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Knowledge‐ wh and the Problem of Convergent Knowledge
Author(s) -
KALLESTRUP JESPER
Publication year - 2009
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.1933-1592.2009.00251.x
Subject(s) - ascription , proposition , relation (database) , epistemology , psychology , computer science , philosophy , database
Call knowledge where so‐and‐so, knowledge who so‐and‐so, etc., knowledge‐wh . The reductive view says that knowledge‐ wh reduces to the two‐place knowledge relation Ksp. Schaffer (2007) argues that this view has no viable response to the problem of convergent knowledge: how can a knowing‐ wh ascription be reduced to a Ksp ascription if a second knowing‐ wh ascription intuitively inequivalent to the first can be reduced to the same Ksp ascription? Instead he suggests that knowledge‐ wh be understood as a three‐place knowledge relation Kspq, where q is a contextually salient contrast proposition. I argue firstly that once we realise that wh ‐questions can have more than one true answer, the reductivist has an obvious response to this problem. Secondly, I pose a revenge problem for Schaffer’s contrastivist alternative: how can a knowing‐ wh ascription be reduced to a Kspq ascription if a second knowing‐ wh ascription intuitively equivalent to the first can be reduced to a distinct Kspq ascription?