[lit-ideas] Re: Agnotology
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:13:42 +0100 (BST)
--- On Tue, 19/4/11, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Indeed, Hintikka, in his "Logic of Knowledge" proposes
> to call "Socrates"
> -- 'the agnotological agent'.
>
> For Hintikka, it is a theorem:
>
> If S knows that p, S knows that he knows that p.
Speaking off the cuff, if this is what Hintikka says, it seems wrong to me:
either the "knows" is a redundancy (with no secondary meaning) or it is a
meta-knowing - a higher level knowing that pertains to some lower level
knowledge about p.
It does not obviously follow, even within a subjectivist theory like 'epistemic
logic', that because 'I know p' I am further aware of having knowledge that 'I
know p' beyond the mere fact of having a mental state that might be described
as 'I know p'. There is an infinite regress looming otherwise: for surely then
if 'I know p' entails 'I know that I know p' it also entails 'I know that I
know that I know p' etc.; and yet 'I know p' is surely a finite mental state
and not one that spins off into infinity.
What might be argued is that I cannot claim both that 'I know p' and that 'I
know that I do not know p'. But this would not mean that 'I know p' entails
some further knowing-state only that it rules out as a further knowing-state
one that it is inconsistent with it. In fact, this is arguably true if we
substitute 'believe' for 'know': I cannot at the same time both 'believe p' and
'believe that I do not believe p'.
Where does this get us though?
Btw, Hintikka is also a defender of inductive logic isn't he? Also btw, for
Popper "epistemic logic" is a subjectivist blunder in the theory of knowledge:
largely irrelevant and point-missing. Btw, so is 'inductive logic' mostly.
Donal
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