Research in experimental epistemology has revealed a great, yet
unsolved mystery: why do ordinary evaluations of knowledge ascribing
sentences involving stakes and error appear to diverge so systematically
from the predictions professional epistemologists make about them? Two
recent solutions to this mystery by Keith DeRose (2011) and N. Ángel
Pinillos (2012) argue that these differences arise due to specific
problems with the designs of past experimental studies. This paper
presents two new exp…
Read moreResearch in experimental epistemology has revealed a great, yet
unsolved mystery: why do ordinary evaluations of knowledge ascribing
sentences involving stakes and error appear to diverge so systematically
from the predictions professional epistemologists make about them? Two
recent solutions to this mystery by Keith DeRose (2011) and N. Ángel
Pinillos (2012) argue that these differences arise due to specific
problems with the designs of past experimental studies. This paper
presents two new experiments to directly test these responses. Results
vindicate previous findings by suggesting that (i) the solution to the
mystery is not likely to be based on the empirical features these theorists
identify, and (ii) that the salience of ascriber error continues to make the
difference in folk ratings of third-person knowledge ascribing sentences.