Inference and Scepticism*
Inference and Scepticism*
The chapter focuses on a family of inferences that are intuitively incapable of producing knowledge of their conclusions, although they appear to satisfy sufficient conditions for inferential knowledge postulated by plausible epistemological theories. They include Moorean inferences and inductive bootstrapping inferences. The chapter provides an account of why these inferences are not capable of producing knowledge. The chapter argues that the reason why these inferences fail to produce knowledge of their conclusions is that inferential knowledge requires that the subject is more likely to believe the premises of the inference if the conclusion is true than if it is false. The chapter ends by comparing the treatment of these cases that emerges from the approach that the chapter recommends with the position advocated by Sherrilyn Roush in her recent book, Tracking Truth (2005).
Keywords: bootstrapping, closure, evidence, inference, knowledge, scepticism, transmission
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