Epistemology for modern Skeptics: II, Fallibilism as an approach to knowledge
These days we are too darn certain of way too many things we have no business being certain about. Or so I believe. Welcome to modern Skepticism! I am currently in the middle of elaborating a more or less coherent philosophy of life inspired by both ancient and modern Skepticism, and since Skepticism is largely an epistemological stance (i.e., it is about knowledge), this three-part series is looking at what a contemporary Skeptic might have to say about the nature of knowledge. This is important, of course, because everything else in our lives follows from what we claim is or is not true and on what grounds.
Last time we took a quick look at the first of what I think are three pillars of Skeptic epistemology: knowledge understood as a set of coherent beliefs about the world. Today we’ll examine the second pillar, the notion of fallibilism, the proposition that no belief can ever be justified in a way that does not admit the possibility that said belief may, in fact, be false.
If you find fallibilism attractive you are not alone, since the sense in the business is that most epistemologists are, in fact, fallibilists of one stripe or another. Fallibilism in its modern guise began with the work of the American Pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce, though it actually goes back to…
