Reflective Access, Closure, and Epistemological Disjunctivism

Abstract

In this paper, I consider the so-called Access Problem for Duncan Pritchard's Epistemological Disjunctivism (2012). After reconstructing Pritchard's own response to the Access Problem, I argue that in order to assess whether Pritchard's response is a satisfying one, we first need an account of the notion of ‘Reflective Access’ that underpins Pritchard's Epistemological Disjunctivism. I provide three interpretations of the notion of Reflective Access: a metaphysical interpretation, a folk interpretation, and an epistemic interpretation. I argue that none of these three interpretations comes without problems. I conclude that, until we have a clear and unproblematic account of Reflective Access, the Access Problem remains a challenge for Pritchard's Epistemological Disjunctivism.

Recent Work on Skepticism in Epistemology

“…10. For example, see Boult (2017), Ghijsen (2015), Fratantonio (2019), Kraft (2015), Madison (2014), andZalabardo (2015). For criticism of epistemological disjunctivistm's anti-skeptical power, see Coliva (2018) and Conee (2007).…”

The Hard Problem of Access for Epistemological Disjunctivism

“…However, they were not enough interested in focusing specifically on the internalist arguments for ED. Unfortunately, despite its name, more detailed discussions on the so-called "access problem" for ED (Pritchard 2012: 20) concern the different issue of purely reflective access to empirical facts about the environment (Fratantonio 2019;Kraft 2015;Schroeder 2016). These discussions leave aside the question of internal access to epistemic facts about perceptual experiences as factive evidences.…”