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Philosophies
Special Issues
Knowledge and Conditionals—Reliability, Probability, Counterfactuals, and Relevance
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Knowledge and Conditionals—Reliability, Probability, Counterfactuals, and Relevance

A Special Issue of Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 1369

Editor

Dr. Lars Bo Gundersen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Philosophy, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark
Interests: epistemology; metaphysics and ontology; philosophy of science

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

You are cordially invited to contribute to the Philosophies Special Issue on “Knowledge and Conditionals—Reliability, Probability, Counterfactuals, and Relevance”, which aims to explore the pros and cons of various versions of reliabilism, particularly sensitivity and safety theories of knowledge, how these theories are best understood semantically, and how they relate to recent developments in semantics for counterfactuals, including conjunction conditionalization, irrelevant semifactuals, probability, and relevance. This Special Issue will bring together state-of-the-art research in reliabilism and semantics, thus contributing to a cross-fertilization of these two important areas of research.

Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal dedicated to scientific research and philosophical reflection concerning themes at the intersection of philosophical, scientific, technological, and cultural studies. Although the philosophy of science, with its foundations in epistemology, scientific methodology, and the history of science, is at the core of the scope of Philosophies, the journal seeks much broader perspectives that integrate the diverse intellectual tools developed in a large variety of scientific disciplines and philosophical systems. The ultimate goal of the journal is to reach for a synthesis of knowledge using the collective wisdom of diverse methodologies.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome, and research areas may include, but are not limited to, the following topics: major arguments for reliabilism, major arguments for sensitivity versions of reliabilism, major arguments for safety versions of reliabilism, major arguments for and against fleshing sensitivity and/or safety out in terms of counterfactuals, significant and recent research on the semantics of counterfactuals, and how this research may impinge on the understanding of reliabilism.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send this to the Guest Editor (fillg@cas.au.dk) or to the Philosophies Editorial Office (philosophies@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue, and full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Dr. Lars Bo Gundersen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Philosophies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • reliabilism
  • sensitivity
  • safety
  • counterfactuals
  • irrelevant semifactuals
  • conjunction conditionalization
  • probability
  • relevance

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 247 KB  
Article
Dretskean Sensitivity Wins the Lottery!
by Kelly Becker
Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 165; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050165 (registering DOI) - 18 Sep 2026
Abstract
One major strand of post-Gettier epistemology concentrates on shoring up the connection between belief and truth by postulating a condition that includes a modal requirement. This approach abandons the traditional emphasis on reasons. A second major strand maintains the focus on reasons, aiming [...] Read more.
One major strand of post-Gettier epistemology concentrates on shoring up the connection between belief and truth by postulating a condition that includes a modal requirement. This approach abandons the traditional emphasis on reasons. A second major strand maintains the focus on reasons, aiming to distinguish those that are sufficient for knowledge from those that are not. The first strand has generated an endless parade of counterexamples. Some version of the second strand may be true but insufficiently informative. For example, perhaps knowledge really is undefeated justified true belief, but what is a genuine defeater, and what is justification? An early entrant in the post-Gettier competition, Fred Dretske, proposed a modal requirement that ties reasons, not belief, to the truth, thus incorporating key components of both strands. Drawing solely on resources in Dretske’s presentation, I develop his notion of conclusive reasons in an account of knowledge that I call reasons-based Dretskean sensitivity (RDS), which resolves most, if not all, of the major problems afflicting its wayward cousin, Nozickean sensitivity, and indeed many other epistemological difficulties. This paper lays out the RDS resolution of Hawthorne’s lottery puzzle. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Knowledge and Conditionals—Reliability, Probability, Counterfactuals, and Relevance)
14 pages, 236 KB  
Article
The Safety Versus Sensitivity Debate Revisited
by Duncan Pritchard
Philosophies 2026, 11(4), 122; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11040122 - 17 Jul 2026
Viewed by 550
Abstract
It is widely accepted that there is a modal condition on knowledge. There are two main candidates in the literature: safety and sensitivity. My goal in this paper is to revisit this debate in the context of anti-risk epistemology. This approach [...] Read more.
It is widely accepted that there is a modal condition on knowledge. There are two main candidates in the literature: safety and sensitivity. My goal in this paper is to revisit this debate in the context of anti-risk epistemology. This approach is meant to offer an independent way of determining the modal condition on knowledge (i.e., as opposed to simply pitching modal conditions against one another and seeing which one accommodates the wider range of cases). Interestingly, while anti-risk epistemology favors safety over traditional formulations of sensitivity, it also leads to a very specific way of formulating the safety condition on knowledge. Given that sensitivity might also be reformulated along anti-risk lines, a natural question to ask is where this leaves the debate between safety and sensitivity. I will be suggesting that the most plausible anti-risk formulation of sensitivity is equivalent to the corresponding formulation of safety. If that is right, then ultimately the moral to draw from anti-risk epistemology is not that it favors safety over sensitivity but that it leads to a formulation of the anti-risk condition on knowledge whereby this distinction collapses. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Knowledge and Conditionals—Reliability, Probability, Counterfactuals, and Relevance)
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