Knowledge Comes in Degrees

Jacopo Pallagrosi

University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia

The default view about the nature of propositional knowledge is absolutism, i.e., the idea that knowledge is absolute, an all-or-nothing matter that cannot come in degrees. Absolutism is compatible with what I call extrinsic epistemic gradability, i.e., ordinal comparability between finite sets of distinct known facts. In this paper, I will argue against absolutism and in favor of what I will call intrinsic epistemic gradualism about propositional knowledge. According to this view, knowledge in itself comes in degrees and can thus be better or worse. I will argue for this by showing that, on the traditional analysis of knowledge in terms of justified true belief, justification is a constitutive, necessary epistemic component of knowledge. Justification is an intrinsically gradable epistemic constituent in that the subject may be better justified in believing that p. The intrinsic epistemic gradability of justification can be quantitative, i.e., grounded in the amount of evidence available to the subject (the more evidence for p is available to subject S, the more justification S has for believing that p), or qualitative, i.e., the kinds of evidence (e.g., perceptual, testimonial, memorial, etc.) on which the subject can base a given belief have different degrees of justificatory power. The evidence on which a subject bases their belief has a degree of justificatory power, and this degree can be increased either by accumulating other evidence of the same kind or by gaining evidence of another kind with a qualitatively, intrinsically greater degree of justificatory power. Propositional knowledge is then constituted by an intrinsically gradable epistemic component. Hence, we can conclude that propositional knowledge is, at least derivatively, intrinsically gradable, in that one of the elements that constitutes it is intrinsically gradual. I will conclude the paper by considering some objections to my argument.

Chair: Freya von Kirchbach

Time: September 11th, 13:30 – 14:00

Location: SR 1.003 (online)