The purpose of this paper is to question some commonly accepted patterns of reasoning involving nonmonotonic logics that generate multiple extensions. In particular, I argue that the phenomenon of floating conclusions indicates a problem with the view that the skeptical consequences of such theories should be identified with the statements that are supported by each of their various extensions....

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Sartre (1956) describes ways in which one may present oneself to others as being a certain sort of person. In one of his examples, a waiter presents himself as a waiter by as it were acting the part of a waiter. More generally, Sartre argues that, wanting to be, or at least to appear to others to be, a person of a certain sort or character, one often acts the part of a person of that sort of ch...

Closure is the epistemological thesis that if S knows that P and knows that P implies Q, then if S infers that Q, S knows that Q. Fred Dretske acknowledges that closure is plausible but contends that it should be rejected because it conflicts with the plausible thesis: Conclusive reasons (CR): S knows that P only if S believes P on the basis of conclusive reasons, i.e., reasons S wouldn’t have ...

In this paper, I try to make sense of the idea that true knowledge attributions characterize something that is more valuable than true belief and that survives even if, as Contextualism implies, contextual changes make it no longer identifiable by a knowledge attribution. I begin by sketching a familiar, pragmatic picture of assertion that helps us to understand and predict how the words “S kno...

Has Tom spoken truly? Surely, Jones’s epistemic position seems good enough for satisfying the predicate ‘knows that the animals in the pen are zebras’ (henceforth ‘knows Z’): Jones has visual experiences of a black and white striped horse-like animal, she can discriminate reliably between zebras and antelopes, she has read the sign on the pen that reads ‘Zebra Pen’, etc. Thus, Tom’s utterance o...

The purpose of this paper is to question some commonly accepted patterns of reasoning involving nonmonotonic logics that generate multiple extensions. In particular, I argue that the phenomenon of oating conclusions indicates a problem with the view that the skeptical consequences of such theories should be identi ed with the statements that are supported by each of their various extensions.