Capturing Lewis's "elusive knowledge"

Abstract

David Lewis developed one of the most prominent versions of epistemic contextualism (EC) in Elusive Knowledge [2], which is also known as a version of relevant alternatives theory (RAT). In this work, I propose a simple formalization of Lewis account, which results in our basic Lewisian epistemic logic (LEL). Trivial as it may seem, my formalization focuses directly on Lewis's theory, and thus provides a firm basis to discuss his theses on anti-skepticism, infallible knowledge, rules of relevance, and especially "knowledge without belief". Moreover, my formalization not only avoids problems of two former existed formalizations [1],[3], but also partly answers Holliday's question how a relevant alternatives theorist should handle higher-order knowledge [1]. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.