Comments on: ‘Knowledge’ and its limits

By: Jonny Blamey

Jonny Blamey — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 17:53:48 +0000

I didn’t realise anyone else challenged the factivity of knowledge explicitly, phew! An example of an implicit non factive user of knowledge is Karl Popper, who often and freely talks of “scientific knowledge” but says that most scientists don’t think of their theories as being “true”. The protagonist projection doesn’t quite work here, but the know that/know whether difference does. I think Popper would assent to something like the following: We know that e=mcsquared, but we don’t know whether this is true. I think the analysis of knowledge should come out that knowledge is the end of enquiry, and so is truth. However, enquiries can always be reopened. When we look back at a previous end of enquiry, we can choose to refer to the state of enquiry then, or the state of enquiry now. This is not an ambiguity of the term “know”, just a shifting in the background discourse. When we won’t to refer similtaneously to two states of enquiry, then truth and knowledge come apart. Hence Billy Bragg and the Mountaineer. At that point in the enquiry, the bets were off, I was going to die. Now however, the book has reopened as to whether I will die or not.

By: Allan

Allan — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 21:03:48 +0000

I’m not sure how this connects the rest, but is it clear what’s going on with with expression ‘as far as S knows’? “It” is non-factive (‘As far as we knew, he was the right man for the job’, ‘Nothing ever happened here, as far as anyone else knows’) and one can easily make concessive as-far-as-knowledge attributions (‘As far as I know it’s on Sunday, but I could be wrong’). But to say that p, as far as you know, isn’t just to expression a mere opinion that p; saying that as far as S knows, p, is to say that S bears some epistmeically significant relation to p. (As in ‘As far as I know!’ as a reply to ‘Is that true?’, where it is an assertion of one’s epistemic non-blameworthyness with respect to regarding p as true.)

By: Keith

Keith — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:31:37 +0000

Thanks, David. Gary Ostertag e-mailed me last year to call my attention to that Vlastos paper. What’s really interesting about it (& Gary pointed this out to me) is that, while V ends up using some form of “two senses of ‘know’” theory to reconcile Socrates’ various claims, when V is warming up for his interpretation, and speaking in his own voice, at the paragraph at pp. 11-12, he sounds a lot like a current contextualist, rather than a 2-senses guy.

By: Dsosa

Dsosa — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 09:37:19 +0000

In “Socrates’ Disavowal of Knowledge,” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 138. (Jan., 1985), pp. 1-31, Gregory Vlastos claims to find an ambiguity view in Socrates (as between “certain” knowledge and “elenctic” knowledge). Apology 20D6-E1 is one useful text. It’s probably worth noting that Vlastos overlapped substantially with Malcolm at Cornell. But Socrates did not.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 04:36:03 +0000

Jeremy,

The first two of these involve embedded questions, and the third involves a so-called concealed question, and it’s certainly consistent with the claim that ‘know’ is not factive that it is factive in these cases. That is, it is consistent to claim that ‘know’ behaves just like ‘tell’, non-factive with that-clauses, factive with embedded/concealed questions.

Having said that, I think the embedded questions cases show something. It should be uncontroversial that ‘know’ is factive with embedded questions. (I don’t know what it would even mean to have a non-factive usage of ‘know’ with an embedded question.) But we can have protagonist projection in these cases, even non-obvious protagonist projection. And that makes it (even) more plausible that protagonist projection is what is going on with Allan’s cases.

By: Jeremy Fantl

Jeremy Fantl — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 04:30:08 +0000

Hi Allan,

I confess to not having looked at the paper. I’m just going by the above dialogue snippet, so you may have answers to this already. But does it matter that, when the non-philosophers and students say that the mountain climber surely did know, that people before Ptolemy surely did know, etc., they immediately retract when asked the following question:

So, the mountain climber knew whether he was going to die in 5 minutes?

So, they knew whether the earth revolved around the sun?

So, they knew the shape of the earth?

All of these receive (in my experience) emphatic “no“s. Is this not evidence that “know” is factive?

If you’ve already dealt with this sort of thing, feel free to tell me to shove off.

-j

By: Allan

Allan — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 22:37:11 +0000

There definitely is ‘protagonist projection’ (those aren’t scare quotes, they’re just “I’m not pretending like I’d heard of protagonist protection before” quotes); one of my favorite examples is when secular persons say that such-and-such a day is the “holiest day of the year.” Presumably they don’t think that such-and-such a day really is the holiest day of the year, but just that that is what the people described believe.

Two replies:

1. This one’s not going to convince many, I can tell already, but: ‘saw’ isn’t factive either. After all, the ‘aim of inquiry’ argument that I endorse works for seeing as well, at least when we think of seeing as a way of knowing. (Haven’t thought about this a lot, so this is pretty knee-jerk.)

The same kind of ordinary language evidence that ‘knows’ isn’t factive is there for ‘sees’, so I’d be prepared to say that they stand and fall together. Which brings us to …

2. Are our non-factive uses of ‘knows’ explained by PP? This is something I want to think about more, but my first thought is that they don’t because you don’t get the right answers with requests for straight talk:

A: Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year.
B: What? I didn’t think you believed in any of that stuff …
A: Well, I mean that according to Jewish people it’s the holiest day of the year.

A: I knew that I was going to die, but then I was miraculously rescued.
B: What? You knew you were going to die? But you just said you were rescued.
A: …

It’s not obvious that A needs to retract her first claim to keep conversationally kosher. In talking to people about this, I’ve heard a fair number of people say that the mountain climber surely did know, that people before Ptolemy surely did know, etc., and non-philosophers often wonder what the fuss is about. (This is a species of the same genus that the phenomenon of how hard it is to convince undergrads that knowledge is factive is a species of.) If we’re speaking falsely when we use ‘knows’ non-factively, we don’t know it. But it seems like usually when we’re doing PP, we know it.

But this is a serious concern Brian, thanks. I am prepared to bank quite a bit, however, on the ‘aim of inquiry’ argument…

By: Keith DeRose

Keith DeRose — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 19:18:57 +0000

I also seem to recall some contextualists arguing against ambiguity views on the ground that there should be many more than two senses for ‘knows’, but I can’t remember who says that.

Hi, Brian. Though I don’t argue the point at length, you could be thinking of me here; see section 7 of “Responding to Skepticism” and section 7 of “Contextualism: An Explanation and Defense” (on-line versions of these are available at http://pantheon.yale.edu/~kd47/OLP.htm )

On ambiguity theories (strong vs. weak senses of “knows”), I always cite Norman Malcolm’s 1952 Mind paper, “Knowledge and Belief.” That’s a bit before Hintikka, I think. I too would be interested to learn if there are earlier versions of such a view.