Contemporary philosophers nearly unanimously endorse knowledge reliabilism, the view that knowledge must be reliably produced. Leading reliabilists have suggested that reliabilism draws support from patterns in ordinary judgments and intuitions about knowledge, luck, reliability, and counterfactuals. That is, they have suggested a proto-reliabilist hypothesis about “commonsense” or “folk” epistemology. This paper reports nine experimental studies (N = 1262) that test the proto-reliabilist hypothesis by testing four of its principal implications. The main findings are that (a) commonsense fully embraces the possibility of unreliable knowledge, (b) knowledge judgments are surprisingly insensitive to information about reliability, (c) “anti-luck” intuitions about knowledge have nothing to do with reliability specifically, and (d) reliabilists have mischaracterized the intuitive counterfactual properties of knowledge and their relation to reliability. When combined with the weakness of existing arguments for reliabilism and the recent emergence of well supported alternative views that predict the widespread existence of unreliable knowledge, the present findings are the final exhibit in a conclusive case for abandoning reliabilism in epistemology. I introduce an alternative theory of knowledge, abilism, which outperforms reliabilism and well explains all the available evidence.

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Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions

A New Paradigm for Epistemology From Reliabilism to Abilism

This article studies power imbalances in alliances. More precisely, we seek to understand how – and under what circumstances – firms can leverage market redefinition strategies to change the structure of their markets and to reduce the bargaining power of actual or potential partners. Based on resource dependence theory, our analysis examines the causes of disproportionate power in alliances and describes various power-balancing operations that can be implemented to reduce dependence. In previous research, the presence of alternative sources that might reduce resource dependence has been given exogenously, and the set of power-balancing operations has been rather limited. Based on the alliance literature, the bargaining power literature and the market redefinition literature, we elaborate a theoretical framework to study the extent to which firms can leverage market redefinition strategies to shape the structure of their markets, in general, and reduce the bargaining power of partners, in particular. We illustrate our theoretical framework by means of multiple case studies and discuss our conclusions. Focusing on air-rail intermodal strategies, we emphasise that firms can proactively redesign their market boundaries to find new partners. These market redefinition strategies reduce dependence on powerful partners in the traditional market and offer new strategic partnership options for firms. In addition, we note that processes can be implemented to increase the quality offered by these new substitutes. Finally, we elucidate several theoretical and managerial implications regarding the role of market redefinition strategies in alliance development.

Resource Dependence and Power-Balancing Operations in Alliances: The Role of Market Redefinition Strategies

The Pragmatic Encroachment Debate

In this paper, we claim that, if you justifiably believe that you ought to perform some act, it follows that you ought to perform that act. In the first half, we argue for this claim by reflection on what makes for correct reasoning from beliefs about what you ought to do. In the second half, we consider a number of objections to this argument and its conclusion. In doing so, we arrive at another argument for the view that justified beliefs about what you ought to do must be true, based in part on the idea that the epistemic and practical domains are uniform, in a sense we spell out. We conclude by sketching possible implications of our discussion for the debates over what is wrong with akrasia and pragmatic encroachment on justified belief and knowledge.

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If you justifiably believe that you ought to Φ, you ought to Φ

This paper explores how the purpose of the concept of knowledge affects knowledge ascriptions in natural language. I appeal to the idea that the role of the concept of knowledge is to flag reliable informants, and I use this idea to illuminate and support contextualism about ‘knows’. I argue that practical pressures that arise in an epistemic state of nature provide an explanatory basis for a brand of contextualism that I call ‘practical interests contextualism’. I also answer some questions that contextualism leaves open, particularly why the concept of knowledge is valuable, why the word ‘knows’ exhibits context-variability, and why this term enjoys such widespread use. Finally, I show how my contextualist framework accommodates plausible ideas from two rival views: subject-sensitive invariantism and insensitive invariantism. This provides new support for contextualism and develops this view in a way that improves our understanding of the concept of knowledge.

Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions

Citations

A New Paradigm for Epistemology From Reliabilism to Abilism

Resource Dependence and Power-Balancing Operations in Alliances: The Role of Market Redefinition Strategies

The Pragmatic Encroachment Debate

If you justifiably believe that you ought to Φ, you ought to Φ

The Practical Origins of Epistemic Contextualism

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