Epistemic Closure and Epistemological Optimism

Abstract

Half a century later, a Dretskean stance on epistemic closure remains a minority view. Why? Mainly because critics have successfully poked holes in the epistemologies on which closure fails. However, none of the familiar pro-closure moves works against the counterexamples on display here. It is argued that these counterexamples pose the following dilemma: either accept that epistemic closure principles are false, and steal the thunder from those who attack classical logic on the basis of similarly problematic cases—specifically, relevance logicians and like-minded philosophers—or stick with closure and surrender to relevantist claims of failure in truth-preservation aimed at classical rules of inference (by Edwin Mares, Stephen Read, et al.). Classicist closure advocates find the promise of a way out of the dilemma in the works of Roy Sorensen and John Hawthorne. The paper argues against their pro-closure move and renews Robert Audi’s call for a theory of closure-failure.