Comments on Juan Comesana: Knowledge and Subjunctive Conditionals

Juan Comesana considers some recent proposals regarding the relation between knowledge and subjunctive conditionals, including those by Dretske and Nozick recommending a " sensitivity " condition on knowledge, and by Sosa recommending a " safety " condition. Comesana raises problems for each of the positions he considers, and at the end of the paper he expresses pessimism about the prospects for alternative proposals along similar lines. I agree with Comesana that the problems he raises for the positions he considers are weighty. Perhaps none of the proposals that get treatment in his paper can withstand the objections he raises against them. On the other hand, the more general claim that Comesana is critiquing is really very weak. That claim is that " there is a constitutive connection between knowledge and the truth of some subjunctive conditional. " Alternatively, " for a subject to know a certain proposition, some subjunctive conditional related to that subject and that proposition has to be true. " Consider: it is more than plausible that knowledge puts the knower in some modal relation to the truth. In cases of knowledge, we think, it is no accident or mere coincidence that S believes the truth. But then shouldn't that alone be sufficient to support some relevant counterfactual? If so, we should be anything but pessimistic about the more general claim at issue. Here is a further thought along the same lines. It is plausible to think that knowledge is grounded in ability: when someone knows something, that person forms her believes through some cognitive or intellectual ability, such as accurate perception or good