Modal Epistemology

by

Kelly Becker, Bin Zhao

• LAST REVIEWED: 23 June 2023
• LAST MODIFIED: 23 June 2023
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0139

Introduction

Modal epistemologies aim to explicate the necessary link between belief and truth that constitutes knowledge. This strain of epistemological theorizing is typically externalist; hence, it does not require that the agent know or understand the nature of the knowledge-constituting link. A central concern of modal epistemology is to articulate conditions on knowing such that no merely lucky true belief counts as knowledge. In the effort to eliminate luck, epistemic principles are often cast modally, requiring that an agent’s belief is true not only in the actual world but also in relevant possible worlds, indicating that the link between truth and belief is more than an actual world lucky coincidence. (Note, then, that this entry is not about the epistemology of modals—statements involving modal operators such as “necessarily,” “possibly,” and the like—but about the use of modal principles in characterizing the nature of knowledge in general. For purposes of disambiguation and in deference to the other topic, perhaps “modalized epistemologies” would be a better term, though it is not typically used here.) Modal epistemologies typically have antiskeptical consequences, but the strengths of the antiskeptical results vary significantly, especially between the two best-known modal principles, sensitivity and safety.

General Overviews

Because modal epistemologies are relative newcomers in the theory of knowledge, and because they occupy a niche in the epistemological landscape, there are few general overviews on the topic. Pritchard 2005 offers a general taxonomy of various strains of knowledge-precluding luck and defends a safety-based theory. Safety says that S knows that p only if, in nearby worlds where S believes that p, p is true. Rabinowitz 2011 presents a detailed overview of the safety condition, including some historical background and its development and defense by well-known theorists. Becker 2007 investigates various modal theories—modalized process reliabilism, sensitivity, and safety—and argues for a combination of the first two. Modalized process reliabilism says that S knows that p only if S’s belief that p is formed from a general belief-forming process that produces mostly true beliefs in the actual world and, typically, in nearby worlds. Sensitivity: S knows that p only if, were p false, S would not believe that p. Becker 2018 presents an overview of the sensitivity theorists’ responses to the Gettier problem. Pritchard 2008 provides a succinct appraisal and comparison of sensitivity and safety. As textbooks are typically geared to more general themes, there are none available that are concerned specifically with modal theories. However, most epistemology anthologies designed for upper-level undergraduate courses contain many of the seminal papers or book excerpts on modal epistemology, including, with few exceptions, selections from Nozick’s original presentation of sensitivity (Nozick 1981, cited under Sensitivity). One excellent such anthology is Sosa, et al. 2008. Finally, there are two volumes on modalized epistemology, each focused primarily on Nozick’s sensitivity-based (“tracking”) theory. Luper-Foy 1987 begins with an extensive excerpt from Nozick 1981, cited under Sensitivity) and follows with twelve critical essays. This book has provided a point of departure for many subsequent investigations of Nozick’s tracking epistemology. Finally, Becker and Black 2012 contains a wide selection of essays on sensitivity, taking up issues concerning the relationships between sensitivity, on the one hand, and closure, reasons-based accounts of knowledge, safety, the value problem, and dispositional accounts of knowledge, on the other. The volume also investigates problems with and counterexamples to sensitivity.

• Becker, Kelly. Epistemology Modalized. New York: Routledge, 2007.

  Offers a critical analysis of modalized process reliabilism, sensitivity, and safety, and defends a theory that incorporates the first two. Sensitivity is defended on the grounds that knowledge requires the capacity to discriminate what is true in the actual world from what would be the case in the closest worlds where the target proposition is false.

• Becker, Kelly. “The Sensitivity Response to the Gettier Problem.” In The Gettier Problem. Edited by Stephen Hetherington, 108–124. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

  Discusses the sensitivity theorists’ responses to the Gettier problem.

• Becker, Kelly, and Tim Black. The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

  DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511783630

  Presents essays investigating sensitivity written by leading figures. Papers discuss closure, safety, reasons-based accounts of knowledge, probabilistic approaches to sensitivity, the value problem, Nozick’s appeal to methods in his sensitivity principle, and sensitivity construed dispositionally.

• Luper-Foy, Steven, ed. The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and His Critics. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987.

  Presents a well-rounded critical investigation of Nozick’s epistemology in general, with a focus on sensitivity. Critical issues discussed are the extent of Nozick’s antiskepticism, Nozick’s commitment to violation of the principle that knowledge is closed under competent deduction (see Closure), and the possible incompatibility of sensitivity with inductive knowledge (see Specific Criticism and Problems).

• Pritchard, D. H. Epistemic Luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

  DOI: 10.1093/019928038X.001.0001

  Presents a valuable taxonomy of luck, some types of which preclude knowledge, in response to which a modalized account of knowledge may be desirable. With that taxonomy in hand, Pritchard then defends a neo-Moorean response to skepticism involving safety as a necessary anti-luck condition for knowing.

• Pritchard, D. H. “Sensitivity, Safety, and Anti-luck Epistemology.” In Oxford Handbook of Skepticism. Edited by John Greco, 437–455. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

  Presents an especially clear and concise discussion of the relative merits and disadvantages of sensitivity and safety. The general anti-luck insight is that a knowledgeable belief is one that could not easily have been false. On the safety view, one can know that radical skeptical hypotheses are false because they are true only in far-off possible worlds, and so those beliefs could not easily have been false.

• Rabinowitz, Dani. “The Safety Condition for Knowledge.” In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University, 2011.

  Presents an overview of the safety condition for knowledge. The article discusses the historical background leading up to safety and the principle’s development by its main adherents. It then turns to how safety deals with central epistemological problems and concludes with well-known problems facing the safety principle.

• Sosa, Ernest, Jaegwon Kim, Jeremy Fantl, and Matthew McGrath, eds. Epistemology: An Anthology. 2d ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008.

  This is one of the more comprehensive anthologies in epistemology, with sixty selections. It includes work from both safety advocates (Pritchard, Sosa, and Williamson) and sensitivity theorists (Dretske and Nozick), and from Goldman, a seminal figure in reliabilism, in addition to coverage of all central topics in epistemology.