Does singular thought have an epistemic essence?

Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming)
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Abstract

What is involved in having a singular thought about an ordinary object? On the leading epistemic view, one has this capacity if and only if one has belief-forming dispositions which would reliably enable one to get its properties right (Dickie, 2015). I first argue that Dickie’s official view entails surprising and unpalatable claims about either rationality or singular thought, before offering a precisification. Once we have reached that level of abstraction, it becomes difficult to see what is distinctively epistemic about the framework. If we are to tease out the delicate connection between singular thought and knowledge, we should suspend the assumption that there is a homogeneous core, present in all cases of such thought, and that it is from there that its (univocal) epistemic character derives.

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James Openshaw
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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References found in this work

Mental Files.François Recanati - 2012 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
How to defeat opposition to Moore.Ernest Sosa - 1999 - Philosophical Perspectives 13:137-49.
The Varieties of Reference.Gareth Evans & John Mcdowell - 1986 - Philosophy 61 (238):534-538.
Unreasonable Knowledge.Maria Lasonen-Aarnio - 2010 - Philosophical Perspectives 24 (1):1-21.

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