Hanwen Hu
Tufts University
My discussion will address the lottery paradox as Hawthorne presented it, and with an alternative solution that do more justice to our actual epistemic processes. My solution will be contextualist in nature, but it differs from those offered by Cohen and DeRose in the sense that I deny epistemic closure.
The lottery paradox argues that skepticism creeps in as we consider whether our lottery ticket is a losing one. Even if the odds are extremely high, it seems that we don’t know that the ticket would lose without the final result (otherwise, I presume, people won’t be buying it in the first place). But following a similar epistemic standard, we would lose most of our knowledge. How do we retain our knowledge in face of highly-unlikely events such as the winning lottery ticket?
In response to that question, I propose to defend ordinary knowledge with epistemic fallibilism. Skepticism does not seems to be a viable position, as we do know a lot. Yet epistemic blunders are inevitable. In order to have substantive knowledge, or even any knowledge at all, “know” has to be fallible. In other words, epistemic agents should be able to know things despite having made mistakes in their processes of knowing.
Cohen holds a similar stance where he allows changing standards for relevant alternatives in epistemic closure, thereby permitting varying epistemic standards in ordinary and skeptical (lottery) contexts. However, I think Cohen misidentifies the problem. He presupposes epistemic closure, and solves the paradox based on that presupposition, I want to argue, however, that whether epistemic closure holds depends on our actual cognitive processes in the context. Due to the limitations on our cognitive capacity, oftentimes we do not draw the inference that results in ordinary knowledge loss. And we thereby preserve knowledge despite the presence of lottery-styled skeptical cases. I think, compared to contextualists like Cohen, that my view has the strength of being closer to our actual epistemic practice. Additionally, it provides a constraint on our scope of knowledge that is objective, and coheres better with the requirement that knowledge is factive.
Chair: Sebastián Sánchez Martínez
Time: September 6th, 14:40-15:10
Location: SR 1.004
SOPhiA 2026 