Jaakko Hirvelä: "The Epistemic Continuum: Knowledge, Justification, and Certainty"

Jaakko Hirvelä, University of Helsinki: "The Epistemic Continuum: Knowledge, Justification, and Certainty"

Abstract
Knowledge, justification, and certainty are some of the most central epistemic goods. While a lot has been said about each one of them individually, unified theories, which spell out the interconnections between these goods, and give a coherent account of them, are largely missing from the literature. In this talk I aim to remedy this shortcoming. I will provide a unified theory of knowledge, justification, and certainty in terms of the notion of risk. Roughly; one’s true belief amounts to knowledge just in case the risk of erring is low enough. One’s belief is justified just in case the risk of not knowing is low enough. One is epistemically certain just in case given the way in which one believes there is no risk of not knowing. I lay out some of the structural consequences of the view. In particular, I show that certainty, unlike knowledge, validates a positive introspection principle, and that degrees of certainty map into degrees of justification. I conclude by suggesting that the distinction between knowledge and certainty is integral for Descartes in the meditations, and that he can use it to escape the Cartesian circle.