Formalizing the Epistemic Truth-Justification Disconnect: Top-Down Text Parsing and Sensitivity Failure Under Testimonial and Deductive Constraints
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: We formalize an epistemic agent evaluating an invariant inscription across possible worlds within a standard Kripke–Lewis modal framework. Two distinct orientations are investigated: an agent whose testimonial warrant supervenes upon macro-institutional evidence states and peer accreditation, versus an autonomous deductive agent driven by consistency restoration over a world-responsive premise set. Tracking fails. Whenever the target proposition is contingent, the Limit Assumption holds, and the justification base exhibits emergent modal rigidity—stemming either from institutional hysteresis (the sociotechnical inertia of citation virality) or syntactic underdetermination relative to micro-facts—sensitivity collapses. The divergence between standard justification J and tracking justification J* reveals the Gettier problem not as an accidental counterexample, but as the mathematical price of reducing epistemic warrant to closed syntactic operations or institutional pedigree. This formally recovers the aporetic core preserved in Plato's Theaetetus.
Author: Oompkens, Oswald
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225076707