Actions that make us know

Authors
Publication date 2009
Host editors
  • J. Salerno
Book title New essays on the knowability paradox
ISBN
  • 9780199285495
Pages (from-to) 129-146
Number of pages 373
Publisher Oxford: Oxford University Press
Organisations
  • Interfacultary Research - Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC)
Abstract
The knowability paradox is usually formulated as a problem about the static propositions which express the knowledge that we can achieve in principle. In this paper, I propose to put these issues in a more 'dynamic' light, by shifting the emphasis to the epistemic actions that produce knowledge, or sometimes even ignorance. The very notion of 'knowability' seems mainly an existentially quantified residue of knowledge-producing actions, just as 'provability' is the static property of propositions that remains when we suppress their live proof and its production. In particular, can every static proposition which is true trigger a dynamic action of announcing that it is true, or of learning that truth? Keeping track of what actions do over time is notoriously difficult, as the truth values of relevant propositions keep changing in processes of computation, physical movement, games, or communication. We discuss some basic issues that arise when we place 'knowability' in a setting of one or more epistemic agents performing a possible variety of epistemic actions.
Document type Chapter
Published at http://www.illc.uva.nl/Publications/ResearchReports/PP-2007-10.text.pdf
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