Are modal conditions necessary for knowledge?

• Main Author: Dacela, Mark Anthony L.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2013
• Subjects: Knowledge; Theory of
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/367
• Institution: De La Salle University

In this work, the author argues for the claim that modal conditions, particularly sensitivity and safety, are not necessary for knowledge. He does this by first investigating problem cases for both modal conditions, noting that they point to an internal glitch that even a revised similarity ranking or ordering of worlds, which others proposed, cannot fix. He then demonstrates, by way of a set theoretical profiling of the problem cases and a set theoretical analysis of the modal semantics at work in both sensitivity and safety, that these modal conditions fail whenever necessary links that are constitutive of epistemic circumstances actually obtain but are not modally preserved And since there are instances when knowledge only requires this, he concludes that modal conditions are not necessary for knowledge.