Abstract
Safety-based theories of knowledge face a difficulty surrounding necessary truths: no subject could have easily falsely believed such a proposition. Failing to predict that ill-grounded beliefs in such propositions do not constitute knowledge, standard safety theories are therefore less informative than desired. Some have suggested that the subjects at issue could easily have believed some related false proposition; but they have given no indication as to what makes a proposition related. I suggest a solution to this problem: a belief is safe iff its subject could not easily have believed a false answer to the same question. Keywords: epistemology, knowledge, problem of necessary truths, questions, safety.
Highlights
Safety-based theories of knowledge face a difficulty surrounding necessary truths: no subject could have falsely believed such a proposition
The belief in question could not have been falsely held, and knowledgea le beliefs are safe. That this is the central idea underlying safety theories can serve to explain the fo lowing otherwise potentia ly puzzling claim of Wi liamson’s: In many cases, someone with no idea of what knowledge is would be unable to determine whether safety obtained. [...] One may have to decide whether safety obtains [in such cases] by first deciding whether knowledge obtains, rather than vice versa (2009, p. 305). If safety theorists such as Wi liamson were proposing to reduce knowledge to safely true belief, this might be thought to be pro lematic; but if instead safety is held to be a consequence of knowledge, it can be maintained that certain possibilities are more similar to the actual case than others because they hold fixed whether knowledge obtains in those cases, and so they hold fixed the actual grounds for belief
I am not the first to propose that the theory of knowledge may benefit from the deployment of the notion of a question
Summary
A number of authors have advocated a safety constraint on knowledge. Ernest Sosa, for example, claims that “[i]n order to [...] constitute knowledge a belief must be safe” (1999, p. 142); or, in other words, “[n]o belief constitutes knowledge unless safe” (1999, p. 143). The belief in question could not have been falsely held, and knowledgea le beliefs are safe That this is the central idea underlying safety theories can serve to explain the fo lowing otherwise potentia ly puzzling claim of Wi liamson’s: In many cases, someone with no idea of what knowledge is would be unable to determine whether safety obtained. If safety theorists such as Wi liamson were proposing to reduce knowledge to safely true belief, this might be thought to be pro lematic; but if instead safety is held to be a consequence of knowledge, it can be maintained that certain possibilities are more similar to the actual case (and could have obtained) than others (which could not) because they hold fixed whether knowledge obtains in those cases, and so they hold fixed the actual grounds for belief. If Jai bird could have been paroled tomor ow morning, his belief that he wi l be in prison tomor ow night would not constitute knowledge since it could have been false, not being connected to its truth in an ap ropriate manner
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