Knowledge from Falsehood, Ignorance of Necessary Truths, and Safety

Abstract

According to the safety account of knowledge, one knows that p only if one’s belief could not easily have been false. An important issue for the account is whether we should only examine the target belief when evaluating whether a belief is safe or not. In this paper, it is argued that, if we should only examine the target belief, then the account fails to account for ignorance of necessary truths. But, if we should also examine beliefs in other relevant propositions, then the account fails to account for knowledge from falsehood. Therefore, the safety account of knowledge is undermined by knowledge from falsehood and ignorance of necessary truths.

First-Class and Coach-Class Knowledge

“… 28 See Saunders and Champawat (1964), Hilpinen (1988), Klein (1996: 106, 2008), Hawthorne (2004: 57), Warfield (2005), Coffman (2008), Fitelson (2010, 2017), Feit and Cullison (2011), Arnold (2013), Hiller (2013), de Almeida (2017), Hawthorne and Rabinowitz (2017), Buford and Cloos (2018), Turri (2019), Luzzi (2019), Zhao (Forthcoming). …”