Abstract

This chapter examines the challenge posed to undermining defeat by ‘level-splitting’ views according to which it is sometimes rational for one to be in in epistemically akratic combination of states, say, maintaining the belief that p while also holding that one’s evidence does not support that p. This chapter argues against such level-splitting views by developing arguments already in the literature that such views lead to problematic practical and theoretical reasoning. It then turns to examine and reject arguments for level-splitting views based on 1) the possibility of justified false beliefs about one’s epistemic standing; and 2) the possibility of evidence being misleading about itself. Together with chapter 5, this chapter completes the defence of the phenomenon of defeat, and thus of the conclusion that closure fails because of defeat quite independently of the debate between infallibilism and fallibilism.