Böcker av Rodrigo Martins Borges

Under what conditions do we have inferential knowledge? I propose and defend thefollowing principle: S knows that p via inference only if S knows all the premisesessentially involved in her inference in support of p - "KFK" for short. Eventhough KFK is at least tacitly endorsed by many figures in the history ofphilosophy, from Aristotle through Descartes, and Kant to Bertrand Russell -and,more recently, by David Armstrong - KFK has fallen into disfavor amongepistemologists over the past fifty years. In response to Edmund Gettier's legendarypaper, many have proposed views according to which one's reasoning is asource of knowledge even if one fails to know some or all premises essentiallyinvolved in one's reasoning, while others have given up offering a theory of inferentialknowledge and have focused on reasoning as a source of justified beliefinstead. Unfortunately, these accounts that deal with inferential knowledge areproblematic; they cannot, for example, fully explain our common practice of evaluatingnegatively inferences with unknown premises.