Knowledge, Stakes, and Mistakes

Do stakes affect knowledge ascription? According to a prominent claim in recent epistemology, people are less likely to ascribe knowledge to a high stakes subject for whom the practical consequences of error are severe, than to a low stakes subject for whom the practical consequences of error are slight, even when “traditional” epistemic factors like evidence and belief are held fixed. In short: Folk stakes sensitivity: All else equal, people are less likely to ascribe knowledge to a high stakes subject than to a low stakes subject. To illustrate, Folk stakes sensitivity says that all else equal, people are less likely to say that Sarah knows that her health insurance is current, if she is about to get hit by a bus and incur huge medical bills. Folk stakes sensitivity holds intrinsic interest to anyone interested in the psycho-logical basis of knowledge ascription. It holds further interest to epistemologists by featuring as the lead premise in an abductive argument to the radical conclusion— defended by Fantl & McGrath (2002), Hawthorne (2004), and Stanley (2005)—that knowledge itself is sensitive to stakes. It holds a different sort of interest to experi-mental philosophers as an empirical claim made from the armchair. We offer an opinionated discussion of the “state of the art ” on Folk stakes sensitivity. We draw on a first wave of empirical studies—due to Feltz & Zarpentine (2010), May et al. (2010), and Buckwalter (2010)—which cast doubt on the claim, and a second wave of empirical studies—due to Pinillos (2012) and Sripada & Stanley (2012)—said to vindicate it, as well as new studies of our own. We think that the balance of evidence to date best fits a very different view, namely that of: Folk stakes insensitivity: All else equal, people are equally likely to ascribe knowledge to a high stakes subject as to a low stakes subject. In other words, we doubt that stakes affect knowledge ascription, holding all else equal. Overview: In §1 we review the epistemological background in which Folk stakes sensitivity has arisen, and the empirical background in terms of the first wave studies casting doubt on it. This is to set the stage for a critical discussion of the