Counterfactual Knowledge, Factivity, and the Overgeneration of Knowledge
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Counterfactual Knowledge, Factivity, and the Overgeneration of Knowledge Jan Heylen1 Received: 17 September 2019 / Accepted: 22 July 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Antirealists who hold the knowability thesis, namely that all truths are knowable, have been put on the defensive by the Church–Fitch paradox of knowability. Rejecting the non-factivity of the concept of knowability used in that paradox, Edgington has adopted a factive notion of knowability, according to which only actual truths are knowable. She has used this new notion to reformulate the knowability thesis. The result has been argued to be immune against the Church–Fitch paradox, but it has encountered several other triviality objections. Schlöder in a forthcoming paper defends the general approach taken by Edgington, but amends it to save it in turn from the triviality objections. In this paper I will argue, first, that Schlöder’s justification for the factivity of his version of the concept of knowability is vulnerable to criticism, but I will also offer an improved justification that is in the same spirit as his. To the extent that some philosophers are right about our intuitive concept of knowability being a factive one, it is important to explore factive concepts of knowability that are made formally precise. I will subsequently argue that Schlöder’s version of the knowability thesis overgenerates knowledge or, in other words, it leads to attributions of knowledge where there is ignorance. This fits a general pattern for the research programme initiated by Edgington. This paper also contains preliminary investigations into the internal and logical structure of lines of inquiries, which raise interesting research questions.
1 Introduction Antirealists, including idealists, verificationists and intuitionists, are of the view that all truths are knowable (Hart and McGinn 1976; Hart 1979; Dummett 1991; Tennant 1997). Call this the knowability thesis. The latter has been challenged by the Research for this article was generously sponsored by the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders (Project Grant G088219N), which is gratefully acknowledged. * Jan Heylen [email protected] 1
Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Andreas Vesaliusstraat 2, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
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so-called Church–Fitch paradox of knowability (Fitch 1963), which starts from the aforementioned view and leads to the claim that all truths are known, which is utterly implausible. It has been questioned whether the concept of knowability that is used in the Church–Fitch paradox is a good one, since it is non-factive (i.e. knowable falsehoods are possible). It has been argued that our intuitive concept of knowability is factive (Brogaard and Salerno 2006; Fuhrmann 2014) or, in other words, that only truths are knowable. Moreover, Kvanvig (1995) has pointed out that, given that antirealists want to define truth as knowability, they can only accept a factive notion of knowability. In response, Edgin
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