Balder Ask Zaar

In this paper, I evaluate some recent attacks on Williamson's claim that knowledge is the most general factive stative propositional attitude. Two types of approaches are discussed: The first approach attempts to show that there are factive mental states denoted by factive mental state operators that are not cases of knowing. The second approach aims to show that there are factive mental states that to Williamson count as cases of knowing, but nonetheless fail to entail a corresponding belief. If either of these approaches were successful, it would potentially be damaging for Williamson's theory of knowledge. I argue that recent arguments that exemplify these approaches are unconvincing.

The new evil demon problem amounts to a difficult challenge for the externalist about epistemic justification. Many solutions to the problem have been proffered in the almost 40 years since its first appearance in the literature. Among the more promising responses is indexical reliabilism, a combination of two versions of actual world reliabilism where “actual” denotes either the world of utterance or a rigidly determined actual world. This paper does three things. First, it attempts to clarify indexical reliabilism and how it purports to solve the new evil demon problem. Second, it attempts to mitigate some of the prominent criticism that has been leveled against the theory. Third, it poses an explanatory challenge for the theory which remains even after all of the premises supporting indexical reliabilism are accepted. The conclusion is that indexical reliabilism is not tenable until a linguistic mechanism for the use of “actually reliable” has been offered that explains how the theory avoids collapsing into a two-concepts response to the new evil demon problem.