A Virtue Reliabilist Error-Theory of Defeat

Jaakko Hirvelä

doi:10.1007/s10670-021-00462-1

Abstract

Knowledge defeat occurs when a subject knows that p, gains a defeater for her belief, and thereby loses her knowledge without necessarily losing her belief. It’s far from obvious that externalists can accommodate putative cases of knowledge defeat since a belief that satisfies the externalist conditions for knowledge can satisfy those conditions even if the subject later gains a defeater for her belief. I’ll argue that virtue reliabilists can accommodate defeat intuitions via a new kind of error theory. I argue that in cases where the subject holds dogmatically onto her belief in the face of an apparent defeater, her belief never qualified as knowledge, since the belief was not gained via an exercise of her epistemic virtues. In cases where the subject suspends her judgment upon receiving the putative defeater her original belief might have qualified as knowledge, but crucially, in such cases knowledge is lost due to loss of belief, rather than due to the epistemic force of the defeater. Therefore, knowledge defeat isn’t a genuine phenomenon even though there are no cases where a subject knows what she originally believed after receiving the putative defeater.

Highlights

Knowledge defeat is said to occur when a subject knows that p, gains a putative defeater for her belief, and thereby loses her knowledge that p without necessarily losing her belief that p or any relevant evidence
Consider a paradigmatic case of knowledge defeat like Red light: At t1 Yen comes to know that the wall in front of her is red via perception in optimal conditions
Yen knows in Red light that the wall is red at t1 even if she would dogmatically cling onto her belief if she later gained a justified belief that is a putative defeater for her original belief

Summary

Introduction

Knowledge defeat is said to occur when a subject knows that p, gains a putative defeater for her belief, and thereby loses her knowledge that p without necessarily losing her belief that p or any relevant evidence. Whether Yen and Ciri rebase their beliefs is a contingent matter, and their knowledge need not be defeated by the putative defeater, contra the defeatist intuition (Lasonen-Aarnio, 2010).. Whether Yen and Ciri rebase their beliefs is a contingent matter, and their knowledge need not be defeated by the putative defeater, contra the defeatist intuition (Lasonen-Aarnio, 2010).7 It isn’t easy to see how externalist theories of knowledge could accommodate putative cases of knowledge defeat. The defeatist intuition is explained by the fact that there are no cases where a subject knows that p at t1, and retains her knowledge of p after having received a putative defeater for p at t2.

Virtue and Coherence of Character

Defeat and Justification

Defeat of the Virtues?

Other Virtue Theoretic Proposals

Conclusions