In this paper, I defend epistemological contrastivism—the view that propositional knowledge is a three-place, contrastive relation between an agent, a proposition (or fact) and a contrast term—against two a priori arguments recently offered by Mikkel Gerken for the conclusion that intuitive judgements exhibiting a contrast effect on knowledge ascriptions are false positives. I show that the epistemic argument for false positives begs the question against contrastivism by assuming the independently implausible claim that knowledge of a contrastive proposition always presupposes knowledge of a related ordinary proposition. This claim is apparently also presupposed by the doxastic argument for false positives, the conclusion of which, I argue, is not only perfectly compatible with epistemological contrastivism but also heavily dependent on a (questionable) de dicto construal of the relevant knowledge ascriptions.

A Contrastivist Response to Gerken’s Arguments for False Positives

Volpe, Giorgio
2021

Abstract

In this paper, I defend epistemological contrastivism—the view that propositional knowledge is a three-place, contrastive relation between an agent, a proposition (or fact) and a contrast term—against two a priori arguments recently offered by Mikkel Gerken for the conclusion that intuitive judgements exhibiting a contrast effect on knowledge ascriptions are false positives. I show that the epistemic argument for false positives begs the question against contrastivism by assuming the independently implausible claim that knowledge of a contrastive proposition always presupposes knowledge of a related ordinary proposition. This claim is apparently also presupposed by the doxastic argument for false positives, the conclusion of which, I argue, is not only perfectly compatible with epistemological contrastivism but also heavily dependent on a (questionable) de dicto construal of the relevant knowledge ascriptions.
2021
Volpe, Giorgio
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/766537
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