The transparency proposal
One can come to know that one ϕ’s that p (where ϕ indicates some propositional attitude) by means of an inference whose sole premise concerns one’s environment (viz., whether p) [this is a slight revision to Byrne’s claim on p. 188]
The evidential objection
The facts revealed by attending to one’s environment (e.g. to seeing the hawk) are at best very weak evidence that one ϕ’s that p (p.
The amodal objection
The apparent root of the difficulty is that information does not wear its provenace does not wear its provenance from a particular sensory modality on its face—information is amodal.
Are there alternatives to transparency?
Option 1: Non-observational knowledge
Option 2: Mental evidence
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Visual sensation
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Visual experience
Epistemic rules
KNOW: If p, believe that you know that p
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KNOW is self-verifying. Are there epistemic rules which aren’t self-verifying but nevertheless reliably yield knowledge?
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After much discussion, Byrne argues for:
SEE: If […x…]V and x is an F, believe that you seen F
Answering the evidential objection
Answering the Amodal objection
(cpm/pdf-summary-extract '("/Users/Roambot/Dropbox/Work/MasterLib/byrne2012 Knowing what I see.pdf"))