Fallibilism and warrant
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to distinguish, evaluate, and supplement two prominent ways of understanding the concept of fallible knowledge: fallibility understood as a feature of doxastic revisability within a rational cognitive structure and fallibility understood as a cognitive modal fact (of a type that precludes the modality involved in the doxastic revisability account). Fallibility as doxastic revisability is to be rejected because of its latent skepticism. The best account of fallibility as a cognitive modal fact—and thus the best account of fallible knowledge—is in terms of possible (but not actual) warrant failure, where warrant is that property, enough of which when added to true belief is sufficient for true belief to become knowledge.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Bergmann, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Philosophy
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