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Knowing the Answer
Author(s) -
SCHAFFER JONATHAN
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00081.x
Subject(s) - interrogative , complement (music) , epistemology , psychology , computer science , philosophy , linguistics , biochemistry , chemistry , complementation , gene , phenotype
“ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’ is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.”
(Kenny Rogers) How should one understand knowledge‐ wh ascriptions? That is, how should one understand claims such as “I know where the car is parked,” which feature an interrogative complement? The received view is that knowledge‐ wh reduces to knowledge that p , where p happens to be the answer to the question Q denoted by the wh ‐clause. I will argue that knowledge‐ wh includes the question—to know‐ wh is to know that p , as the answer to Q . I will then argue that knowledge‐ that includes a contextually implicit question. I will conclude that knowledge is a question‐relative state . Knowing is knowing the answer, and whether one knows the answer depends (in part) on the question.