Knowing What an Experience Is Like and the Reductive Theory of Knowledge‐wh

Analytic Philosophy 61 (3):252-275 (2019)
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Abstract

This article discusses a kind of knowledge classifiable as knowledge-wh but which seems to defy analysis in terms of the standard reductive theory of knowledge-wh ascriptions, according to which they are true if and only if one knows that p, where this proposition is an acceptable answer to the wh-question ‘embedded’ in the ascription. Specifically, it is argued that certain cases of knowing what an experience is like resist such treatment. I argue that in some of these cases, one can know that p, where an acceptable answer to the question ‘What’s the experience like?’ is that p, but where one does not know what the experience is like. This could point to the distinctiveness of this sort of knowledge.

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Kevin Lynch
Huaqiao University

Citations of this work

Qualia: The Knowledge Argument.Martine Nida-Rumelin - 2002 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Knowing What It's Like.Andrew Y. Lee - 2023 - Philosophical Perspectives 37 (1):187-209.

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References found in this work

Epiphenomenal qualia.Frank Jackson - 1982 - Philosophical Quarterly 32 (April):127-136.
Language, Truth, and Logic.A. J. Ayer - 1936 - Philosophy 23 (85):173-176.
Why Suspend Judging?Jane Friedman - 2017 - Noûs 51 (2):302-326.
Consciousness and Experience.William G. Lycan - 1996 - Philosophy 72 (282):602-604.
The Blue and Brown Books.Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1958 - Philosophy 34 (131):367-368.

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