Abstract:

According to the mainstream of analytic theory of knowledge, subjects must acquire genuine knowledge without substantially appealing to luck in order to ensure that knowledge acquired is “safe” enough. In this sense, the preclusion of contingency has become a main feature of analytic theory of knowledge. In contrast, Kuki Shūzō, a philosopher of the Kyoto School, re-assesses the status of contingency in the constitution of knowledge in his theory of contingency. He identifies three layers of contingency: categorical contingency on the top, hypothetical contingency in the middle, and the disjunctive contingency on the deepest level. In Kuki, though the first two types of contingency can be reduced to necessities of this or that sort, such reduction cannot be successfully applied to disjunctive contingency, which has a metaphysical significance in Kuki’s system. Kuki’s theory would help us to re-assess the famous “fake barn case”, which frequently appears in epistemological literature, as well as Prichard’s definition of “epistemic safety”, and thereby reveals the difficulty of defining “safety” in a contingency-free manner.

Key words: contingency, theory of knowledge, epistemic safety, necessity, Kuki Shūzō