In the last fifteen years, some authors have proposed one peculiar way in which deductive closure principles could fail: long chains of single-premise deductions may aggregate epistemic risk. This makes it possible for an agent to know (or justifiably belief) the non-risky premise p of a deduction but, at the same time, lack knowledge of (or justification for) its risky conclusion q. However, this deductive risk notion clashes with the popular, fundamental bayesian principle called No-Drop, which states that where p entails q, it is irrational to be more certain of p than of q. Our aim for this work is to set this worry aside by converging the notion of deductive risk with gnosticism — more specifically, with the claim that justification for p is equal to the probability of knowing p. Once the right assumptions are made, we’ll principle the claim that justification drops through a deduction, and address some possible objections.
Activities > Graduate Research Seminar (GRSem) > From No-Drop to Drop: Strengthening the Case for Deductive Risk
