This paper attempts to reconcile the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (KNA) with the Knowledge Norm of Belief (KNB). After laying out three challenges for that pair—challenges related to hedged assertions with ‘I believe,’ the “weakness” of belief, and lottery cases—I defend it by exploiting the fact that the standard formulation of the KNA does not strictly imply that knowledge is sufficient for epistemically permissible assertion and by relying on a particular kind of Fallibilism about knowledge.

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I argue for the possibility of suboptimal knowledge: knowledge that p that’s normatively defective given that you ought to inquire into whether p. I do this by appeal to two claims from the literature on inquiry. There’s the Ignorance Norm (IGN) according to which you ought not: know that p and inquire into whether p. And there’s the claim that, even if you know that p, you may still be obligated to inquire into whether p (Inquiry Beyond Knowledge (IBK)). Since the IGN and IBK are consistent (as I’ll explain), we do well to respect them both on account of their plausibility. Notably, though, they entail the possibility of suboptimal knowledge. The following question then arises: what must zetetic normativity be like if suboptimal knowledge is possible? To answer, I suggest that they have epistemic health as their anchoring value, where this is a measure of how well agents function with respect to a range of epistemic goods. The IGN exists for the sake of epistemic health maintenance (to maintain knowledge); meanwhile, IBK is true because there are reasons to acquire states of epistemic health that are stronger than mere knowledge (like certainty). Suboptimal knowledge is possible because concerns for epistemic health maintenance and acquisition have a complex interaction. Suboptimal knowledge, I submit, is the epistemic face of a phenomenon that we observe in hygienic normativity more generally.

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In a situation I call the “party case,” a subject initially believes that 100 distinct individuals are coming to her party. She also initially knows of all but one out of the 100 that they are coming (she has misleading testimony from only one of the invitees). The situation is preface-paradoxical because the subject comes to know via testimony that one of the invitees isn't coming. This paper is primarily about a view of the case according to which the subject loses all of her initial knowledge (the “uniform defeat perspective,” as I call it). I argue for two claims. First, that there's a prima faciecompelling argument against the uniform defeat perspective—one that plays up one of its apparent skeptical consequences. This is noteworthy given an independently plausible closure-based argument for the uniform defeat perspective. Second, I argue that, if there is a way to undermine the argument against the uniform defeat perspective, then it requires the truth of Fallibilism. Thus, if the uniform defeat perspective is a tenable outlook on the party case, then Fallibilism about knowledge must be true.

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Rational Inconsistency Against Infallibilism

Recent epistemological literature features compelling and novel arguments for thinking that an agent can rationally believe each member of a set of propositions even while knowing that one of the members is false. Perhaps more provocatively, these proponents of “rational inconsistency,” as it were, claim that it’s possible to know each true member of the set while knowing that one of the members is false. In this article, I explain why, if that’s true, then, on pain of an absurd implication regarding the confirmation of a proposition by evidence, proponents of rational inconsistency should reject Infallibilism about knowledge.

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According to the Doctrine of Normative Defeat (DND), you may lose justification to believe that p if you fail to possess negatively relevant evidence that you ought to possess. This paper presents an objection to the DND as it's standardly developed: it carries with it an absurd implication regarding how one's knowledge can be restored once one's associated epistemic justification is presumed to be normatively defeated. I defend the force of this objection before closing with a note about what my argument means for the motivation of the DND.

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