Acquittal from Knowledge Laundering

Abstract

Subject-sensitive invariantism (SSI), the view that whether a subject knows depends on the practical stakes has been charged with ‘knowledge laundering’: together with widely held knowledge-transmission principles, SSI appears to allow improper knowledge-acquisition. I argue that this objection fails because it depends on faulty versions of transmission principles that would raise problems for any view. When transmission principles are properly understood, they are shown to be compatible with SSI since they don’t give rise to improper knowledge acquisition. The upshot is a better understanding of the nature and structure of these transmission principles.