BARON REED

HOW TO THINK ABOUT FALLIBILISM

(Received 7 June 2001)

ABSTRACT. Almost every contemporary theory of knowledge is a version of

fallibilism, yet an adequate statement of fallibilism has not yet been provided.
Standard definitions cannot account for fallibilistic knowledge of necessary truths.
I consider and reject several attempts to resolve this difficulty before arguing that
a belief is an instance of fallibilistic knowledge when it could have failed to be
knowledge. This is a fully general account of fallibilism that applies to knowl-
edge of necessary truths. Moreover, it reveals, not only the connection between
fallibility and error, but the connection between fallibility and accidental truth as
well.

1. INTRODUCTION

Fallibilism is the philosophical view that conjoins two apparently

obvious claims. On one hand, we are fallible. We make mistakes
– sometimes even about the most evident things. But, on the other
hand, we also have quite a bit of knowledge. Despite our tendency
to get things wrong occasionally, we get it right much more of the
time.
Fallibilism is endorsed by virtually all contemporary epistemolo-
gists.1 Despite this near unanimity, or perhaps because of it, there
has been some confusion as to how fallibilism is best analyzed. The
standard statements of fallibilism are unable to explain how we can
have fallible knowledge of necessary truths. Moreover, they do not
allow for all of the ways in which our knowledge of contingent
truths can fail. I argue that the standard account of fallibilism can
be modified to overcome these two difficulties. The result, then, is a
fully general theory of fallible knowledge.

Philosophical Studies 107: 143–157, 2002.

© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
144 BARON REED

2. THE STANDARD ACCOUNT OF FALLIBILISM

Before turning to the analysis of fallibilism, let me first offer two

remarks to locate that conception within the current epistemo-
logical terrain. First, fallibilism and infallibilism are contradictories.
For various reasons, some epistemologists offer an account of
infallibilism in the primary instance.2 Those accounts can be
straightforwardly adapted for my purposes to yield an analysis of
fallibilism.
Second, some epistemologists use the term ‘incorrigibility’ to
express the concept infallibility (and, correlatively, ‘corrigibility’ for
fallibility).3 Following Alston’s usage, I prefer to say that a belief
is incorrigible (in an epistemic sense) when the justification for it
cannot be overturned by anything else.4 It is possible, therefore, that
a belief may be incorrigible without being infallible: we may have
the strongest possible justification for a belief without the belief
being true. In any case, it is not difficult to recognize when an
epistemologist means by ‘incorrigible’ what I mean by ‘infallible’,
and the definition of ‘incorrigibility’ offered by such an epistemolo-
gist can easily be adapted to yield an account of fallibilism. When
I speak of a philosopher’s account of fallibilism, then, this should
be understood to refer either (a) to an account couched in terms of
fallibility or (b) to an account that can easily be transformed into an
instance of (a).
For the most part, the standard statements of fallibilism fall
into two broad groups. Abstracting from inessential differences of
expression yields the following two theses:5

(FK1) S fallibly knows that p =df (1) S knows that p on the basis
of justification j and yet (2) S’s belief that p on the basis
of j could have been false.
(FK2) S fallibly knows that p =df (1) S knows that p on the basis
of justification j even though (2) j does not entail that S’s
belief that p is true.
Philosophers who speak of fallibilism in accordance with (FK1)
tend to say that, despite the good justification underlying one’s
knowledge, it nevertheless could have been mistaken or wrong or
false.6 Philosophers who prefer (FK2) tend to say that, although
 HOW TO THINK ABOUT FALLIBILISM 145

one’s justification for a belief can be quite good, it does not entail or
guarantee that the belief is true.7
The two definitions are equivalent, given the usual understanding
of entailment. To say that p entails q means that it is logically
impossible for p to be true and q false. Thus, to deny that p entails q
is to say that it is logically possible that p is true and q is false. So,
when (FK2) says that j does not entail that p, this means that it is
logically possible for S to have j and yet it be false that p. Or, in other
words, S’s belief that p on the basis of j could have been false, just
as (FK1) says. (FK1) and (FK2), then, are alternative expressions of
what we might call the standard account of fallibilism.

3. FALLIBILISM AND NECESSITY

The standard account runs into difficulty in extending fallibilism to

our knowledge of necessary truths. For, if it is necessary that p,
S’s belief that p couldn’t have been mistaken, contrary to (FK1).
And because a necessary truth is entailed by everything (given the
usual understanding of entailment), S’s justification will entail that
p, contrary to (FK2).
We have various options in responding to this difficulty. First, we
might define fallibilism so that it applies only to contingent truths.8
But there is a very good case to be made for thinking that our a
priori knowledge is fallible in much the same way as our empir-
ical knowledge.9 Certainly, it is otherwise difficult to explain both
the errors and the progress we make in our a priori endeavors. A
second option is to retain (FK2) but reject the usual understanding of
entailment.10 Without an alternative account of entailment in hand,
though, this may be an unnecessarily complicated response.
A third option is to interpret the possibility that figures in the
standard account as epistemic rather than logical.11 If epistemic
possibility does not entail logical possibility, we may be able to
make sense of saying that a belief in a necessary truth could have
been false – it could have been false in the epistemic sense. But
on this option, fallible knowledge turns out to be impossible (in the
logical sense). ‘It is epistemically possible that p’ is usually read as
‘for all we know, p’. The epistemic reading of ‘S’s belief that p could
have been false’ yields ‘for all S knows, ∼p’. But, ex hypothesi, S
146 BARON REED

knows that p, and surely in that case it is false that, for all S knows,
∼p. Hence, S always will have knowledge (namely, the knowledge
that p) that precludes ∼p from being epistemically possible.
Even if we bracket S’s knowledge that p so that it plays no role in
determining the epistemic possibility that ∼p, the problem remains.
For the belief that p will almost certainly fit into a coherent set of
beliefs (even if its justification doesn’t depend on that coherence).
For example, the belief that I am now standing coheres well with the
beliefs that I was standing an instant ago, that nothing has happened
that would lead to my not standing, that if I were now to look in a
mirror I would see myself to be standing, that other people know I
am now standing, etc. Even if we bracket the belief that I am now
standing, these other beliefs also seem to preclude from epistemic
possibility that I am not now standing. It simply isn’t true that for all
I know I am not now standing. We could try bracketing not only the
belief that p but also all of the evidence for it and the consequences
of it. But then we would have no claim to be capturing what it means
to say that for all we know it’s false that p. Epistemic possibility just
doesn’t give us the account of fallibilism we want.
Susan Haack and Keith Lehrer suggest a fourth option for the
second clause of (FK1): it is logically possible that S mistakenly
believes that p or it is possible that p is true yet S does not believe
that p.12 Lehrer takes the italicized possibility to be logical, whereas
Haack says it should be read as psychological possibility. In making
this suggestion, Lehrer intends to offer an account of infallibility
capable of explaining, for a foundationalist, how basic beliefs can
be knowledge. He therefore does not presuppose that S knows that
p. Similarly, Haack is offering an account of fallibilism that is meant
to cover propositions in general rather than simply propositions
that a subject knows. To bring their proposals squarely to bear on
the standard account, two changes must be made. First, we should
presuppose the first clause of the standard account, i.e., S knows that
p on the basis of justification j. This doesn’t affect their views but
only the purposes for which they can be put to use. Second, we must
factor justification into their proposals for the second clause. Doing
so yields:

(FK3) S fallibly knows that p = df (1) S knows that p on the

basis of justification j and yet (2) it is logically possible
 HOW TO THINK ABOUT FALLIBILISM 147

that S mistakenly believes that p on the basis of j or it is

possible that S has j but does not believe that p.13

(FK3) modifies (FK1) only by making the second clause disjunctive.

The added disjunct says that it is possible that S has j but does not
believe that p. Even if it is necessarily true that p, and S couldn’t
believe it and be mistaken, still S could fail to know it simply by not
believing it.14
One way to think of fallibilism is this: if it is true, there are
some non-actual possible worlds that determine the character of S’s
knowledge in the actual world. According to the standard account, it
is those worlds in which S continues to believe that p on the basis of j
even though it is false that p. It is because S could have been in one of
those worlds that S’s knowledge is fallible. Now, because necessary
truths are true in all possible worlds, the standard account is unable
to specify any possible worlds in which S mistakenly believes that
p. Hence, there is no way of showing that S’s knowledge is fallible.
This is one way of stating what I have been calling the difficulty
with necessity. (FK3) attempts to resolve the difficulty by specifying
some possible worlds in which, although it is true that p, S has j but
doesn’t know that p. The possible worlds it picks out are those in
which S doesn’t know that p because S doesn’t believe that p. This
can happen, of course, even if it is necessarily true that p.
Now, although this does succeed in picking out some possible
worlds even when S’s belief is of a necessary truth, it does so at the
cost of no longer capturing what we mean by fallibilism. Suppose
that I am learning the Pythagorean Theorem for the first time. I
come to know that, for right triangles, the square of the hypotenuse
is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, and I
know this on the basis of a proof. It is nonetheless a psychological
(and therefore logical) possibility that I understood the proof but
without believing the conclusion on that basis. I could have been
morbidly diffident about my mathematical abilities and thus unable
to believe theorems based on even the most evident reasoning. Given
this possibility, the knowledge I actually have of the theorem counts
as fallible according to (FK3). But it is difficult to see what relevance
it has to the actual case of my knowing the theorem on the basis of
the proof. The fact that I could have been diffident has nothing to do
with how I nondiffidently respond to the proof in the actual world. I
148 BARON REED

also could have been quite dogmatic in my mathematical beliefs, but

that doesn’t make my actual knowledge any less fallible. Fallibilism
is a thesis regarding the quality of my actual state of knowing; (FK3)
picks out worlds that are simply irrelevant to that.
L.S. Carrier suggests a fifth option. He argues that “some empir-
ical propositions are known, but none of them are known not to be
mistaken.”15 This can be captured in the following thesis:
(FK4) S fallibly knows that p = df (1) S knows that p on the
basis of justification j but (2) S does not know that the
belief that p is not mistaken.
Carrier says that “[t]o deny epistemic certainty [as the fallibilist
does] seems to require that one deny the knowledge of some propo-
sition or other”; otherwise, we “run the danger of being dogmatic.”16
This resolves the difficulty with necessity. Even if S’s belief in
a necessary truth cannot be mistaken, this fact itself may not be
something that S knows.
But Carrier is making here what is sometimes called a “level
confusion.”17 Let us distinguish S’s first-level belief that p from the
second-level belief that the belief that p is not mistaken. Suppose
that Sam is a primitive knower – he doesn’t have the concepts of
belief and being mistaken and so he is unable to have the second-
level belief. It shouldn’t follow just from the definition of fallibilism
that Sam is unable to have infallible knowledge. If it is possible for
more sophisticated subjects to know infallibly that they are feeling
pain, there is no reason to suppose that Sam could not do so as well.
Now suppose that Sandy is a normal subject who fallibly knows
that p. There is no reason to suppose she couldn’t know that her
belief that p is not mistaken. This second-level belief could have
been mistaken, of course – but that just shows that her second-
level knowledge is as fallible as her first-level knowledge. If Sandy
escapes the charge of dogmatism when she believes that p even
though she could have been mistaken, there’s no reason to suppose
she couldn’t make a similar escape at the next level up. Fallible
knowledge is an intra-level (not inter-level) phenomenon. Our
account of fallibilism must reflect that fact.
 HOW TO THINK ABOUT FALLIBILISM 149

4. KNOWING EVEN THOUGH ONE MIGHT NOT HAVE

Above, we tried to make sense of saying that S’s belief that p on

the basis of j could have been mistaken, where the italicized phrase
is interpreted as epistemic possibility. Although the proposal was
ultimately rejected, it was initially promising because it seemed to
allow us to say that a belief in a necessary truth could be somehow
mistaken – not in the strictest sense, of course. It is logically
impossible for a belief in a necessary truth to be mistaken. But
there must be some other way in which a belief can be mistaken
or otherwise defective so that, even if it is true, it doesn’t count as
knowledge.
This suggests a sixth option. Although the belief actually does
count as knowledge, it could have failed to do so.18 As a first
approximation, we have:
(FK5) S fallibly knows that p = df (1) S knows that p on the
basis of justification j and yet (2) S’s belief that p on the
basis of j could have failed to be knowledge.19
Even though S’s belief in a necessary truth cannot be mistaken, in
the sense of being false, it could nevertheless fail to be knowledge
– even if in that possible world S has the same justification for it
that allows the belief to count as knowledge in the actual world.
Suppose that Seth has excellent reasons for trusting Linda, his logic
instructor, and has so far acquired nothing but justified true beliefs
from her. Now Linda presents Seth with argument A, which is valid.
Seth does not follow all of the details of the argument but gains
merely a general sense of how it is supposed to work. On the basis of
this limited grasp of the argument and Linda’s authority, he comes to
know that the premises entail the conclusions. But compatibly with
this, Linda could have made two errors with negations that cancel
each other out. In that case, Seth would have come to believe, with
the same justification, that the premises entail the conclusion. His
belief would have been true – but it wouldn’t have been knowledge.
Despite holding the belief with considerable justification, the justi-
fication for it wouldn’t have been connected to the truth in the right
sort of way for it to count as knowledge.
Because its definiens includes the concept of knowledge, we
should think of (FK5) as a generic account of fallible knowledge.
150 BARON REED

Its specific instances will be determined by the various theories of

knowledge that can be fitted into it. For our purpose, we can leave
(FK5) generic and work with the following schematic account of
knowledge:

(K) S knows that p = df (1) it is true that p,

(2) S believes that p,
(3) S is justified in believing that p, and
(4) S’s belief that p is not accidentally true.
Most epistemologists are committed to something like (K), although
there are widely divergent opinions as to how the third condition
dealing with justification is to be explicated. The fourth condition is
meant to rule out Gettier cases; there is some difference of opinion
here, too, as to how this should be done.20
Using (K), we can replace (FK5) with:

(FK6) S fallibly knows that p = df (1) S knows that p on the basis

of justification j and yet (2) S’s belief that p on the basis
of j could have been either (i) false or (ii) accidentally
true.
(FK6) says that S’s knowledge is fallible just in case S could have
failed to satisfy vis-à-vis the proposition that p either the truth condi-
tion (K1) or the accidentality condition (K4) while still satisfying
the belief and justification conditions (K2) and (K3).21 This differs
from the standard account, then, in allowing the possible failure
of (K4) to count as a way in which S’s knowledge is fallible. The
modification resolves the difficulty with necessity. If S’s justified
belief is of a necessary truth, (K1) will always be satisfied. But the
justification could have failed to be appropriately linked with the
truth, i.e., (K4) could have failed to be satisfied.
The modification is quite plausible, I think, for empirical knowl-
edge as well. My knowledge that I’m seeing a barn is fallible – in
spite of the justification – because the belief could have been false:
I could have been looking at a barn façade instead of a real barn.
But the knowledge is also fallible – in spite of the justification –
because the belief could have been accidentally true: I could have
been looking at a real barn but one that is in an area filled with lots
of barn façades and no other real barns.22
 HOW TO THINK ABOUT FALLIBILISM 151

(FK6) can be read as a modification of the standard account of

fallibilism in the (FK1) version. Let us now consider how we might
similarly modify the other version of the standard account, (FK2).
The Gettier problem arises for fallibilist epistemologies because,
although S’s belief is both true and justified, the truth and the justi-
fication are somehow independent of one another. (FK2) attempts to
capture that independence by saying that S’s justification does not
entail that p. But, as we have seen, everything entails a necessary
truth, including S’s justification. Now, even though truth and justi-
fication can be somehow independent of one another, they typically
are connected (in a nontrivial way). This is what grounds the idea
that we can have fallible knowledge. Perhaps we can resolve the
difficulty with necessity if we focus, not on how truth and justifi-
cation can be independent as (FK2) does, but rather on how having
justification for a belief makes it likely to be true.
Let us begin by saying that the connection between S’s justifica-
tion j and the proposition that p is probabilistic. To say that j makes
it probable that p is true is to say that there is a high probability that
p is true relative to the class of beliefs picked out by j. The class of
beliefs picked out by j is the class of beliefs that have justification
of the same type as j.23 Working with the relative frequency model
of probability, we can then modify (FK2) as follows:
(FK7) S fallibly knows that p = df (1) S knows that p on the
basis of justification j where (2) j makes probable the
belief that p in the sense that S’s belief belongs to the
class of beliefs which have the same (type) j and most,
but not all, of which are true.24
Notice how probabilistic connections of this sort allow Gettier cases
to occur. The reference class is made up of those beliefs that are
justified. Typically, a belief will end up in that class because it is
true, but this need not be the case. The class of justified beliefs may
contain some that are false. It may also contain some that are true
but that are not members of the class because they are true. In one
of the original Gettier cases, Jones has the true belief that Smith
owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona. It ends up in the class of
justified beliefs because Jones is justified in believing that Smith
owns a Ford, but it’s true because Brown is in Barcelona. Something
similar happens in the Seth case above. His belief that the premises
152 BARON REED

entail the conclusion is true, but that’s not why it ends up in the class
of justified beliefs.
There are, of course, many different ways of explaining how
beliefs end up in the class of justified beliefs. According to historical
reliabilism, for example, the class will contain all the beliefs that
have come from the same belief-producing process. They will all
be justified just in case most of the beliefs in the class are true.25
According to other views, the class of justified beliefs will be those
that have some sort of evidential support, or coherence relations, or
that have been caused in the right sort of way. What they all have
in common, though, is the gap between the truth of a belief and the
justification for it. Although the gap is sometimes bridged, it is also
possible for the bridge to go out. It is the threat of this happening
that makes knowledge fallible, even in the best of times.

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The standard account of fallibilism came in two versions. The first,

(FK1), said that knowledge is fallible if it could have been mistaken.
The second, (FK2), gave an explanation of how this could be so: the
justification for the knowledge does not entail the truth of the belief.
According to our modified account, (FK5), knowledge is fallible
when it could have failed to be knowledge. (And, conversely, knowl-
edge is infallible when it could not have failed to be knowledge.)
(FK6) explains how this can happen – how S’s response to the
cognitive situation, though adequate in fact, could nonetheless have
failed to be adequate. S’s belief could have been justified but false,
or it could have been justified but accidentally true. (FK7), in turn,
explains how this is possible. Because S’s justification makes the
belief probably true, it ordinarily makes the belief an instance of
knowledge. For the same reason, though, the knowledge is fallible:
although probably true, the belief could have been false, or it could
have been true but in such a way that the justification is unrelated to
its truth.
And so we now have a completely general account of how knowl-
edge can be fallible, while also preserving the insights underlying
the standard conception of fallibilism. The modified account permits
fallible knowledge of both contingent truths and necessary truths.
 HOW TO THINK ABOUT FALLIBILISM 153

Moreover, it captures both of the ways in which one’s knowledge of

contingent truths can fail, and hence provides a deeper explanation
of fallibilism than has been previously offered.26

NOTES
1 Cf. Cohen (1988), p. 91.
2 For example, philosophers concerned primarily with the debate over founda-
tional beliefs often begin by considering whether those beliefs are infallible.
3 Cf. Lehrer (1974) and Nakhnikian (1968). Lehrer (1990) complicates matters:

he makes infallibility one component of what he calls “incorrigibility,” yet his

account of incorrigibility so-called is better construed, I think, as a modified
analysis of infallibility rather than of incorrigibility. Ayer (1956), pp. 54–66, also
blends the two; where he uses ‘incorrigibility’, I would prefer to say that he is
really offering an account of infallibility and then pointing out that infallibility
entails incorrigibility.
4 See Alston’s entries on ‘incorrigibility’ and infallibility’ in Dancy and Sosa

(1992). Also, cf. Ayer (1963), p. 73, where he does clearly distinguish the two.
This usage accords better, I believe, with the usual definition of ‘incorrigible’ as
“not easily influenced or changed.”
5 All of the definitions in this paper should be understood as containing temporal

qualifiers (“S fallibly knows that p at t” etc.). I have omitted these for the sake of
simplicity. Also, I am not presupposing any particular account of justification in
these definitions. So, for example, the sense in which j is the basis for the belief
that p can be, but need not be, construed as an evidential relationship.
6 See, for example, Ayer (1956), pp. 54–56; BonJour (1985), p. 26; BonJour

(1998), p. 16; and Alston’s entry on ‘infallibility’ in Dancy and Sosa (1992). See
also Hetherington’s characterization of fallible, as opposed to failable, knowledge
in his (1999), p. 565, and Lehrer’s initial characterizations of incorrigibility in his
(1974), p. 81, and his (1990), p. 45.
7 See, for example, Cohen (1988), p. 91; Fogelin (1994), pp. 88–89; and Jeshion

(2000), pp. 334–335. Audi (1998) typically uses phrasing reminiscent of (FK1)
but ultimately explains infallibility in terms of (FK2); see pp. 82, 84, 255, and
292–4.
8 Cf. Lehrer (1974), pp. 82–83. Hetherington (1999), p. 565, says that most

epistemologists are so firmly committed to the standard account, even with the
difficulty raised by necessary truths, that he is willing to concede to them the term
‘fallibilism’. Instead, he will offer an account of failable knowledge that captures
more fully what he thinks is the underlying basis for the traditional conception
of fallibilism. I disagree with Hetherington’s assessment of how firmly other
epistemologists are committed to the standard account, and so I shall ignore his
concession in what follows. His theory of knowing failably, then, is a version of
what I am calling fallibilism, though it is not a version of the standard account of
fallibilism.
154 BARON REED

9 See BonJour (1998) and Jeshion (2000).

10 See Fumerton (1985), p. 53 and fn. 10, and (1995), pp. 69–73, where he
recommends holding out hope for a developed relevance logic.
11 Cf. Haack (1979), pp. 48–49, who considers and rejects this option, through

her reason for doing so is a bit different from the one I give.
12 Lehrer (1990), p. 47, and Haack (1979), p. 52. I have transformed Lehrer’s

suggestion so that it is an account of fallibilism (rather than of what he calls

“incorrigibility”). I have also transformed both Lehrer’s and Haack’s proposals
so that they approximate (FK1). This should make it easier to see both how their
views are similar and how they are modifying the standard account to deal with
the problem with necessity. Finally, in her formalized proposal Haack says that
it must be psychologically possible that S believes that p, but in her gloss on
the formalized version she says only that it must be psychologically possible that
S does not believe that p. I have adopted the latter as the logically weaker and
therefore more plausible claim.
13 This modification also makes Lehrer’s (1990) account of infallibility (what

he calls “incorrigibility”) more plausible. Lehrer says that if S knows that p with
infallibility, then the following must be true: it is logically necessary that if p then
S believes that p. But when it is necessarily true that p this makes it necessarily
true that S believes that p. Surely, no foundationalist would say that – there are
possible worlds in which, for example, S either does not exist or is brain dead
and has no beliefs at all. These worlds are precluded, however, if we require only
that necessarily S believes that p in those worlds in which S has j. Cf. Fumerton
(1995), pp. 69–71.
14 Cf. Hetherington (1999), p. 566, on how knowledge can be failable because S

could have failed to have the belief.

15 Carrier (1993), p. 361. He later suggests that the account may work for a

priori knowledge as well (p. 370). The option based on Carrier’s view, presented
in (FK4), is weaker than this statement; I would like to allow for the possibility
that at least some empirical propositions are known with infallibility (the cogito
springs to mind as a likely candidate).
16 Carrier (1993), pp. 366, 369.
17 Cf. Alston (1980).
18 Lehrer (1974) and (1990) rejects this option because it would make an account

of knowledge in terms of infallibility circular. Because that is not our concern

here, we can safely ignore his scruple. In any case, it is by no means clear that
a foundationalist should choose infallibility as the bedrock epistemic concept. At
the foundational level, it is not merely belief that entails knowledge, but justified
belief. I might have been brainwashed to believe that I am in pain, but that surely
doesn’t entail that I know I am in pain. The belief must arise in the right way if it is
to be infallible – see Nakhnikian (1968), p. 211, and Fumerton (1995), pp. 69–71,
on this point. So, any plausible account of infallibility will include justification
(or something like it), which then will have a better claim to being the bedrock
concept.
 HOW TO THINK ABOUT FALLIBILISM 155
19 Nakhnikian (1968), p. 207, and Alston (1971), p. 261, make similar proposals.
However, both offer accounts of infallibility in the primary instance (and
Nakhnikian uses the term ‘incorrigibility’). For this reason, they miss (as we shall
see) one of the ways in which empirical knowledge can fail. Alston’s definition
is phrased in terms of belief guaranteeing knowledge. For the reasons mentioned
in the previous note, Nakhnikian’s definition in terms of attentive belief (where
attentive belief entails both justification and knowledge) is preferable to Alston’s;
see Nakhnikian (1968), p. 211. Hetherington (1999) also characterizes failable
knowledge along these lines (p. 566), but he, too, misses one of the sources of
fallibility for empirical knowledge (see note 21 below). Nakhnikian (p. 212),
Alston (p. 261), and Hetherington (p. 565) all offer their accounts at least in part
as solutions to the difficulty with necessity. Ginet (1975), pp. 53–54, characterizes
fallibility and infallibility with respect to justification in a way that is suggestive
of (FK5). It isn’t clear whether Ginet has the difficulty with necessity in mind;
some of his remarks on pp. 57–58 seem to indicate that he does not, given that
he there seems to characterize fallibility with respect to knowledge of necessary
truths only in terms of possibly being mistaken.
20 Cf. Gettier (1963) for the original cases and Shope (1983) for an overview of

the problem and various responses to it.

21 Hetherington (1999) says that S’s knowledge that p is failable because it

could have failed to satisfy any one of the first three conditions of (K) while
meeting the other two. We disagree, therefore, over whether possibly failing (K2)
or (K3) makes S’s knowledge fallible. I have argued above, in considering the
Haack/Lehrer proposal, that possible worlds in which S has j but doesn’t believe
that p are largely irrelevant to S’s actual knowledge that p. Similar considerations
apply to those worlds in which (K3) isn’t satisfied – i.e., S has a true but unjustified
belief that p. Although it is certainly true that S doesn’t know that p in those
worlds, they seem to be irrelevant to S’s actual knowledge that p. It simply is a
different cognitive situation when S’s belief that p is not based on justification j
and thus does not affect S’s knowledge that p when the belief is in fact based on j.
Hetherington also thinks that we have (very failable) Knowledge in Gettier cases
and so leaves (K4) out of his schematic account of knowledge. I don’t find this
to be plausible, but I won’t offer further comment on it except to say that if we
disallow the possible failure of (K2) and (K3) his account has no other resources
for resolving the difficulty with necessity. His account of failable knowledge, then,
does not accomplish its stated goal of capturing “the kind of failing that underlies
the traditional concept of knowing fallibly” (p. 565).
22 As far as I know, Ginet (1975), p. 54, is the only epistemologist to explicitly

connect fallibility with possibly being subject to a Gettier case. The barn façade
example comes from Ginet via Goldman (1976).
23 Types of justification can be individuated broadly or narrowly (e.g., justified

because formed on the basis of reason or justified because formed on the basis of
modus ponens). I leave open which strategy is preferable.
24 Cohen (1988) says that “a fallibilist theory allows that S can know q on the

basis of r where r only makes q probable” (p. 91). This sounds like an endorsement
156 BARON REED

of (FK7); however, he seems not to distinguish it from (FK2), which he endorses

earlier in the paragraph. Moreover, Cohen’s claim that “r only makes q probable”
is either false or inapplicable to necessary truths. In the case of necessary truths,
the justification bears both a probabilistic relation and an entailment relation to the
belief. (FK7) does not face this problem because it does not exclude the entailment
relation but rather ignores it as being epistemically irrelevant.
25 Cf. Goldman (1979).
26 I am grateful to Jason Kawall, Jennifer Lackey, and Ernest Sosa for helpful

comments on this paper.

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Brown University and Pomona College

Claremont, USA
E-mail: baron_reed@pomona.edu