Dear Daniel (if I may)

Thank you very much for your insightful questions.

My ‘Knowledge First’ view agrees with some aspects of Williamson’s position but disagrees with others. I agree that knowledge involves an irreducible acquaintance-like relationship between object and subject, one that is not mediated by reasons, arguments and the like. On my account, knowledge is a primitive perception or an irreducible mental ‘grasping’ or ‘seeing’ the object of cognition which is present to the knower. As you note, a consequence of this view is that the bar for what counts, strictly speaking, as knowledge is high. On my view, what we can know is limited because assent to the object of cognition which is primitively moved by the presence and perception of ‘what is’ is possible only in limited cases. Most of our cognitive activity relies on assent given for reasons external to the object itself. No amount of reasons or justification supporting such belief will turn this other mode of cognition into knowledge. On the other hand, justified belief is mostly very reliable in tracking truth, and constitutes an essential and distinctive mode of our successful cognition, with enormous power of extending our cognitive grip beyond what (strictly speaking) can be known.

There are, on the other hand, important differences between the position I am developing and Williamson’s position. On my account, knowing and believing are two cognitive modes distinct in kind in the strong sense that knowing does not entail believing. In turn, believing is not some sort of botched knowing but a mental state fundamentally different from knowing, with its own distinctive and complementary role in our cognitive life. Moreover, for me, knowledge is first in the sense that, ontologically, knowing is the most primitive mode of our cognition, without which there would be no successful cognition. It is not first, however, in the sense that believing has a non-reciprocal, conceptual dependence on knowing: although believing can be understood in terms of not knowing, knowing can likewise be understood in terms of not being in a state of believing. Furthermore, on my account, the object of knowledge are not primarily propositions, and knowing and believing are not primarily attitudes to propositions. Knowledge’s primitive mode is a non-discursive, non-propositional perception; on this primitive perception of ‘what is’ are based discursive modes of knowledge. Finally, on my account, ‘evidence’ is not primarily propositional either. Rather, I take ‘evidence’ in its primary, traditional sense — derived from the Latin ex (from) + videre (to see) — of ‘visibility’ or ‘seeableness’ which allows something to be immediately apprehended by a cognitive subject. There is a sense in which also on my account E=K – ultimately, what we see, grasp, perceive in sense-perception and/or intellectually is what we know – but this sense is quite different from Williamson’s account.

Regarding your more specific question — whether the evidence base will be too slim to justify many (most) beliefs — on my account belief is ultimately justified by what we know but there can be many intermediate stages in which some beliefs are justified by other justified beliefs and so on.

Regarding your second question — what I say about Goldman/Ginet fake-barn cases – you are right in suspecting that, on my view, the subject’s perception of an actually barn qualifies as knowledge of there being a barn, that is, as having made cognitive contact with ‘what is’; had she been looking at fake-barn façades and formed the view that there were barns, she would have had a justified but false belief. Is this making knowledge the result of chance? I don’t think so. It is to take on board that knowing is a sui generis presence of ‘what is’ to a subject. However, since we are fallible cognitive subjects, it is easy for us to misjudge what is really present and what is not. But we do have ways of confirming whether we know or merely justifiably but falsely believe something (and in this case, it would be easy enough to find out).

Thank you very much for your interest and for pressing me on these points!
Rosa