Dretske's Analysis of Knowledge: Closure Preserved

Epistemic Skepticism is one of the most controversial issues in epistemology. To block it, some find the failure of closure helpful. Dretske puts forward a recursive analysis of Knowledge. In his view, the analysis makes the closure principle fail which in turn helps to undermine the paradigmatic arguments for epistemic Skepticism. However, some including contextualists, dogmatists, or neo-mooreans, on the other hand, maintain the closure and yet undermine skepticism. In the present paper, I am not going to explore various approaches to preserving closure, criticize Dretske’s analysis as a knowledge nor will I study the setbacks of closure failure. I intend to show that, contrary to the current understanding of Dretske’s analysis, the mentioned analysis does not necessarily lead up to closure failure: There is a specific reading of the recursive base such that not only does it preserve the closure principle but also it offers a way to defeat the classic arguments for Skepticism. To better examine my suggestion compared to Dreske’s and see their exact differences, I will first study Dretske’s analysis of knowledge. Then, I will show that my suggestion respects the closure principle yet undermines skepticism.