A Positive Evidentialist Account of Epistemic Possibility

In spite of an evolving contemporary debate over the concept of “epistemic possibility,” nearly every philosopher assumes that the concept is equivalent to a mere absence of epistemic impossibility, that a proposition is epistemically possible as long as it is not inconsistent with some relevant body of knowledge. I suggest that we challenge this deeply entrenched assumption. I assemble an array of data that singles out the distinctive meaning and function of the attitude of taking propositions as epistemically possible, and suggest that this data is best explained by a positive evidentialist conception of epistemic possibility. On this conception, a proposition is epistemically possible to a subject only if the subject has cognitive access to evidence that specifically supports that proposition. I suggest that this view not only offers a superior explanation of the data, but also offers a unique and straightforward strategy for undermining skeptical arguments.