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Moser Propositional Knowledge Philosophical Studies 1987
Moser Propositional Knowledge Philosophical Studies 1987
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Propositional Knowledge
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Paul K Moser
Loyola University Chicago
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PAUL K. MOSER
PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE
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92 PAUL K. MOSER
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 93
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94 PAUL K. MOSER
II
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 95
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96 PAUL K. MOSER
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 97
hypnosis. In such a case, clearly, the mere fact that Jones is in a state
of hypnosis would not prevent it from being more rational than not
for the membersto believe Jones' reporton the basis of his testimony.
(For similar reasons, it is implausible to suppose, with respect to the
counterexample where Jones is shamming, that the mere fact that
Jones does not intend to report true information prevents it from
being more rational than not for the members to believe his report.)
But if this is so, Shope's diagnosis fails to explain, in either case, why
the proposition reportedby Jones is actually unjustifiedfor the mem-
bers (including the experts) of the relevant epistemic community or
for S. And given this failure, the diagnosis also fails to explain why
the key inferredproposition that someone in the office owns a Ford is
unjustified.Certainly, under the envisaged circumstances,there is no
reason to think that the proposition in question would be unjustified
for the members of the actual epistemic community. Thus, it should
be noticed that for Shope's diagnosisto succeed, one would apparent-
ly have to claim that the justified proposition, q, in (El) and (I), does
not suffice to justify r, and that some false proposition is needed for
the justification of r. But it is highly doubtful that the justified q fails
to justify r. And this means that we evidently can constructa genuine
JEC like (El)-(E3) for r in (I) that does not expose a knowledge-
precludingfalsehood.
The second relevant considerationis that it still is not clear why a
JEC for r in (I) must explain the justification of the proposition that
Jones owns a Ford. Notice, in this connection, that the JEC (El)-(E3)
satisfies Shope's aforementioned requirement that propositional
knowledge that h must be justified through its connections with a
chain of propositions that it would be more rational than not for the
members of the epistemic community to accept. It is perfectly
compatible with example (I) to assume that each proposition in
(El)-(E3) is justified for the relevant epistemic community. But this
means that, on Shope's diagnosis, we are committed to the implaus-
ible view that S knows that r in (I).
III
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98 PAUL K. MOSER
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 99
IV
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100 PAUL K. MOSER
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 101
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102 PAUL K. MOSER
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 103
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104 PAUL K. MOSER
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 105
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106 PAUL K. MOSER
(c) Jones has told S that he owns a Ford only because of the
hypnotic state he is currentlyin.
PK accounts for S's lack of knowledge in the present case, because
when we add the true proposition(c) to S's evidence, S is not justified
in believing (iii) on the basis of that expanded evidence; for that
evidence does not make (iii) more probable than not. The reason it
does not make (iii) more probable than not is simple: that expanded
evidence undercuts the presumed reliability of Jones' claim that he
owns a Ford. Furthermore,there is in example (I) no truth providing
an adequate restoration of S's underminedjustification. Therefore,
S's evidence is not truth-resistantin the sense requiredby PK, and so
PK accounts for S's lack of knowledgein example (I).
PK also explains the lack of knowledge in the aforementioned
more familiar "Lucky Mr. Nogot" counterexample where Jones is
shamming. For when we expand S's evidence to include the true
proposition that Jones is shamming, that expanded evidence base
justifies for S neither the proposition that someone who is currentlya
reliable office-mate has said that he owns a Ford nor the proposition
that someone in the office owns a Ford. Further,there is not in that
example the sort of restorer of justification required by PK. The
above-mentioned considerationsexplaining the lack of knowledge in
example (I) apply here as well.
PK is equally effective with regardto the following example due to
Gettier:
(IV) Smith and Jones have applied for the same job. Smith is
justified in believing that (i) Jones will get the job, and that (ii)
Jones has ten coins in his pocket. On the basis of (i) and (ii)
Smith infers, and thus is justified in believing, that (iii) the
person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. How-
ever, as it turns out, Smith himself will actually get the job,
and he also happens to have ten coins in his pocket. Thus,
although Smith is justified in believing the true proposition
(iii), Smith does not know (iii).
In this example Smith is justified in believing the false proposition:
(i) Jones will get the job.
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 107
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108 PAUL K. MOSER
resistantin the manner requiredby PK. In any such case, there is not
available an epistemic explanation of the relevantjustified true belief
that consists solely of true propositions and is truth-resistantin the
required manner. Given PK, then, Gettier-style counterexamples
should cease to perplex us.
However, we must ask whether PK is too demanding, whether
there are cases of propositional knowledge that fail to satisfy the
requirementof truth-resistantjustificationset by PK. This leads us to
reconsiderthe earlier-mentionedexample (II)that raisedproblemsfor
principle ER. In that example, S believes, on the basis of his visual
experience, that his acquaintance,Tom Grabit, stole a book from the
library, but Tom's twin is just a fiction of the imagination of Tom's
demented mother, Mrs. Grabit, who has claimed that f: Tom's twin
was at the library at the time of the theft, but Tom was not. PK
accounts for S's having knowledge in this example, on the ground
that S's justification is truth-resistantin the requiredway. When we
add to S's evidence the truth that Mrs. Grabit's claim that f is mis-
taken, we preclude her claim's serving as an underminer of S's
evidence. And this is true even of the more difficult variation on the
present example where we add to S's evidence only the potential
undermining truth that Mrs. Grabit has claimed that f and mothers
are typically highly reliable as a source of information about their
sons' general whereabouts. Consequently, the example that was
troublesomefor ER is easily handledby PK.
Another example that might be used to arguethat PK is too strong
also resembles the counterexample involving Tom Grabit's actual
twin, except it includes the following situation: while observing
Tom's theft, S momentarilyentertainsthe proposition that Tom has
an identical twin who was in the libraryduring the time of the theft;
but S also knows that he does not actually believe that proposition.13
In this example, it might be argued, the momentarily entertained
proposition - call it d - is, if true, a genuine underminerof S's justifi-
cation for the belief that b: he does not believe d; for if d is added to
S's evidence for believing that b (in the sense that S believes that d),
then S is not justified in believing that b. Therefore, the argument
concludes, PK improperly leads us to deny that S knows that b. But
this argument rests on a confusion: a confusion of the proposition
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 109
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110 PAUL K. MOSER
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 111
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112 PAUL K. MOSER
essential core for that concept. In doing so, PK takes the mystery out
of the Gettier-style counterexamples that intuitively demand the
formulation of evidential constraints on propositional knowledge.
The essential constraintprovidedby PK may be characterizedsimply
as justification-sustenanceby the totality of truths.
v
In summary, then, we have seen that the analysis of propositional
knowledge provided by PK explains not only Gettier's original two
counterexamples, but also some of the most difficult Gettier-style
counterexamples, e.g., example (I) above, the familiar Lucky Mr.
Nogot case, and the cases involving Tom Grabit and his demented
mother. We have also seen how this analysis might be understoodas
improvingsubstantiallyon the use of epistemic explanation in Robert
Shope's initially promising analysis, and how it can meet several
likely objections to the effect that it is too demanding. Perhaps it is
worth emphasizing also that this analysis, unlike typical defeasibility
analyses, does not employ a subjunctive conditional, and therefore
does not fall prey to the objection that it commits the conditional
fallacy.'6 The analysis can be put simply in standardquantificational
form as follows: For every proposition, p, and every instance of
evidence, e, S knows that p on e if and only if p is true; S has justify-
ing evidence, e, for p that is truth-resistantin the sense specified by
the (subjunctive-free)principle TR above; and S believes that p on
the basis of e. Stated thus, it should also be emphasized, the analysis
does not run afoul of the principle from probability theory that the
probabilityof a non-redundantconjunction is less than the probabili-
ty of its individual conjuncts having a probabilityless than 1; for the
analysis proceeds on the assumption that any true proposition, t, is
added to S's evidence, e, in the sense that S is justified in believing
that (e & t), and thus the relevant conjunction is not to be taken as
unjustifiedfor S due to low probability.Another virtue of the present
analysis, moreover, is that it clearly allows for non-deductivejustify-
ing evidence as a component of propositionalknowledge. Finally, the
analysis provided by PK enables us to see how to generate less
strenuous, but equally plausible, concepts of propositional knowl-
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PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE 113
NOTES
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114 PAUL K. MOSER
Departmentof Philosophy,
Loyola Universityof Chicago,
Chicago,IL 60626,
U.S.A.
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