EPISTEMIC INTUITIONS IN FAKE-BARN THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS. (31st March 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Colaço, David; Buckwalter, Wesley; Stich, Stephen; Machery, Edouard
• Is Part Of: Episteme. Volume 11:Number 2(2014)
• Page Start: 199
• Page End: 212
• Publication Date: 2014-03-31
• Subjects: Social epistemology -- Periodicals; 121
• DOI: 10.1017/epi.2014.7
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1742-3600

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="normal"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>In epistemology, fake-barn thought experiments are often taken to be intuitively clear cases in which a justified true belief does not qualify as knowledge. We report a study designed to determine whether members of the general public share this intuition. The data suggest that while participants are less inclined to attribute knowledge in fake-barn cases than in unproblematic cases of knowledge, they nonetheless do attribute knowledge to protagonists in fake-barn cases. Moreover, the intuition that fake-barn cases do count as knowledge is negatively correlated with age; older participants are less likely than younger participants to attribute knowledge in fake-barn cases. We also found that increasing the number of defeaters (fakes) does not decrease the inclination to attribute knowledge.</p> </abstract>