Williamson on Knowledge and Psychological Explanation 

PD Magnus and Jonathen Cohen
University of California, San Diego  

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According to many philosophers, psychological explanation can legitimately be given in terms of belief and desire, but not in terms of knowledge. Timothy Williamson has recently argued against this common view. Knowledge plays an essential role in ordinary psychological explanation, he insists, and therefore we must supplement a psychology of belief with a psychology of knowledge. In this paper we examine Williamson’s arguments for the explanatory role for knowledge and find them lacking.