The Kantian Account of Knowledge

Abstract

Chapter 11 elaborates on and defends the account of knowledge—the Kantian Account—that follows from a right reasons account of the nature of well properties. Knowledge, it is argued, is a special case of a well property—one which requires believing well along both objective and subjective dimensions. This, it is argued, makes knowledge involve a kind of match between internal and external components that explains why it is prime and why it has distinctive explanatory power, as argued by Williamson. It explains why defeaters for knowledge come in objective and subjective pairs—even according to pragmatic encroachers. It explains where earlier generations of defeasibility accounts of knowledge went wrong, by adopting subjunctive rather than categorical accounts of the sufficiency of reasons, and by insufficiently appreciating the generality of the relationship between reasons and their weight. And it explains how to avoid Linda Zagzebski’s diagnosis of the inevitability of Gettier cases.