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Outline

Knowledge de re , Identity, And Games Of Imperfect Information

2000

Abstract

Under its most fair-spoken interpretation, a form of knowledge that is known as de re knowledge means that an individual is picked in epistemic alternatives so that the identity of alternatives is not known to one who is making these choices. However, if individuals can be chosen outright, so that a sentence including some propositional attitudes such as knowledge or belief becomes true, these individuals have to be taken as being the same across the alternatives, experiencing only their local manifestations or aspects in some particular alternatives. It is this interpretation that amounts to de re or specific reading of knowledge, and its logic can be implemented in game-theoretic semantics, where the relevant games are of imperfect information, and the syntax is an intensionalised version of Hintikka-Sandu independence-friendly (IF) first-order logic. The interpretation cannot operate independently of the issues concerning the identification of objects in a semantic theory. The identification semantics is here taken to include a number of cognitively meaningful modes, with repercussions to so-called puzzles of beliefs.