Reducing Contrastive Knowledge

Erkenntnis 86 (6):1547-1565 (2019)
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Abstract

According to one form of epistemic contrastivism, due to Jonathan Schaffer, knowledge is not a binary relation between an agent and a proposition, but a ternary relation between an agent, a proposition, and a context-basing question. In a slogan: to know is to know the answer to a question. I argue, first, that Schaffer-style epistemic contrastivism can be semantically represented in inquisitive dynamic epistemic logic, a recent implementation of inquisitive semantics in the framework of dynamic epistemic logic; second, that within inquisitive dynamic epistemic logic, the contrastive ternary knowledge operator is reducible to the standard binary one. The reduction shows, I argue, that Schaffer’s argument in favor of contrastivism is compatible with a binary picture of knowledge. This undercuts the force of the argument in favor of contrastivism.

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Michael Cohen
Tilburg University

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References found in this work

Inquisitive Semantics.Ivano Ciardelli, Jeroen Groenendijk & Floris Roelofsen - 2018 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Edited by J. A. G. Groenendijk & Floris Roelofsen.
Knowing the Answer.Jonathan Schaffer - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2):383-403.
From contextualism to contrastivism.Jonathan Schaffer - 2004 - Philosophical Studies 119 (1-2):73-104.

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