[lit-ideas] Re: The alethic and the epistemic
- From: "Adriano Palma" <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 09:02:04 +0200
** Low Priority **
** Reply Requested by 6/13/2012 (Wednesday) **
that kap entails KKap is false (look at perception)
regards
>>> <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> 13/06/2012 01:51 AM >>>
In a message dated 6/12/2012 4:57:09 A.M. UTC-02,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
a theory of knowledge may include a theory of truth. But, as with Tarski,
we can have a theory of truth without any theory of knowledge - without any
account of how we know or decide whether a proposition is true.
Again, McEvoy is not using the Greek.
Greek lacks an intelligent word for 'true'. "Alethes" sounds childish. --
Yet, Grice was fascinated by von Wright's coinage, 'alethic', and would use
it.
Similarly, the Greeks had problems when categorising 'knowledge'. I think
'epistemic' is that they meant.
Yet, I'm not sure the connection between the dyadic functor,
K(A, p) -- A knows that p.
and the 'true' predicate
relate in obvious ways.
As Phil Enns notes, in another post, to require a 'true' predicate indulges
us in a 'regressus ad infinitum'
p
If p, it is true that p.
If it is true that p, it is true that it is true that p,
and so on.
But similarly with K(A, p) -- as Hintikka -- a Scandinavian philosopher,
like von Wright -- "If I had not been English, I would have been
Scandinavian", Grice once said --.
So,
if A knows that p,
A knows that he knows that p.
----
McEvoy:
"a theory of knowledge may include a theory of truth. But, as with Tarski,
we can have a theory of truth without any theory of knowledge - without any
account of how we know or decide whether a proposition is true."
Note that here McEvoy is rephrasing 'know' with 'decide':
An account of how we KNOW _or decide_ whether a proposition is true.
--- Grice thought that 'know' was overrated.
"In general," Grice writes, Gettier's "theory seems too strong. An
examination candidate at an oral KNOWS the date of the battle of Waterloo. He
may
_know_ this without conclusive evidence; he may even answer after hesitation
(shoing in the end that he does _know_ the answer." He goes on to suggest
a causal theory, where the fact that the Battle of Waterloo was fought on
date D CAUSES the candidate to utter what he (or she) does. (WoW, 53). (cfr.
*)
Cheers,
Speranza
* McEvoy: "What Tarski's theory does not do is tell us how we know or
decide 'what is true': and we might argue it is not the remit of a theory of
truth to answer this, for that we need a 'theory of knowledge'".
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