Knowledge by Indifference

2009

The paper explicates a new way to model the context-sensitivity of 'knows', namely a way that suggests a close connection between the content of 'knows' in a context C and what is pragmatically presupposed in C. After explicating my new approach in the first half of the paper and arguing that it is explanatorily superior to standard accounts of epistemic contextualism, the paper points, in its second half, to some interesting new features of the emerging account, such as its compatibility with the intuitions of Moorean dogmatists. Finally, the paper shows that the account defended is not subject to the most prominent and familiar philosophical objections to epistemic contextualism discussed in the recent literature.

Topoi an International Review of Philosophy, 1994

The intuitionistic conception of truth defended by Dummett, Martin L6f and Prawitz, according to which the notion of proof is conceptually prior I to the notion of truth, is a particular version of the epistemic conception of truth. The paradox of knowability (first published by Frederic Fitch in 1963) has been described by many authors 2 as an argument which threatens the epistemic, and the intuitionistic, conception of truth. In order to establish whether this is really so, one has to understand what the epistemic conception of truth really is. So I shall start in part I with a description of the matter at issue between the epistemic conception of truth and the opposite position, the realistic conception of truth. In part H I shall very briefly describe the paradox. In part I11 1 shall try to answer the question which appears in the title of this paper: "What can we learn from the paradox of knowability?". My conclusion will be that the paradox of knowability is not a refutation of the epistemic conception of truth, but helps us to better formulate (and understand) such a view. I. The matter at issue between realists of different sorts on the one side and supporters of an epistemic conception of reality and truth on the other side is best described as a question concerning what notions one ought to adopt as primitive notions in metaphysics. We can roughly distinguish two families of notions, the ontologic and the epistemic family. The realist will tend to take as primitive some notions of the first family and will maintain that these primitive notions do not presuppose notions concerning our epistemic or linguistic practices. To the ontologic family belong notions like "being", "reality", "object", "world", "fact", "truth". The epistemic philosopher, as I shall call the supporter of an epistemic conception of truth or reality, takes as primitive some notions of the epistemic family.

Mathematical Social Sciences, 2013

In earlier work (Halpern and Rêgo, 2009), we proposed a logic that extends the Logic of General Awareness of Fagin and Halpern (1988) by allowing quantification over primitive propositions. This makes it possible to express the fact that an agent knows that there are some facts of which he is unaware. In that logic, it is not possible to model an agent who is uncertain about whether he is aware of all formulas. To overcome this problem, we keep the syntax of the earlier paper, but allow models where, with each world, a possibly different language is associated. We provide a sound and complete axiomatization for this logic and show that, under natural assumptions, the quantifier-free fragment of the logic is characterized by exactly the same axioms as the logic of Heifetz, Meier, and Schipper (2008). 1 Interestingly, Hintikka (1962) distinguished between a weak and strong sense of knowledge, where, roughly speaking, weak knowledge of ϕ only requires the agent to have the information that ϕ was true, while strong knowledge requires, in addition, justification for the information. As Sillari (2008a) points out, we could view explicit knowledge as strong knowledge and implicit knowledge as weak knowledge, if we interpret awareness as justification (although this is not the spirit in which it is typically interpreted).

2008

Savage (1954) introduced the sure-thing principle in terms of the de- pendence of decisions on knowledge, but gave up on formalizing it in epistemic terms for lack of a formal deflnition of knowledge. Using simple models of knowledge, we examine the sure-thing principle, presenting two ways to capture it. One is in terms of the union of future events, for which we reserve the original name|the sure-thing principle; the other is in terms of the intersection of kens|bodies of agents' knowledge|which we call independence of irrelevant knowledge. We show that the two prin- ciples are equivalent and that the only property of knowledge required for this equivalence is the axiom of truth|the requirement that whatever is known is true. We present a symmetric version of the independence of irrelevant knowledge which is equivalent to the impossibility of agreeing to disagree on the decision made by agents, namely the impossibility of agents making difierent decisions being common knowledge

How much can we turn the screw on counter-examples to the KK principle? The principle, also sometimes called “positive introspection”, says that if one knows that P, one knows that one knows that P. It is widely, although not universally, acknowledged that the KK principle is false, and not just for the boring reason that one can know that P without having formed the belief that one knows that P. One can know that P, and believe that one knows that P, without knowing that one knows that P, because one is not in a strong enough epistemic ...

Philosophical Writings, 2014

It is largely admitted that the tripartite conception as Justified True Belief knowledge implying truth is possible but truth is not recognisable per se, that is, knowledge implying self-awareness of having the truth (which is not to be conflated with certainty) is impossible. Borrowing from the theory of meaning I intend to redefine knowledge with the immanence principle and the implicitness principle, which impose the recognisability of the knowledge conditions. Second, I argue that since truth is not directly recognisable it must be inferred. Hence, knowledge is the product of an inference from a belief and a justification to the truthascription of the henceforth-acknowledged belief. The seminal Gettier problems take thus an almost trivial aspect, or at least it is no obstacle to the possibility of knowledge thus defined.

Analysis, 2011

Philosophia, 2024

Alter (The Matter of Consciousness: From the Knowledge Argument to Russellian Monism, GB: Oxford University Pres, 2023) argues for something surprising: despite being widely rejected by philosophers, including Frank Jackson himself, Jackson's knowledge argument succeeds. Alter's defense of Jackson's argument is not only surprising; it's also exciting: the knowledge argument, if it's sound, underscores the power of armchair philosophy, the power of pure thought to arrive at substantial conclusions about the world. In contrast, I aim to make a case for something unsurprising and unexciting: that the knowledge argument does not succeed, or, even less far-reaching, that Alter's defense of it is not persuasive. Mine is a classic file-drawer thesis, but what it has going for it is that it's true, or so I think, and hope to illustrate why you should too. Keywords Knowledge argument • Frank jackson • Consciousness • Reduction • A priori In The Matter of Consciousness: From the Knowledge Argument to Russellian Monism, Torin Alter argues for something surprising: despite being widely rejected by philosophers, including Frank Jackson himself (1994), Jackson's (1982, 1986) knowledge argument-in essence, that not all facts are physical facts because you cannot learn what the experience of seeing color is like from black and white information-succeeds. Alter's defense of Jackson's argument is not only surprising; it's also exciting: the knowledge argument, if it's sound, underscores the power of armchair philosophy, the power of pure thought to arrive at substantial conclusions about the world. In contrast, I aim to make a case for something unsurprising and unexciting: that the knowledge argument does not succeed, or, even less far-reaching, that

Gilbert Ryle paid close attention to the difference between "knowing that" and "knowing how" in his book "The Concept of Mind." In this study, I focus primarily on the definition of “knowing that”, with the remark that the two concepts of knowledge, in my view, form a strongly dual epistemic relationship. The curiosity of the chosen philosophical problem is given by the talk of lively philosophical-logical debates that emerged after Edmund L. Gettier's short article published in 1963. . (Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?) The "information theory" foundations of knowledge in my view - which have significant ontological implications - are as follows: - Information is not just a socio-cultural phenomenon, but primarily a physical quantity. - The static part of information can be characterized as the Shannon information quantity. - The dynamic of information is generated by the stability and complexity of the space-time structures. - Information is therefore an ’emergent’ quantity. - Information-performance (strength) as a physical quantity can be represented by in the human-social region also as a ‘multivector’ that has components of ‘real-knowledge’ and ‘emotional-impact’. - The knowledge is the ’time-invariant part’ of information-strength. - The ‘separation criteria’ between the ‘real-knowledge’ and the ‘emotional-impact’ can be the stability/instability of the information source, and the evaporation time of the emotional content.

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback), 2008

In this paper I investigate the nature of the concept knowledge. I ask how this concept must be if it is to generate conceptual truths about knowledge, arguing that it must have a set of principles attached to it (a folk theory) that plays a reference-determining role. I then produce evidence that suggests that the folk theory attached to our concept knowledge-our folk epistemology-is inconsistent. If folk epistemology is inconsistent, I conclude, then either there are no conceptual truths about knowledge or any conceptual truths there are will not be a priori knowable.