Is Knowledge Closed Under Known Entailment Essay

Is Knowledge Closed Under Known Entailment - Essay Example This entails the skeptic hypothesis of falsity approach that suggests that such thoughts are false. The truth is that a person is a handless brain in a vat making all his experiences hallucinations. The falsity entailed within the skeptical hypotheses would be known by virtue of the fact that under the knowledge entailment is being closed. Since the skeptical hypothesis of falsity cannot be known as the skeptics support, the common sense truth must also not be known, which suggests that a person has hands. The anti-skeptics alternatively centralize around the possibility of the failure of people to be aware of the common sense truth proposition, and therefore, in the closure principle virtue, people can become aware of the entailed falsity within the approach of the skeptics. Although anti-skeptics sometimes use the closure principle, some view the closure rejection as the key to the skeptic’s reputation. The following case argument based on Fred Dretske work will help give a supposed closure counter example. At the zoo, Joe goes to a cage marked zebra. He looks at the caged stripped animal and believes it is a zebra. It seems, in fact, that Joe knows they are zebras. For the animal to be a zebra, then it cannot be a mule that has been cleverly disguised. Joe know what a zebra is, he is aware of this fact as well, which leaves the question if he knows that the animal right in front of him is not a mule, would that have been cleverly disguised? Dretske says, it does not and suggests that this answer is intuitive.