How to be an Infallibilist*

Two central topics in epistemology are the nature of knowledge and the norm of belief. The first concerns what knowledge is, the second what we should believe. Infallibilism is a distinctive answer to both. On the first, it claims that you know p just if you infallibly believe p. On the second, it claims that you should believe p with certainty just if you know p. Below we will have much more to say about what “infallibly believe” means. But hopefully it is already clear that the two answers naturally fit together. Believing infallibly is, roughly, having a belief that could not be mistaken. Believing with certainty is, roughly, taking something for granted, without doubt or reservation, and disregarding alternative possibilities. It is natural to think that having a belief in p that could not be mistaken—and nothing short of that—warrants taking p for granted and disregarding the possibility that p is not so. So it is natural to think that if knowledge is infallible belief, then knowledge, and knowledge only, warrants certainty. Infallibilism has a bad press these days. It is said to be factually wrong because there are few things that we infallibly believe and few things that we should be certain of. It is said to be conceptually wrong because knowledge does not require infallible belief and is not enough for justified certainty. Budding epistemologists are warned: if you commit both errors, you will be excessively dogmatic like Descartes; if you commit the conceptual error alone, you will be excessively sceptic like Hume. Thankfully, the story goes, Reid, Peirce, Popper and others have led the way out of this madness and we are all past it now. Indeed, most epistemologists accept an outlook on which knowledge is in some important sense compatible with the possibility of error and on which there are few things we should be absolutely certain of. As Stewart Cohen (1988) put it, “the acceptance of fallibilism in epistemology is virtually universal.” The bad press is undeserved. There is a mistaken infallibilist view that we can ascribe to several past philosophers that leads to a false dilemma between excessive dogmatism and excessive ∗Thanks to Bob Beddor, Davide Fassio, Sandy Goldberg, Mikkel Gerken, Chris Kelp, Arturs Logins, Mona Simion, Levi Spectre, Jacques Vollet and the audience at the 2016 European Epistemology Network in Paris for useful feedback on the ideas of this paper. Special thanks to Charity Anderson for many fruitful discussions of this topic. This paper owes much to the work of Timothy Williamson and John Hawthorne though that is not to say that they endorse the views defended here.