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Luminosity and the Safety of Knowledge
Author(s) -
NETA RAM,
ROHRBAUGH GUY
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0114.2004.00207.x
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , interpretation (philosophy) , mental state , epistemology , position (finance) , state (computer science) , philosophy , psychology , computer science , cognitive psychology , linguistics , business , algorithm , medicine , finance
In his recent Knowledge and its Limits , Timothy Williamson argues that no non‐trivial mental state is such that being in that state suffices for one to be in a position to know that one is in it. In short, there are no “luminous” mental states. His argument depends on a “safety” requirement on knowledge, that one's confident belief could not easily have been wrong if it is to count as knowledge. We argue that the safety requirement is ambiguous; on one interpretation it is obviously true but useless to his argument, and on the other interpretation it is false.