Kelsey Wengert

The dogmatism puzzle purports to show that present knowledge licenses one to disregard any future evidence against what one knows. According to the puzzle, knowing a proposition puts one in a position to know that any evidence one may later gain against it is misleading. Since one is entitled to disregard evidence one knows to be misleading, one is entitled to disregard any future evidence against what one now knows. The standard response to the puzzle appeals to the defeasibility of knowledge: acquiring new evidence can destroy old knowledge. When this occurs, one may no longer know that the counterevidence is misleading, and so one is no longer entitled to disregard it. Recently, Maria Lasonen-Aarnio and Rachel Fraser have advanced dogmatic revenge puzzles which resist this standard defeat-based solution. These puzzles show that avoiding dogmatism requires rejecting a plausible principle, Entitlement, which says that one may disregard evidence one knows to be misleading. I argue that the views most vulnerable to these puzzles—those allowing for partial defeat—have strong independent reasons to reject Entitlement. If these views are correct, a surprising outcome follows: one ought to heed evidence one knows to be misleading. I suggest that this outcome is not as bad as it sounds.