Towards closure on closure

Fred Adams

John Barker

Julia Figurelli

pp. 179-196

in: Claudio de Almeida, Stephen Hetherington (eds), Topics in contemporary epistemology, Synthese 188 (2), 2012.

Abstract

Tracking theories of knowledge are widely known to have the consequence that knowledge is not closed. Recent arguments by Vogel and Hawthorne claim both that there are no legitimate examples of knowledge without closure and that the costs of theories that deny closure are too great. This paper considers the tracking theories of Dretske and Nozick and the arguments by Vogel and Hawthorne. We reject the arguments of Vogel and Hawthorne and evaluate the costs of closure denial for tracking theories of knowledge.