A Safe Road to Infallibilism?

The article critically examines Julien Dutant's argument that knowledge requires infallible belief—defined as belief that could not be mistaken—based on a safety condition stating that knowledge demands a belief epistemically unlike any false belief. It challenges Dutant's claim that this safety condition entails infallibilism without skepticism, arguing that the condition is either trivial or unsound and that knowledge need not be the conjunction of truth and a factive (truth-entailing) condition. The discussion addresses classic epistemological cases (e.g., fake barns, lotteries, coin tosses) to question whether beliefs about chancy outcomes can be known infallibly and distinguishes between epistemic and alethic modalities in evaluating infallibilism. Ultimately, the article suggests that a strict fallibilist account can accommodate certainty without endorsing infallibilism and that Dutant's safety condition does not successfully establish infallibilism.