Saving Sensitivity

Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1):177-196 (2021)
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Abstract

Sensitivity has sometimes been thought to be a highly epistemologically significant property, serving as a proxy for a kind of responsiveness to the facts that ensure that the truth of our beliefs isn’t just a lucky coincidence. But it's an imperfect proxy: there are various well-known cases in which sensitivity-based anti-luck conditions return the wrong verdicts. And as a result of these failures, contemporary theorists often dismiss such conditions out of hand. I show here, though, that a sensitivity-based understanding of epistemic luck can be developed that respects what was attractive about sensitivity-based approaches in the first place but that's immune to these failures.

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Brett Topey
University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia

Citations of this work

On Mentioning Belief-Formation Methods in Sensitivity Subjunctives.Bin Zhao - 2025 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 12:232-246.
Sensitivity, Safety, and Epistemic Closure.Bin Zhao - 2022 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 30 (1):56-71.
On Relativizing the Sensitivity Condition to Belief-Formation Methods.Bin Zhao - 2024 - American Philosophical Quarterly 61 (2):165-175.

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References found in this work

On the Plurality of Worlds.David Lewis - 2001 - Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.

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