Defining epistemic closure

Abstract

In the present paper, I aim to 'clear the ground' of the literature on epistemic closure and determine whether the most plausible closure principle passes the screening of a conceptual evaluation. To do so, I will begin by explaining how some basic concepts involving inference relate to each other. The text follows with an investigation into the nature of the closure property in mathematics, while gathering intuitions that can help us in the syntactic classification of closure principles. From there, we assess some motivations and ponder on compelling closure formulations that are advocated contemporaneously. We conclude that all closure formulations involving the 'knowledge' status suffer from serious objections and motivate a closure formulation in terms of epistemic justification.