Abstract

I develop a challenge for a widely suggested knowledge-first account of belief that turns, primarily, on unknowable propositions. I consider and reject several responses to my challenge and sketch a new knowledge-first account of belief that avoids it.

Highlights

  • Sometimes we believe p without knowing p

  • On the corresponding knowledge-first view ( ‘old’), to believe p is to Φ as if p were known, i.e. as if one knew p

  • An epistemicist about vagueness like Williamson (1996) would hold that whether a borderline case of a vague concept F falls in the extension of that concept cannot be known since knowledge entails safety, that is, that x could not have falsely believed p, and one could have had false beliefs about whether a borderline case of a vague concept F falls in the extension of that concept

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Summary

Introduction

A belief-first view of knowledge predicts this datum On such a view, knowing p is something like the conjunction of believing p with further factors, e.g. truth. A more promising option models a knowledge-first view on truth-first views of belief familiar from, e.g., Braithwaite (1932) and Marcus (1990).4 These views say, roughly, that to believe p is to Φ, for instance, be disposed to act, as if p were true.. Since new avoids under- and overgenerating in the way old does, it is a better starting point for assessing the prospects of going knowledge-first about belief. Whether it yields correct predictions in all cases, and so is plausible, is not my concern here.

Regimentations
The initial challenge
Two assumptions
OLD overgenerates
Rejecting the assumptions
The first assumption
A further challenge
Unrelativized OLD
Relativized OLD
A better alternative
Full Text
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