Knowing‐‘wh’, Mention‐Some Readings, and Non‐Reducibility

This article presents a new criticisms of reductive approaches to knowledge‐‘ wh ’ (i.e., those approaches on which whether one stands in the knowledge‐‘ wh ’ relation to a question is determined by whether one stands in the knowledge‐‘ that ’ relation to some answer(s) to the question). It argues in particular that the truth of a knowledge‐‘ wh ’ attribution like ‘ Janna knows where she can buy an Italian newspaper ’ depends not only on what Janna knows about the availability of Italian newspapers, but on what she believes about the matter. This dependence of Janna's knowledge‐‘ wh ’ on her (possibly false) beliefs is incompatible with the reductive approach.