Reflective Meta-attitudes and (In)Compatibilism

This paper contains a defense of the orthodox view that knowledge entails belief. I begin with distinguishing two ways in which one can deny the knowledge-belief entailment claim. The first is incompatibilism, which claims that co-occurrence of knowledge and belief is impossible. The second is compatibilism, which claims that that co-occurrence of knowledge and belief is a contingent matter. Next, I present intuitive arguments against both kinds of denials. The arguments apply to agents that are capable of entertaining reflective metabelief and reflective meta-knowledge for every belief or knowledge state they have. I close the paper with a discussion of some possible objections to the presented arguments. The first is the problem of the interpretation of apparent “knowledge without belief” scenarios that enables the keeping of the contrast between them, and then also both “knowledge with belief” and “belief without knowledge” scenarios. Firstly, I consider the class of cases of apparent “knowledge without belief” scenarios encompassing situations in which one is disposed to assent that ‘I do not only believe that: I know it’. Secondly, I consider the class of cases of apparent “knowledge without belief” scenarios embracing, for instance, the classical Radford example in the version presented recently by Myers- Schulz and Schwitzgebel. The second problem concerns the commitment to epistemic logics. The third is the problem that the arguments appeals to reflective agents who have the disposition to form meta-attitudes, and one may still claim that compatibilism is true of agents that are not in that group (young children, some or all animals, etc.). The fourth problem is the commitment to attempts to provide sufficient and necessary conditions for the application of the concept of knowledge