Knowledge, Stakes, and Mistakes

To illustrate, Folk stakes sensitivity says that all else equal, people are less likely to say that Sarah knows that her health insurance is current, if she is about to get hit by a bus and incur huge medical bills. Folk stakes sensitivity holds intrinsic interest to anyone interested in the psychological basis of knowledge ascription. It holds further interest to epistemologists by featuring as the lead premise in an abductive argument to the radical conclusion— defended by Fantl & McGrath (2002), Hawthorne (2004), and Stanley (2005)—that knowledge itself is sensitive to stakes. It holds a different sort of interest to experimental philosophers as an empirical claim made from the armchair. We offer an opinionated discussion of the “state of the art” on Folk stakes sensitivity. We draw on a first wave of empirical studies—due to Feltz & Zarpentine (2010), May et al. (2010), and Buckwalter (2010)—which cast doubt on the claim, and a second wave of empirical studies—due to Pinillos (2012) and Sripada & Stanley (2012)—said to vindicate it, as well as new studies of our own. We think that the balance of evidence to date best fits a very different view, namely that of: