UC Irvine

There are a class of examples that appear to show that one can gain knowledge via reasoning from a falsehood. The problem that such examples pose is to explain why knowledge can be acquired in such cases given that in general drawing inferences from false beliefs, even if the inferred belief is true, does not result in knowledge. A safety-based rationale is offered in this regard, along with the kind of motivation for safety offered by anti-risk epistemology. It is maintained that such a rationale is at best incomplete, however, and that for a fuller account of how knowledge can be acquired from error we need to turn to the theory of knowledge offered by anti-risk virtue epistemology.