Closure (philosophy)

Closure, in epistemology, is the principle that if a subject S knows that p, and S knows that p entails q, then S can thereby come to know that q. Most epistemological theories involve a closure principle and many sceptical arguments assume a closure principle, arguing for instance that if you cannot know you are a not a brain in a vat, then you cannot know that you have hands. On the other hand, some epistemologists, including Robert Nozick, have denied closure principles on the basis of reliabilist accounts of knowledge. Nozick, in Philosophical Explanations, advocated that, when considering the Gettier problem, the least counter-intuitive assumption we give up should be epistemic closure. Nozick suggested a "truth tracking" theory of knowledge, in which the x was said to know P iff x's belief in P tracked the truth of P through the relevant modal scenarios. ^[1]

References

1. ^ Philosophical explanations, By Robert Nozick (Harvard 1981), page 204

See also

• Closure: A Short History of Everything by Hilary Lawson, Routledge 2002

External links

• The Epistemic Closure Principle at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.