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- Title
The normality of error.
- Authors
Carter, Sam; Goldstein, Simon
- Abstract
Formal models of appearance and reality have proved fruitful for investigating structural properties of perceptual knowledge. This paper applies the same approach to epistemic justification. Our central goal is to give a simple account of The Preface, in which justified belief fails to agglomerate. Following recent work by a number of authors, we understand knowledge in terms of normality. An agent knows p iff p is true throughout all relevant normal worlds. To model The Preface, we appeal to the normality of error. Sometimes, it is more normal for reality and appearance to diverge than to match. We show that this simple idea has dramatic consequences for the theory of knowledge and justification. Among other things, we argue that a proper treatment of The Preface requires a departure from the internalist idea that epistemic justification supervenes on the appearances and the widespread idea that one knows most when free from error.
- Subjects
JUSTIFICATION (Theory of knowledge); THEORY of knowledge; ECONOMIES of agglomeration; PERCEPTUAL psychology; EPISTEMICS
- Publication
Philosophical Studies, 2021, Vol 178, Issue 8, p2509
- ISSN
0031-8116
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11098-020-01560-6