Jonathan L. Kvanvig

One response to the preface paradox—the paradox that arises when each claim in a book is justified for the author and yet in the preface the author avers that errors remain—counsels against the preface belief. It is this line of thought that poses a problem for any view that places a high value on intellectual humility. If we become suspicious of preface beliefs, it will be a challenge to explain how expressions of fallibility and intellectual humility are appropriate, whether voiced verbally or encoded mentally. Moreover, banning expressions of intellectual humility is especially disturbing in our context, for such a preface claim is just the sort of expression of intellectual humility that is supposed to provide a barrier to the costly damage that can be done by zealous faith found in various forms of fundamentalism. The goal is thus to find a way to express humility without engendering paradox.

A dispute in epistemology has arisen over whether some class of things epistemic (things known or justified, for example) is closed under some operation involving the notion of what follows deductively from members of this class. Very few philosophers these days believe that if you know that p, and p entails q, then you know that q. But many philosophers think that something weaker holds, for instance that if you know that p, and p entails q, then you are in a position to know that p, or if you know that p and you competently deduce p from q, then you know that q. However there are some considerations tracing back to Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and some early work by Fred Dretske that suggests even these weaker principles are false.

Mona Simion questions whether there is a distinction between taking back an assertion and taking back only the content of an assertion, as I have claimed. After arguing against the distinction in question, Simion grants that there is a difference between the cases that I use to illustrate the distinction, and thus turns to the task of explaining the difference in a way that keeps it from undermining the knowledge norm. The explanation she offers is in terms of a distinction between doing something that is wrong and doing something that is blameworthy. I respond here by defending the distinction and questioning the explanation she gives of it.

Philosophical reflection concerning heaven and hell has focused on the place of such doctrines in the great monotheistic religions emanating from the religion of the ancient people of Israel--Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The philosophical issues that arise concerning these doctrines is not limited to such traditions, however. Consider, for example, the doctrine of hell. Any religion promises certain benefits to its adherents, and these benefits require some contrast that befalls, or might befall, those who fail to adhere to the religion in question.