Abstract

THE PRESENT paper grows out of a previous paper of mine called "Fallibilism and Necessity." That paper was primarily concerned with an issue raised by Peirce’s philosophy of mathematics: whether it is possible to hold that our mathematical beliefs are fallible, while at the same time maintaining that mathematical truths are necessary. My conclusion was that fallibilism and necessity are, in fact, perfectly compatible, once one has correctly formulated what fallibilism is: the point became clear as soon as I realized that fallibilism is a thesis about our liability to error, and not a thesis about the modal status of what we believe. This conclusion prompted the train of thought that resulted in the present paper: If fallibilism has to be conceived as a thesis primarily about cognitive agents and their liability to error, a fallibilist epistemology must allow a suitably central place to the knowing subject. Now Popper, of course, is a fallibilist; and yet he criticizes "traditional epistemology" for its preoccupation with the individual who knows or believes, and urges, instead, the claims of an "epistemology without a knowing subject." So I thought it would be worthwhile to try to work out a somewhat more developed account of the role of the knowing subject in a fallibilist epistemology, and to go about this, in the first instance, by comparing and contrasting what I believe to be the most fruitful approach with that favored by Popper.