on basis e ! p). (Sosa, Tracking)19

Given that the safety condition is offered as a necessary condition on knowledge, and given that belief and truth are also necessary for knowledge, Sosas safety condition will always be a true-true conditional. Because of this, it seems clear that Sosa (like Nozick) cannot accept the standard semantics for subjunctives, on pain of making the safety condition trivial. Let us suppose, then, that in assessing the safety condition we are to assume some other semantics for subjunctives, perhaps the one sketched in the previous section. One advantage of the safety condition over sensitivity is that my belief that I am not a brain in a vat (and, in general, any belief that I am not the victim of undetectable deception) is safe. Throughout the worlds that are in the I-believe-that-I-am-not-a-biv neighborhood of the actual world, I am not a brain in a vat.20 Thus, the safety condition is a crucial ingredient in Sosas Moorean response to skepticism: it is true that we know that we are not brains in a vat, but we might be fooled into thinking that we dont know it because that belief of ours is not sensitive, and whereas it is safety, and not sensitivity, that is required for knowledge, the two conditions are easily confused (because one is the contrapositive of the other). Despite these advantages of the safety condition over its contrapositive, several counterexamples to safety have appeared in the literature. One of them runs as follows:
Halloween Party: There is a Halloween party at Andys house, and I am invited. Andys house is very difficult to find, so he hires Judy to stand at a crossroads and direct people towards the house ( Judys job is to tell people that the party is at the house down the left road). Unbeknownst to me, Andy doesnt want Michael to go to the party, so he also tells Judy that if she sees Michael she should tell him the same thing she tells everybody else (that the party is at the house down the left road), but she should immediately phone Andy so that the party can be moved to Adams house, which is down the right road. I seriously consider disguising myself as Michael, but at the last
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moment I dont. When I get to the crossroads, I ask Judy where the party is, and she tells me that it is down the left road. (Comesaa 397)21

In the case as described, I know that the party is down the left road, and yet I could have easily believed the same thing without its being true (because I could have easily have come disguised as Michael, in which case Judy would have lied to me). In other words, I have knowledge but my belief is not safe. Conclusion Unconstrained, the thesis that there is a connection between knowledge and the truth of some subjunctive conditional about the proposition known is trivially true. For instance, if it is true that S knows that p, then the following subjunctive is also true: if S knew that p, then p would be true. The idea that Dretske, Nozick, Sosa, and others have put forward, however, is that interesting and illuminating conditions on knowledge can be captured in terms of subjunctive conditionals. It is fair to say that these accounts must face important obstacles. In particular, the standard semantics for subjunctives will have to be replaced, and there are powerful counterexamples to every proposed condition. Acknowledgements Many thanks to Carolina Sartorio, Andy Egan, and the participants in the Second Online Philosophy Conference <http://experimentalphilosophy. typepad.com/2nd_annual_online_philoso/>, especially my commentators John Greco, Tim Black, and Peter Murphy, as well as Avram Hiller, for very helpful comments. Short Biography Juan Comesaas research interests are centered in questions about justification and knowledge; he has authored papers in these areas for Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Perspectives, Synthese, and the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Comesaa is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, and he holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Brown University. Notes
* Correspondence address: Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin Madison, 5163 Helen C. White Hall, 600 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Email: jmcomesana@wisc.edu.
1 As David Lewis noted, however, there are shortened conditionals that have no verb (and, a fortiori, no verb in the subjunctive mood), such as No Hitler, no A-bomb, and which should

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still receive the same semantic treatment as subjunctive conditionals, and there are also subjunctive conditionals about the future, such as If our troops invade Iran next year, there would be trouble, which behave rather like indicative conditionals (see Lewis 4). Iatridou argues that what distinguishes a subjunctive conditional is the presence of past morphology in both the antecedent and the consequent clause. 2 The definition is similar to the one put forward by Stalnaker (and differs from the one put forward by Lewis) in that it incorporates the assumption that, for any given world w, there is a set of worlds whose members resemble w more than any world not in the set, but it differs from it (and, in that respect, it resembles the one in Lewis) in allowing that set to contain more than one member (that is, it allows for ties). 3 The definition in the text is a slightly revised version of Nozicks. 4 The sensitivity condition, as well as the claim (also made by Nozick) that knowledge is not closed under known logical implication, were anticipated by Fred Dretske see Dretske, Epistemic Operators; Conclusive Reasons. 5 For a discussion of closure principles in epistemology, see Kvanvig. 6 See also Warfield. 7 The fact that my belief that I have hands is sensitive whereas my belief that biv is false is not is underscored by the fact that subjunctive conditionals are variable strict conditionals and not any kind of fixed strict conditionals. When we evaluate the truth-conditions of the proposition that if biv were true then I would not believe that it is false we have per force to consider worlds that are much more dissimilar to the actual world than when we evaluate the truthconditions of the proposition that if I didnt have hands then I wouldnt believe that I did. 8 For a development of this idea in the framework of a probabilistic interpretation of Nozicks subjunctive conditions, see Roush. 9 Inductive knowledge presents a problem for Nozicks own account, who claims (implausibly) that you can know that the sun will come out tomorrow only if, if it werent the case that the sun will come out tomorrow, then there would have been signs of that (a back-tracking counterfactual, where the consequent refers to a time that comes before the time referred to by the antecedent) see Nozick 2223. The modified version of Nozicks account under consideration should also deal with inductive knowledge: presumably, one would want to allow for knowledge of propositions that are neither tracked nor deduced from propositions tracked, but inferred from tracked propositions according to sound inductive cannons. 10 The parenthetical qualification is my addition, but it seems clear that is needed. Also, DeRoses proposal is that we tend to judge that S knows that p only if either S believes that p sensitively or we take it that there is some q such that . . . This avoids the difficulty that S may know anything as long as he takes himself to know the right proposition. At the same time, however, it means that there is no easy translation from DeRoses proposal to a condition on knowledge (as opposed to knowledge attribution). In the text I ignore this complication by assuming that S takes himself to know only propositions that we would take him to know. 11 For a development of the DeRose-style sensitivity condition, see Black and Murphy. 12 For a different defense of the tracking theory from these (and other) counterexamples, see Adams and Clarke. 13 This is the assumption that Lewis calls centering. 14 Nozick goes on to consider a further refinement to allow for not-p worlds that are just as close to the world in which the conditional is evaluated as are some of the worlds in the p neighborhood. I ignore that complication. 15 A different theory that allows for non-trivially true (and false) true-true conditionals is the one put forward in von Fintel although only in contexts where other counterfactuals have been previously asserted. 16 Or at least, conditionals that we know to be true-true conditionals strike us as unassertible and we are at a loss to judge their truth-values. That is the kind of conditional in play in Nozicks adherence condition. 17 The traditional semantics also finds truth-values where we dont (clearly) see any, but at least it doesnt introduce any distinctions that we dont see. 18 The adherence condition could be defended by claiming that my method of belief formation is different if I see a pelican than if I dont see anything. This is true, but it just highlights the need to say much more about method-individuation than Nozick ever said.
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19 Williamson also proposes what he calls a safety condition on knowledge, and he cites Sosa approvingly. However, Williamson might not be adverse to understanding safety in terms of knowledge, which goes against Sosas project. 20 Another advantage may be that safety respects plausible principles of closure, but whether that is so or not depends on details of the individuation of bases of belief formation. 21 See also Neta and Rohrbaugh. It is interesting to note that, under the assumption that p is truly believed, if p is sensitive then it is safe (under the revised semantics offered in the previous section). Therefore, counterexamples to safety as a necessary condition on knowledge are also (further) counterexamples to sensitivity.

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