According to a tradition reaching back to Plato, questions about the nature of knowledge are to be answered by offering an analysis in terms of truth, belief, justification, and other factors presumed to be in some sense more basic than knowledge itself. In light of the apparent failure of this approach, knowledge first philosophy instead takes knowledge as the starting point in epistemology and related areas of the philosophies of language and mind. Knowledge cannot (...) be analyzed in the traditional sense, but this does not make it mysterious or unimportant. On the contrary, we are freed to use our grasp of what knowledge is to elucidate the nature of belief, justification, evidence, the speech act of assertion, and the demands on action and practical reasoning, and to treat knowledge as a purely mental state in its own right. Knowledge First? offers the first overview and critical evaluation of knowledge first philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

I begin by criticizing reductionist knowledge-first epistemology according to which knowledge can be used to reductively analyze other epistemic phenomena. My central concern is that proponents of such an approach commit a similar mistake to the one that they charge their opponents with. This is the mistake of seeking to reductively analyze basic epistemic phenomena in terms of other allegedly more fundamental phenomena. I then turn to non-reductionist brands of knowledge-first epistemology. Specifically, I consider the (...) knowledge norms of assertion and contrast them with an alternative that I have developed elsewhere (Gerken 2011, 2012a, 2013b, 2014, 2015a, 2015c, MS). On the basis of the critical discussion, I question whether a knowledge-first program that is both plausible and distinctive has been identified. On a more positive note, I sketch the contours of an alternative that I label ‘equilibristic epistemology.’ According to this approach, there isn’t a single epistemic phenomenon or concept that is “first.” Rather, there are a number of basic epistemic phenomena that are not reductively analyzable although they may be co-elucidated in a non-reductive manner. This approach preserves some grains of truth in knowledge-first epistemology. For example, it preserves the idea that knowledge can be taken to be explanatorily basic and unanalyzable. However, since no single epistemic phenomenon is first, knowledge is not first. (shrink)

Knowledge-first evidentialism combines the view that it is rational to believe what is supported by one's evidence with the view that one's evidence is what one knows. While there is much to be said for the view, it is widely perceived to fail in the face of cases of reasonable error—particularly extreme ones like new Evil Demon scenarios (Wedgwood, 2002). One reply has been to say that even in such cases what one knows supports the target rational belief (...) (Lord, 201x, this volume). I spell out two versions of the strategy. The direct one uses what one knows as the input to principles of rationality such as conditionalization, dominance avoidance, etc. I argue that it fails in hybrid cases that are Good with respect to one belief and Bad with respect to another. The indirect strategy uses what one knows to determine a body of supported propositions that is in turn the input to principles of rationality. I sketch a simple formal implementation of the indirect strategy and show that it avoids the difficulty. I conclude that the indirect strategy offers the most promising way for knowledge-first evidentialists to deal with the New Evil Demon problem. (shrink)

I develop a challenge for a widely suggested knowledge-first account of belief that turns, primarily, on unknowable propositions. I consider and reject several responses to my challenge and sketch a new knowledge-first account of belief that avoids it.

The traditional approach to the analysis of knowledge sees it as a true belief meeting further conditions. I discuss an empirical challenge to this traditional approach, which I call the argument from development. Briefly, the argument is that belief cannot be conceptually prior to knowledge because children acquire the concept of knowledge first. Several prominent scientists and philosophers have argued that this latter claim is supported by many findings with infants and young children. Here, I defend (...) the traditional approach by raising three challenges to the argument from development: the competence-performance challenge, the double-standard challenge, and the underdetermination challenge. I conclude that the developmental data are fully compatible with children acquiring the concept of belief first. In closing, I also argue that further research is needed to investigate when children acquire a concept of knowledge. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to motivate and defend Evidential Knowledge First, a view that combines the best of both knowledge first and evidentialist approaches to epistemology. To do so, I argue that knowledge is not the most general factive mental state. However, non-inferential knowledge is. After developing the core commitments of the view, I investigate what else the Evidential Knowledge Firster should say. A similar view is considered and rejected by Alexander (...) Bird (2025). I conclude by addressing his objections. (shrink)

An infuential twenty-first century philosophical project posits a central role for knowledge: knowledge is more fundamental than epistemic states like belief and justification. So-called “knowledge first” theorists find support for this thought in identifying central theoretical roles for knowledge. I argue that a similar methodology supports a privileged role for more specific category of basic knowledge. Some of the roles that knowledge first theorists have posited for knowledge generally are better (...) suited for basic knowledge. (shrink)

Knowledge-first epistemology places knowledge at the normative core of epistemological affairs: on this approach, central epistemic phenomena are to be analyzed in terms of knowledge. This study offers a defence of an integrated, naturalistic knowledge-first account of justified belief, reasons, evidence and defeat, permissible assertion and action, and the epistemic normativity of practical and theoretical reasoning. On this account, the epistemic is an independent normative domain organized around one central etiological epistemic function: generating (...) class='Hi'>knowledge. In turn, this epistemic function generates epistemic norms of proper functioning that constitute the epistemic domain, and govern moves in our epistemic practice, such as forming beliefs, asserting, and reasoning. (shrink)

This paper aims to outline, and argue for, an approach to episodic memory broadly in the spirit of knowledge-first epistemology. I discuss a group of influential views of epsiodic memory that I characterize as ‘two-factor accounts’, which have both proved popular historically and have also seen a resurgence in recent work on the philosophy of memory. What is common to them is that they try to give an account of the nature of episodic memory in which the concept (...) of knowledge plays no explanatory role. I highlight some parallels between these two-factor accounts and attempts to give a reductive definition of knowledge itself. I then discuss some problems two-factor accounts of episodic memory face in explaining the distinctive sense in which episodic recollection involves remembering personally experienced past events, before sketching an alternative approach to episodic memory, which takes as basic the idea that episodic memory involves the retention of knowledge. I argue that we can give an exhaustive constitutive account of what episodic memory is, and how it differs from other types of mental states, by considering what particular type of knowledge is retained in episodic memory, and what exactly having that knowledge consists in. (shrink)

When a belief is self-fulfilling, having it guarantees its truth. When a belief is self-defeating, having it guarantees its falsity. These are the cases of “self-impacting” beliefs to be examined below. Scenarios of self-defeating beliefs can yield apparently dilemmatic situations in which we seem to lack sufficient reason to have any belief whatsoever. Scenarios of self-fulfilling beliefs can yield apparently dilemmatic situations in which we seem to lack reason to have any one belief over another. Both scenarios have been used (...) independently to challenge Evidentialism, on which what we may rationally believe is all and only what fits our current evidence. Here we tie the two scenarios together and explore what a knowledge-sensitive evidentialist approach to one implies for the other. (shrink)

There is a growing body of evidence that the mentalizing abilities of humans and other primates have a “knowledge-first” character, according to which the ability to appreciate others’ knowledge is more basic than the ability to appreciate others’ beliefs. This paper proposes an overlooked way of understanding the knowledge-first character of mentalizing and develops a particular model along those lines. I motivate the model by comparing it to alternatives and explain how, if the model is (...) correct, then the step some have made, from the evidence for knowledge-first mentalizing to more theoretical claims about the relative basicness of knowledge and belief (or the concepts thereof), is not motivated. (shrink)

This chapter aims to develop a novel virtue epistemological account of knowledge and justified belief, which gives the view a knowledge first spin. It is virtue epistemological in that it offers accounts of knowledge and justified belief in terms of exercises of epistemic abilities. It has a knowledge first twist because, unlike traditional virtue epistemology, it does not unpack the relevant notion of an epistemic ability as an ability to form true beliefs but as (...) an ability to know. In addition, this chapter aims to show that the resulting knowledge first virtue epistemology compares favourably with its traditional cousins as it offers an appealing new solution to the Gettier problem. (shrink)

The paper takes a closer look at the role of knowledge and evidence in legal theory. In particular, the paper examines a puzzle arising from the evidential standard Preponderance of the Evidence and its application in civil procedure. Legal scholars have argued since at least the 1940s that the rule of the Preponderance of the Evidence gives rise to a puzzle concerning the role of statistical evidence in judicial proceedings, sometimes referred to as the Problem of Bare Statistical Evidence. (...) While this puzzle has led to the development of a multitude of accounts and approaches in the legal literature, I argue here that the problem can be resolved fairly straightforwardly within a knowledge-first framework. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to relate two trending topics in contemporary epistemology: the discussion of group knowledge and the discussion of knowledge-first approach. In social epistemology no one has seriously applied and developed Williamson’s theory of knowledge-first approach to the case of group knowledge yet. For example, scholars of group knowledge typically assume that knowledge is analyzed in terms of more basic concepts, such as group belief or acceptance, group justification, (...) and so on. However, if Williamson’s theory of knowledge is correct, these are not good analyzes for understanding group knowledge. For, in such framework, knowledge is not analyzed in terms of belief and justification, and the same should apply to group knowledge. Thus, we propose to analyze which consequences Williamson’s theory has for social epistemology, namely for an understanding of group knowledge. The questions that will guide this article are the following: What is a knowledge-first approach to group knowledge? And what does a knowledge-first approach teach us with regard to one of the most pressing issues of social epistemology, namely the dispute between summativists and non-summativists accounts of groups? We claim that a knowledge-first account of group knowledge can be offered and that it favors non-summativism. (shrink)

Knowledge-first theories of justification are theories of justification that give knowledge priority when it comes to explaining when and why someone has justification for an attitude or an action. The emphasis of this article is on knowledge-first theories of justification for belief. As it turns out, there are a number of ways of giving knowledge priority when theorizing about justification, and what follows is a survey of more than a dozen existing options that have (...) emerged in the early 21st century since the publication of Timothy Williamson’s *Knowledge and Its Limits*. This article traces several of the general theoretical motivations that have been offered for putting knowledge first in the theory of justification. This is followed by an examination of existing knowledge-first theories of justification and their standing objections. These objections are largely, but not exclusively, concerned with the extensional adequacy of knowledge-first theories of justification. There are doubtless more ways to give knowledge priority in the theory of justified belief than are covered here, but the survey is instructive because it highlights potential shortcomings that would-be knowledge-first theorists of justification may wish either to avoid or else to be prepared with a suitable error theory. This entry concludes with a reflection about the extent to which the short history of, arguably, failed attempts to secure an unproblematic knowledge-first account of justified belief has begun to resemble the older Gettier dialectic. (shrink)

I discuss three understandings of the idea of “Knowledge First Epistemology”, i.e. Timothy Williamson’s suggestion that we should take knowledge as a starting point, rather than trying to analyze it. Some have taken this to be a suggestion about the role of the concept of knowledge, but Williamson also seems to be concerned with intuition-based metaphysics. As an alternative, I develop the idea that knowledge may be a social kind that can be understood through a (...) functional analysis in the tradition of Edward Craig. (shrink)

This idea that what is distinctive of intentional performances (or at least of those intentional performances that amount to skilled actions) is one’s practical knowledge in it —i.e., knowledge of what one is doing while doing it— famously traces back to Anscombe ([]1963] 2000). While many philosophers have theorized about Anscombe’s notion of practical knowledge (e.g., Setiya (2008), Thompson et al. (2011), Schwenkler (2019), O’Brien (2007)), there is a wide disagreement about how to understand it. This paper (...) investigates how best to understand practical knowledge for it to play the desired explanatory role in a reductive theory of intentional action, of intention-in-action, and of control-in-action. I argue that practical knowledge ought to be construed as a dynamic knowledge state and that structured practical senses (Pavese 2015) are needed to model it. (shrink)

There is a New Idea in epistemology. It goes by the name of ‘knowledge first,’ and it is particularly associated with Timothy Williamson’s book Knowledge and Its Limits. In slogan form, to put knowledge first is to treat knowledge as basic or fundamental, and to explain other states—belief, justification, maybe even content itself—in terms of knowledge, instead of vice versa. The idea has proven enormously interesting, and equally controversial. But deep foundational questions about (...) its actual content remain relatively unexplored. We think that a wide variety of views travel under the banner of ‘knowledge first’ (and that the slogan doesn’t help much with differentiating them). Furthermore, we think it is far from straightforward to draw connections between certain of these views; they are more independent than they are often assumed to be. Our project here is exploratory and clarificatory. We mean to tease apart various ‘knowledge first’ claims, and explore what connections they do or do not have with one another. Our taxonomy is offered in §2, and connections are explored in §3. The result, we hope, will be a clearer understanding of just what the knowledge first theses are. We conclude, in §4, with some brief suggestions as to how we think the various theses might be evaluated. (shrink)

What should knowledge first theorists say about the value of knowledge? In this paper I approach this issue by arguing for a single ‘modest knowledge first claim’ about the value of knowledge. This is that the special value of knowledge isn’t merely instrumental value relative to true belief. I show that MKF is inconsistent with the version of the Platonic stability theory that Williamson defends in Knowledge and its Limits. I then argue (...) in favour of MKF by arguing that Williamson’s stability theory fails for reasons that plausibly generalise to any theory of the value of knowledge that is inconsistent with MKF. Crucial to this argument is a putative adequacy condition on philosophical theories of the value of knowledge: that, in order to fully explain the special value of knowledge, a theory must identify respects in which knowledge is more valuable than true belief that give enquirers adequate reason for preferring knowledge to true belief. I conclude by suggesting that this adequacy condition is the source of a more general dilemma for proponents of philosophical theories of the value of knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter uses some resources of the knowledge-first approach in epistemology (KFAE), championed by Timothy Williamson and characterized by the idea that epistemology should be done by beginning with the concept of knowledge rather than by beginning with the idea that justification or good evidence or even belief itself is more basic to the subdiscipline, to advance a novel argument in defense of the Ockhamist solution to the perennial problem of the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and creaturely (...) freedom. As an added bonus, it explains how KFAE also provides the Ockhamist with materials to defuse two of John Martin Fischer’s objections against Ockhamism. (shrink)

On a widely suggested knowledge-first account of belief, to believe p is to phi as if one knew p. I challenge this view by arguing against various regimentations of it. I conclude by generalizing my argument to alternative knowledge-first views suggested by Williamson and Wimmer.

“Knowledge-First” constitutes what is widely regarded as the most significant innovation in contemporary epistemology in the past twenty-five years. Knowledge-first epistemology is (in short) the idea that knowledge per se is an epistemic kind with theoretical importance that is not derivative from its relationship to other epistemic kinds such as rationality. Knowledge-first epistemology is rightly associated with Timothy Williamson in light of his influential book, Knowledge and Its Limits (KAIL). In KAIL, Williamson (...) suggests that although knowing might be characterized as a very general kind of factive mental state, meeting the conditions for knowing is not constitutively explained by meeting the conditions for anything else, e.g. justified true belief. Accordingly, knowledge is conceptually and metaphysically prior to other cognitive and epistemic kinds. In this way, the concept know is a theoretical primitive. The status of know as a theoretical primitive makes it particularly suitable for using it to make substantive constitutive and causal explanations of a number of other phenomena, including the nature of belief, the nature of evidence, and the success of intentional actions. One of the principal virtues of the knowledge-first approach in epistemology is the way that it connects epistemology to other areas in philosophy. This virtue explains in part some of the wide-ranging impact the knowledge-first approach has had over the past decade or so, and it is a virtue that this volume shares. Specifically, the volume explores not merely the knowledge-first approach in epistemology, but also its ramifications for a variety of areas in philosophy, including the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the philosophy of action, and value theory. (shrink)

[This papers explores a novel case for the normativity of knowledge for belief – something that is compatible with the knowledge/factual awareness distinction I've explored elsewhere.] There are two different kinds of enkratic principles for belief: evidential enkratic principles and normative enkratic principles. It’s frequently taken for granted that there’s not an important difference between them. But evidential enkratic principles are undermined by considerations that gain no traction at all against their normative counterparts. The idea that such an (...) asymmetry exists between evidential and normative enkratic principles is surprising all on its own. It is also something that calls out for explanation. Similarly, the considerations that undermine evidential enkratic principles also undermine certain narrow-scope evidential principles. This too generates explanatory questions. I show how a knowledge-first view of rationality can easily address these explanatory questions. Thus we have one more reason to put knowledge first in [some areas of] epistemology. (shrink)

Process reliabilism -- Virtue reliabilism: justified belief -- Virtue reliabilism: knowledge -- Knowledge first virtue reliabilism -- The competition -- The safety dilemma -- Lottery cases.

Knowledge‐first philosophy has fewer adherents than it should. It has the potential to address many of the common problems facing epistemologists, but it is counter‐intuitive in some respects. In this paper, I make the case that the underlying metaphysics of Timothy Williamson's account of knowledge‐first is responsible for some of this counter‐intuitiveness. I argue that we ought to understand knowledge not as an irreducible factive mental attitude towards true propositions, but as an irreducible factive relation (...) with the world. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there are elements of Tim Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology that can be found in the work of the fourteenth-century philosopher, Gaṅgeśa. He is the father of the new school of Nyāya. I delineate his view about perception and knowledge by comparing it to his predecessor, Gautama Akṣapāda, the father of Nyāya. On Gaṅgeśa’s knowledge is not composed of parts. And a perceptual event, understood as a veridical awareness, is a transient occurrence (...) of perceptual knowledge. I cash out his view of perception as a special form of disjunctivism that focuses on positive and negative causal factors. I apply it to several cases to show how the theory works. I then go on to discuss Gaṅgeśa’s two-tiered theory of knowledge where there is a distinction between perceptual knowledge and certified knowledge and how it relates to the KK-principle, that when one knows they know that they know. (shrink)

Recent knowledge first epistemology features a number of different accounts of justified belief, including a knowledge first reductionism according to which to believe justifiably is to know Sutton (2005, 2007), Littlejohn (Forthcoming a, b), Williamson (2000, 2010), a knowledge first version of accessibilism Millar (2010) and a knowledge first version of mentalism Bird (2007). This paper offers a knowledge first version of virtue epistemology and argues that it is preferable to (...) its knowledge first epistemological rivals: only knowledge first virtue epistemology manages to steer clear of a number of problems that its competition encounters. (shrink)

This paper examines three reasons to think that Craig's genealogy of the concept of knowledge is incompatible with knowledge-first epistemology and finds that far from being incompatible with it, the genealogy lends succour to it. This reconciliation turns on two ideas. First, the genealogy is not history, but a dynamic model of needs. Secondly, by recognizing the continuity of Craig's genealogy with Williams's genealogy of truthfulness, we can see that while both genealogies start out from specific (...) needs explaining what drives the development of certain concepts rather than others, they then factor in less specific needs which in reality do not come later at all, and which have also left their mark on these concepts. These genealogies thereby reveal widespread functional dynamics driving what I call the de-instrumentalization of concepts, the recognition of which adds to the plausibility of such instrumentalist approaches to concepts. (shrink)

Summativism about group evidence holds that the evidence of a group is a function of the evidence of its members. In this paper, I put forward a novel knowledge-first summative view of group evidence formulated in terms of the notion of being in a position to know rather than knowledge. In developing this view, I address several crucial questions for any adequate account of group evidence: whether group evidence is factive, whether a group must be able to (...) act on E for it to count as evidence, whether the logical consequences of the group members’ evidence should be included in the group’s evidence, and, more importantly, the nature of the epistemic relationship that must exist between E and a group for E to be part of its evidence. In addressing these questions, I respond to recent criticism by Jessica Brown (Noûs 56:494–510, 2022; Philos Stud 180:3161–3178, 2023; Groups as epistemic and moral agents, Oxford University Press, 2024) against summative views. (shrink)

The knowledge-first solution to the New Evil Demon Problem (NEDP) goes hand in hand with a particular conception of the normativity of justification, one according to which a justified belief is one that satisfies some sort of ought or should (Williamson forthcoming). This claim is incompatible with another, well accepted, view that regards the normativity of justification. According to this established view, a justified belief is rather something that is neither obligatory, nor forbidden (see e.g. Alston 1989, 1993, (...) 2006; Ginet 1975). The purpose of this contribution is to settle the debate between these two irreconcilable conceptions of the normativity of justification. The main upshot is that the knowledge-first conception of the normativity of justification, the one on which the knowledge-first solution to the NEDP relies, seems in fact superior. (shrink)

In Delusions and Beliefs (2019), Kengo Miyazono proposes an extended and convincing argument for the thesis that delusions are malfunctional beliefs. One of the key assumptions for this argument is that belief is a biological notion, and that the function of beliefs is a product of evolution. I challenge the thesis that evolutionary accounts can furnish an epistemologically satisfying account of beliefs because evolutionary success does not necessarily track epistemic success. Consequently, also delusions as beliefs cannot be explained in a (...) satisfactory manner by looking at beliefs’ evolutionary function. How can we then salvage the notion of delusions as epistemologically relevant malfunctioning beliefs? I propose that knowledge-first epistemology gives us a way out. Knowledge-first accounts argue that knowledge is more primitive than belief. That is, knowledge is not a kind of successful beliefs (true, justified, etc.); instead, beliefs are failed attempts at knowledge. Being a belief derives from the norms of knowledge. Explaining the epistemology of beliefs through the primitive norms of knowledge, we can also explain why delusions are malfunctional beliefs: The cognitive and psychological defects that produce delusions block the beliefs from becoming knowledge. Consequently, delusions are attempts at knowledge that have failed particularly badly. (shrink)

I provide a novel knowledge-first account of justification that avoids the pitfalls of existing accounts while preserving the underlying insight of knowledge-first epistemologies: that knowledge comes first. The view I propose is, roughly, this: justification is grounded in our practical knowledge (know-how) concerning the acquisition of propositional knowledge (knowledge-that). I first refine my thesis in response to immediate objections. In subsequent sections I explain the various ways in which this thesis (...) is theoretically superior to existing knowledge-first accounts of justification. The upshot is a virtue-theoretic, knowledge-first view of justification that is internalist-friendly and able to explain more facts about justification than any other available view. (shrink)

How do common belief and common knowledge compare in explaining coordinated action? The prevailing view is that whether common belief rises to the level of genuine common knowledge is not especially important to the overall power of the state to explain coordination, or the achievement of coordination equilibrium, in a group. Against this, I argue that notions differ significantly in explanatory power. Coordination requires a kind of mutual sensitivity, and common knowledge can ground the non-accidental character of (...) this sensitivity in a way that mere common belief—even common belief that is true and justified at every iterative level—cannot. (shrink)

This chapter examines the prospects of a knowledge-first account of the ethics of belief. Knowledge-first accounts claim that the concept of knowledge plays a central role in determining what we should believe from an epistemic perspective. This chapter finds problems for numerous formulations of a knowledge-first ethics of belief including identity theories, counterfactual theories, knowledge minus belief theories, and duplication theories. Each of these accounts either faces clear counterexamples or leaves important details (...) to be filled in at a later date, indicating that the move to a knowledge-first account will not settle the difficulties in formulating a specific and counterexample-free account of the ethics of belief. (shrink)

This paper is a response to “Inferential Evidence” by Jeffrey Dunn, in which he argues that my account of evidence is internally inconsistent, and that any form of Bayesian epistemology excludes evidence gained by inductive inference (which my account allows). In response, I show how the alleged inconsistency dissolves once the process of gaining evidence by inductive inference is fully articulated into the relevant stages, with due attention to the potential role of recognitional capacities.

There are two central kinds of epistemological mistakes: believing things you shouldn’t, and failing to believe things that you should. The knowledge-first program offers a canonical explanation for the former: if you believe something without knowing it, you violate the norm to believe only that which you know. But the explanation does not extend in any plausible way to a story about what’s wrong with suspending judgment when one ought to believe. In this paper I explore prospects for (...) a knowledge-centering account of positive epistemic norms that describe epistemic duties to believe. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes two ways to ?put knowledge first?. One way affirms a knowledge norm. For example, Williamson [2000] argues that one must only assert that which one knows. Hawthorne and Stanley [2008] argue that one must only treat as a reason for action that which one knows. Another way to put knowledge first affirms a determination thesis. For example, Williamson [2000] argues that what one knows determines what one is justified in believing. Hawthorne and (...) Stanley [2008] argue that what one knows determines what it is rational for one to do. This paper argues that the defender of the knowledge norms can and should reject the determination theses. For example, the rationality of acting on a partial belief cannot be explained in terms of the subject's knowledge. That's no problem for the knowledge norm, which only governs acting on full belief. (Analogously, the knowledge norm of flat-out assertion does not govern hedged assertion.) One might worry that rejecting the determination theses undermines the importance of knowing. I reply that the knowledge norms set the standard for epistemic success. The importance of success is not undermined by loosening its ties to justification and rationality. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to develop a view that I call “Evidential Knowledge First”. To do so, first, I consider a traditional way of developing evidentialism, which I call Traditional Evidentialism, and argue that, while it vindicates the roles we expect evidence to play, it struggles accounting for cases of non-inferential justification and non-inferential knowledge (§2-3). I then consider a view we might call “Technically Evidentialism”, which we get when we jointly take two (...) core claims of knowledge-first epistemology, e.g., E=K and J=K. These claims jointly entail the evidentialist idea that justification supervenes on evidence, while avoiding the problem faced by Traditional Evidentialism. However, and contra Traditional Evidentialism, the resulting view doesn’t account for the roles evidence plays in justifying our beliefs (§4). This brings us to Evidential Knowledge-First, which develops traditional evidentialism against the background of knowledge-first epistemology in a way that retains the best features of both views (§5). Evidential Knowledge-First provides us with a novel two-tiered account of knowledge. As we will see, a core feature of my view is that it entails that cases of non-inferential knowledge are cases of knowledge without justification. I argue that this is a benefit of the view (§6). (shrink)

This chapter investigates connections between Knowledge-First epistemology and a meta-epistemological thesis defended elsewhere by the authors (and in opposition to robust forms of virtue epistemology) under the description of _epistemic anti-individualism._ Epistemic anti-individualism is a denial of the epistemic individualist’s claim that warrant—i.e. what converts true belief into knowledge—supervenes on internal physical properties of individuals, perhaps in conjunction with local environmental properties. The chapter has two central aims. First, it argues that ‘epistemic twin earth’ thought experiments (...) which reveal robust virtue epistemology (RVE) are problematically committed to epistemic individualism also show that _evidentialist mentalism_ is likewise committed to individualism. Second, it argues that, even though a _knowledge-first_ approach in epistemology is in principle (unlike RVE and evidentialist mentalism) consistent with epistemic _anti_-individualism, this approach fails to offer a plausible account of epistemic supervenience. The chapter suggests this point is a reason to pursue epistemic anti-individualism outside the knowledge-first framework. (shrink)

In this chapter, Michael Blome-Tillmann argues that embracing a knowledge-first approach can help to resolve important epistemological problems in legal philosophy. Blome-Tillmann takes, as a starting point, a puzzle arising from the evidential standard Preponderance of the Evidence and its application in civil procedure. The evidential standard captured by Preponderance of the Evidence is usually glossed as ‘greater than 0.5 given the admissible evidence’. But this characterization generates puzzles, where our intuitions about whether a defendant should be found (...) liable diverge in case pairs where the evidential probability captured this way is the same. Blome-Tillmann argues that the tension generated by such puzzles can be resolved fairly straightforwardly within a knowledge-first framework. (shrink)

According to knowledge-first epistemology, knowledge is irreducible to true belief plus something else, and yet knowledge entails belief. Moreover, knowledge plays an ineliminable role in causal explanation of action. This paper develops and defends an entirely new line of reasoning against this view: in conjunction with two independently plausible principles about explanatory realism and causal exclusion, this view leads to the conclusion that beliefs are epiphenomenal in cases of knowledge, which is when and only (...) when action is deemed epistemically rational. Even worse, if a causal criterion of ontological commitment is accepted, it follows that postulating the existence of beliefs in cases of knowledge is redundant. Several specific objections are raised, followed by replies. While the paper does not pretend to exhaust all lines of resistance, the upshot is that the burden is now squarely on friends of knowledge-first epistemology to pursue one or more of these further. (shrink)

[Significantly updated in Chapter 6 of Awareness and the Substructure of Knowledge] In order for a reason to justify an action or attitude it must be one that is possessed by an agent. Knowledge-centric views of possession ground our possession of reasons, at least partially, either in our knowledge of them or in our being in a position to know them. On virtually all accounts, knowing P is some kind of non-accidental true belief that P. This entails (...) that knowing P is a kind of non-accidental true representation that P. I outline a novel theory of the epistemic requirement on possession in terms of this more general state of non-accidental true representation. It is just as well placed to explain the motivations behind knowledge-centric views of possession, and it is also better placed to explain the extent of the reasons we possess in certain cases of deductive belief-updates and cases involving environmental luck. I conclude with three reflections. First, I indicate how my arguments generate a dilemma for Errol Lord’s view that possessing reasons is just a matter of being in a position to manifest one’s knowledge how to use them. Second, I explain how my view can simultaneously manage cases of environmental luck without falling prey to lottery cases. Finally, I sketch the direction for a further range of counterexamples to knowledge-centric theories of possession. (shrink)

This paper is a response to ‘Elements of Knowledge-First Epistemology in Gaṅgeśa’ by Anand Vaidya, in which he makes a welcome comparison between the epistemology of the fourteenth-century Nyāya philosopher Gaṅgeśa and the knowledge-first approach developed in _Knowledge and its Limits_. One significant similarity is that we both treat seeing that _p_ as a way of knowing that _p_, and the similarities may go much deeper than that. Both Gaṅgeśa’s work and mine may be disjunctivist in (...) a loose but not in a strict sense. It is suggested that knowledge-first epistemology may in general tend to make for more fruitful comparisons with non-Western traditions in epistemology than belief-first epistemology because knowledge-first epistemology is closer to underlying human forms of mindreading. The paper also makes some remarks on the relation between philosophy, its history, and its traditions. (shrink)

During the last 20 years, knowledge-centered approaches have become increasingly popular in analytic epistemology. Rather than trying to account for knowledge in other terms, these approaches take knowledge as the starting point for the elucidation of other epistemic notions (such as belief, justification, rationality, etc.). Knowledge-centered approaches have been so influential that it now looks like epistemology is undergoing a factive turn. However, relatively little has been done to explore how knowledge-centered views fare in new (...) fields inside and beyond epistemology strictly understood. This volume aims at remedying this situation by putting together contributions that investigate the significance of knowledge in debates where its roles have been less explored. The goal is to see how far knowledge-centered views can go by exploring new prospects and identifying new trends of research for the knowledge-first program. Extending knowledge-centered approaches in this way not only promises to deliver novel insights in these neglected fields, but also to revisit more traditional debates from a fresh perspective. As a whole, the volume develops and evaluates the knowledge-first program in original and fertile ways. (shrink)