Abstract

This paper addresses the question whether future contingents are knowable, that is, whether one can know that things will go a certain way even though it is possible that things will not go that way. First I will consider a long-established view that implies a negative answer, and draw attention to some endemic problems that affect its credibility. Then I will sketch an alternative line of thought that prompts a positive answer: future contingents are knowable, although our epistemic access of them is limited in some important respects.

Highlights

  • Let us start with two simple observations that may look obvious to anyone who is not familiar with the subleties of the debate on future contingents

  • Suppose that you got a ticket for a movie and you are talking with a friend who might be interested in joining you

  • The difference problem may be phrased in general terms as follows: if the ascriptions of knowledge involving future contingents are all false, what explains the intuitive difference between the cases in which it seems that we know that things will go a certain way and those in which it seems that we lack such knowledge

Read more

Summary

The knowability thesis

Let us start with two simple observations that may look obvious to anyone who is not familiar with the subleties of the debate on future contingents. You are fairly confident that the movie will start at 9 p.m., given that you can trust your eyesight, you reasonably believe that the information on the ticket is reliable, and so on This makes it plausible to say that you know (2). (3) In about 10 min he will go out Apparently, Mrs Green has a justification for thinking that Mr Brown will show up as expected: she is aware that Mr Brown is methodical, she has observed many of his past walks, and so on This makes it plausible to say that Mrs Green knows (3). A third option is to define assertibility in terms of knowledge, by saying that one can assert p only if one knows p.6 In each of these three cases, (K) warrants (A), in that. It will suffice to observe that there is an interesting parallelism between the issue of knowledge and the issue of assertibility

Incompatibilism and the difference problem
Different content
Different state or property
Ignored possibilities
Ockhamism
The metaphor of openness
True ascriptions of knowledge
Reasonable ascriptions of knowledge
10 The KK principle
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call