Feldman's "essential dependence" theory of Gettierization
This is just a quick thought dashed off after class, but what's the problem with this precisification of Rich's view.
Let LL "for Lucky Lemma" be the general name for the falsehood essentially depended upon.
S's inference from premises P to conclusion C essentially depends on LL iff (i) S infers C from P, and (ii) it is not possibly the case that (a) S infers C from P and (b) C is justified for S and (c)d justifiedly believes LL is not true.
This seems to capture the intuition of the no-defeaters theory without the doomed subjunctive conditional.
That's awefully rough and I probably shouldn't post in a hurry, but I had the idea that something like this might work for what he says in the mid-to-upper 30's of the Epistemology Intro.
Let LL "for Lucky Lemma" be the general name for the falsehood essentially depended upon.
S's inference from premises P to conclusion C essentially depends on LL iff (i) S infers C from P, and (ii) it is not possibly the case that (a) S infers C from P and (b) C is justified for S and (c)d justifiedly believes LL is not true.
This seems to capture the intuition of the no-defeaters theory without the doomed subjunctive conditional.
That's awefully rough and I probably shouldn't post in a hurry, but I had the idea that something like this might work for what he says in the mid-to-upper 30's of the Epistemology Intro.
posted by Trent_Dougherty at
6:53 PM
9 Comment(s):
Trent,
Is the 'believes' in condition (c) doing any work? It seems preferably to require only that S be justified in believing LL is not true.
Condition (c) also seems too strong in requiring that S be justified in believing LL is *not true*. Why not just:
(c): S is justified in believing LL is not true or S is justified in suspending judgment about LL.
By
jon, at 9/27/2006 9:22 PM
Jon,
Since it's within the scope of a modal operator, I'm not sure it really makes any difference. The original way seemed more economical, but suppose we put it your way (you seem clearly right on the second point), do you think it works then? Actually, since we are talking about an *inference* here we might actually want occurant belief. However, that might hurt generality (although I'm actually not sure we really want the same account for basic beliefs and inferential beliefs). I'm of two minds here, so let's just have two versions. Do you think the modified version works?
We now have:
(ED1) S's inference from premises P to conclusion C essentially depends on LL iff (i) S infers C from P, and (ii) it is not possibly the case that (a) S infers C from P and (b) C is justified for S and (c) S justifiedly believes LL is not true.
(ED2)
S's inference from premises P to conclusion C essentially depends on LL iff (i) S infers C from P, and (ii) it is not possibly the case that (a) S infers C from P and (b) C is justified for S and (c) either suspension of judgement or disbelief is the attitude which fits S's evidence.
John,
I definitely want a definition of essential dependence which fills your inner void, but I'll settle for extensional correctness to start. In this case, I think we should be looking for anything more "enlightening" here. We'll want that when we try to explain what it is about essential dependence which keeps knowledge at bay, but not, I think, here. First I just want to know when it occurs and when it doesn't so I can apply it to cases.
Sometimes if we get the extension right we can read the intensions off it. For example, if we examined all the members of the set of "red" things we'd notice something in common.
re: your last comment, again, this is a two-step: get the notion of ED clear and correct, *then* see why *that* would ward off knowledge.
By
Trent_Dougherty, at 9/28/2006 12:09 AM
Jason,
you say:
"In fact, if Pinocchio hadn't said anything, I apparently would have known"
If that is right, then there is no essential dependence in this case
By
jon, at 9/28/2006 9:17 AM
Jason,
That sounds like a good case, it seems structurally similar to one of the newspaper cases. I'll have to think through it in detail after I finish my formal semantics homework and class. One quick thing, though: I would make the following substitution in the definition of knowledge.
"p is well-founded for S"
for
"S is justified in believing p"
As it happens, I think my functional credit view gets that case right handily. So I'm going to think about the case really hard when I'm done.
I also can't tell yet whether what Jon just said as I was typing is right, though it sounds plausible. Can't wait to think about this case!
By
Trent_Dougherty, at 9/28/2006 9:35 AM
Trent,
I like where (ED2) is headed, but I don't think it's there yet. More must be done to strengthen the connection between C and LL. As things now stand, C and LL can be *completely* unrelated. We don't want it to be the case that my belief that Grabit took the book essentially depends upon the LL: I exist/bachelor are unmarried males/2+2=4..... those all of these LL's would fit the criteria.
I'm not sure how to strengthen the correlation, but hopefully someone can help.
By
jon, at 9/28/2006 2:12 PM
I should add that the problem here is not solely with necessary truths. There could be contingent propositions such that one's evidence make it impossible that one could be justified in suspending judgment or believing it despite the evidence justifying belief in C. This would be the case when LL and C are unrelated.
By
jon, at 9/28/2006 3:00 PM
(ED3) Conclusion C's being justified for S essentially depends on falsehood F iff (i) C is justified for S and (ii) ~<>(S's evidence remains the same with the sole exception of learning that F is false & C remains justified for S)
By
Trent_Dougherty, at 9/29/2006 8:06 AM
Jon (or anyone else), can you spell out in more detail the threat you see from necessary truths or necessarily-ever-justified contingent truths.
I think I'm not seeing it.
By
Trent_Dougherty, at 9/29/2006 8:12 AM
Slightly cleared up version.
(ED2) S's inference from premises P to conclusion C essentially depends on falsehood F iff (i) S infers C from P, and (ii) it is not possibly the case that [(a) S infers C from P and (b) C is justified for S and (c) either suspension of judgement or disbelief is the attitude to F which fits S's evidence].
By
Trent_Dougherty, at 9/29/2006 8:22 AM
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