Infallibilism and Evidential Support

• Main Author: Brown, Jessica
• Format: Book
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2018
• Subjects: Arctic; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198801771.003.0003

This chapter examines and criticizes the infallibilist’s commitment to the Sufficiency of Knowledge for Self-Support : if one knows that p then p is part of one’s evidence for p. This claim about evidential support faces the important challenge of explaining why it is generally infelicitous to cite a known proposition as evidence for itself. For instance, even if one knows, say, that Arctic sea ice is retreating, it’s infelicitous to reply to a request for evidence that Arctic sea ice is retreating by simply saying, ‘Arctic sea ice is retreating’. Intuitively, this reply constitutes a refusal to provide evidence that Arctic sea ice is retreating. The infallibilist might attempt to appeal to pragmatics or an error theory to explain away the infelicity. But I argue that these strategies fail.