A Bitter Pill for Closure

Synthese 196:3773-3787 (2019)
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Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is to introduce a new epistemic paradox that puts pressure on the claim that justification is closed under multi premise deduction. The first part of the paper will consider two well-known paradoxes—the lottery and the preface paradox—and outline two popular strategies for solving the paradoxes without denying closure. The second part will introduce a new, structurally related, paradox that is immune to these closure-preserving solutions. I will call this paradox, The Paradox of the Pill. Seeing that the prominent closure-preserving solutions do not apply to the new paradox, I will argue that it presents a much stronger case against the claim that justification is closed under deduction than its two predecessors. Besides presenting a more robust counterexample to closure, the new paradox also reveals that the strategies that were previously thought to get closure out of trouble are not sufficiently general to achieve this task as they fail to apply to similar closure-threatening paradoxes in the same vicinity.

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Marvin Backes
University of Cologne

Citations of this work

The Hardest Paradox for Closure.Martin Smith - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87 (4):2003-2028.
Justification and the knowledge-connection.Jaakko Hirvelä - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (6):1973-1995.
In defense of flip-flopping.Andrew M. Bailey & Amy Seymour - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):13907-13924.

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References found in this work

Between Probability and Certainty: What Justifies Belief.Martin Smith - 2016 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Belief, credence, and norms.Lara Buchak - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 169 (2):1-27.
The Stability of Belief: How Rational Belief Coheres with Probability.Hannes Leitgeb - 2017 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Decision theory as philosophy.Mark Kaplan - 1983 - Philosophy of Science 50 (4):549-577.

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