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Meaning Meeting - Chenhao Lu / Is modal knowledge factive?

Very close portrait of a young man, looking straight at the camera.

Meaning Meeting - Chenhao Lu / Is modal knowledge factive?

Linguistics | Philosophy Wednesday, November 6, 2024 9:30 am - 10:45 am Marie Mount Hall, 1108B

Wednesday November 6, Chenhao Lu leads the Meaning Meeting with his thoughts on whether modal knowledge is factive, abstracted below.


In A Paradox of Modal Knowledge, Seth Yalcin presents a novel argument against the factivity of knowledge ascriptions. In this talk, I will argue that his argument fails by 

  1. Introducing Yalcin's argument for an incompatibility result between the following two principles about knowledge (where K is the knowledge operator and ♢ is the epistemic possibility operator):
    Factivity (F): For all ϕ, Kϕ |= ϕ
    Decisiveness (D): For nonmodal ϕ, Kϕ ∨ K¬ϕ |= K¬( ♢ ϕ ∧ ♢¬ϕ)
  2.  Introducing Yalcin's case for dropping (F),
     
  3. Putting forward a principle about knowledge, Quinean Question-Sensitivity; then showing that once this principle is adopted there will be no conflict between (F) and (D).
Add to Calendar 11/06/24 09:30:00 11/06/24 10:45:00 America/New_York Meaning Meeting - Chenhao Lu / Is modal knowledge factive?

Wednesday November 6, Chenhao Lu leads the Meaning Meeting with his thoughts on whether modal knowledge is factive, abstracted below.


In A Paradox of Modal Knowledge, Seth Yalcin presents a novel argument against the factivity of knowledge ascriptions. In this talk, I will argue that his argument fails by 

  1. Introducing Yalcin's argument for an incompatibility result between the following two principles about knowledge (where K is the knowledge operator and ♢ is the epistemic possibility operator):
    Factivity (F): For all ϕ, Kϕ |= ϕ
    Decisiveness (D): For nonmodal ϕ, Kϕ ∨ K¬ϕ |= K¬( ♢ ϕ ∧ ♢¬ϕ)
  2.  Introducing Yalcin's case for dropping (F),
     
  3. Putting forward a principle about knowledge, Quinean Question-Sensitivity; then showing that once this principle is adopted there will be no conflict between (F) and (D).
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