Date of Award

2-4-2015

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Philosophy

Advisor(s)

Mark Heller

Keywords

Contrastivism;Knowledge;Question-sensitivity;Skepticism

Subject Categories

Arts and Humanities | Epistemology | Philosophy

Abstract

Abstract: A recent and innovative research program in epistemology aims to connect the related phenomena of questions and inquiry with epistemological concerns. This dissertation project contributes to that program, taking as its inspiration the contrastive theory of knowledge developed by Jonathan Schaffer in a series of recent papers. The dissertation is comprised of three main parts. I begin by articulating a positive account of the evaluation of knowledge attributions, an account that aims to respect the basic insights of Schaffer's contrastivism while situating them in a modal framework that makes manifest the utility of questions for epistemological theorizing. Then I offer and discuss a counterexample that shows that any theory that fits the general structure that our respective accounts share cannot adequately account for certain contexts of knowledge attribution. I close by applying certain basic claims about the nature of inquiry to the problem of skepticism. I attempt to show that inquiry so understood is incompatible with a very strong version of skepticism, namely global skepticism about justification, with the result that non-skeptics can permissibly disregard it even if it is true.

Access

Open Access

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Epistemology Commons

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