Objections to Sensitivity

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers a series of new as well as familiar objections to sensitivity principles. It explores whether they might be trouble for our approach which invokes the Principal Base Sensitivity (PBS) principle. The chapter discusses Closure-style arguments and also introduces a new type of counter-example involving insensitive yet probative evidence which, nonetheless, can yield knowledge. These two cases, it is argued, are genuine counter-examples to PBS. But they are not problematic for our thesis that PBS is deployed as a heuristic. The chapter also considers a barrage of difficult problems for sensitivity theorists developed by Robert Nozick, Michael Blome-Tillmann, Sarah Moss, Timothy Williamson, Jonathan Vogel, and others. The nature of these problems may even challenge the status of PBS understood as a heuristic. The chapter argues that the difficulties can be handled.