Abstract: According to the safety account, knowledge is incompatible with falsely believing in relevantly close worlds. One of the main motivations for this account is that it preserves knowledge in the face of skeptical possibilities. In this talk, however, I argue that skeptical possibilities undermine the safety account, regardless of one’s preferred individuation of methods. On a positive note, I formulate a normic account of knowledge, Dispositional Normicism, where methods are understood as dispositions to believe. I present a new argument, based on a proper functionalist understanding of normality, for the claim that skeptical possibilities are less normal than actuality. For Dispositional Normicism, then, skeptical possibilities are irrelevant worlds because they are less normal than actuality, which is an anti-skeptical strategy unavailable to the safety theorist.
Activities > Seminar > Are Skeptical Possibilities Less Normal Than Actuality?
