Phenomenology, anti‐realism, and the knowability paradox

Abstract

AbstractHusserl endorses ideal verificationism, the claim that there is a necessary correlation between truth and the ideal possibility of experience. This puts him in the company of semantic anti‐realists like Dummett, Tennant, and Wright who endorse the knowability thesis that all truths are knowable. Unfortunately, there is a simple, seductive, and troubling argument due to Alonzo Church and Frederic Fitch that the knowability thesis collapses into the omniscience thesis that all truths are known. Phenomenologists should be worried. I assess the damage by surveying responses that may be open to Husserl. In particular, I explore whether Husserl ought to have adopted intuitionistic logic and motivate a restriction of ideal verificationism on phenomenological grounds.