A dispositional, state-directed epistemology

The paper combines a truthmaker semantics with a dispositional view of beliefs according to which they are dispositions of agents to act as if truthmakers obtain. This has a number of virtues in that it gives us (i) an exact semantics for belief reports; as well as plausible accounts of both (ii) epistemic closure and (iii) contradictory beliefs. In particular, it allows us to analyze knowledge in terms of explanatory connections between truthmakers and beliefs, on the one hand; and between truthmakers and successful actions based on the belief, on the other. The analysis shows promise, not just in that it enables us to avoid Gettier-style counterexamples, but also in that it gives a contextualist solution to, among other things, the argument from ignorance and the lottery paradox in terms of contrastive explanations.