[lit-ideas] Re: Disimplicatures of "Know"
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2014 04:12:54 -0800 (PST)
Well, I suspect that the English verb 'know' is indeed polysemous. In fact,
every language I 'know' other than English has a different verb for personal
knowledge from that which is used for propositional knowledge. In Serbian, it
is 'poznavati' vs. 'znati,' in Italian it is 'conoscere' vs. 'sapere' etc. But
we are now discussing propositional knowledge so we will leave that aside.
The reason I brought up negative forms is that it seems to me that JTB theory
has problems in accounting for these which are not apparent with the
affirmative forms. Let us assume that Bill is a history scholar who doesn't
believe that the Battle of Trafalgar took place in 1805; say that he has strong
evidence suggesting that it took place in 1804, or in 1806. JTB theory seems to
predict that, since one of its necessary conditions (belief) is absent, we
should now be able and willing to say:
Bill doesn't know that the Battle of Trafalgar took place in 1805.
But in fact, such usage seems odd and misleading in the context; much more
likely I would say "Bill doesn't think that...etc"
Now let us assume that Tom is a high school student, and we say that:
Tom doesn't know that the Battle of Trafalgar took place in 1805.
JTB theory would seem to predict that, since knowledge is absent, at least one
of its necessary conditions for knowledge must be missing here, but which one
is it ? It doesn't seem to be either truth or belief or justification; most
likely Tom simply hasn't got the relevant information, or forgot it.
O.K.
On Sunday, January 12, 2014 12:18 PM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
In a message dated 1/11/2014 1:53:15 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Denial of knowledge might also be an interesting case for JL to play with.
Let's see: I don't know that Stockholm is the capital of Sweden; I don't
know that the Battle of Trafalgar took place in 1805. Such statements would
seem odd, for if I didn't know that, how was I able to say it ? First
person present tense usage of negation of 'know that' is seemingly
problematic.
Future tense too: Tomorrow I'll know that that the Battle of Trafalgar took
place in 1805. Can it be that I don't know it now ? But to take a little
more serious example, if I say: He doesn't know that the Battle of Trafalgar
took place in 1805; He doesn't know that force equals mass times
acceleration. It might be awkward to explain in terms of JTB theory what is
being
denied here. Most likely I am not denying that it is true, and most likely I
am not talking about lack of justification. So, that leaves us with belief,
but surely I am not saying that he was told that the Battle of Trafalgar
took place in 1805 and refused to believe it?
Well, there are a couple of points that may merit separate treatment.
(i) I would think, as I did in my post "Knowing that and Ignoring Whether"
that
'ignore whether'
is more correct than
"don't know that".
(ii) Negation can be a 'bother', as some might say.
Strictly
~K
provided
K iff JTB
may apply to each component.
And even further consider:
A: I'm being very republican, you know.
B: You are!
A: But I trust the king of France doesn't know that!
B: He doesn't. He does not exist.
Cfr.
B: I trust the King of France ignores that.
B: He does. He does not exist.
----
So, in an ascription of knowledge, the first item that may fall under the
scope of negation is the existence of the alleged knower.
Harnish discusses cases like:
A: I did not know you were pregnant.
B: You still don't.
In this case, Harnish notes, the implicature is that A is NOT pregnant:
i.e. the negation of a claim to knowledge is understood as a negation to a
claim to the truth of what is alleged to be known.
----
(iii) first versus other persons. Omar is right that there seems to be an
asymmetry, which should never amount to polysemy, though, about the
first-person use of "I know" (or "I ignore" for that matter) and third and
second
person uses. Note incidentally, the ubiquitousness of "you know" in
conversation, but the almost lack of "you don't know".
(iv) Re: (ii), it may be useful to be reminded that Grice once coined what
he called a square-bracket device to represent the immunity of negation on
context.
Thus, he does not know that p.
Or It is not the case that he knows that p.
may receive the treatment at least as follows:
K iff JTB
~K = ~[JT]B
-- in the context above, it is the BELIEF bit that is negated, not the
'justification' nor the 'truth'.
~K = ~[J]T[B]
-- in the context above, what is immune to negation is the justified and
belief bit. The truth is denied.
Finally:
~K = ~ J[TB]
-- in the context, which seems the most common, what is immune to negation
is the truth and the belief part; and the negation applies to the
justification bit.
Grice calls the items inside the square-brackets as having attained -- for
the purposes of the conversation -- what he calls a 'common ground status'.
(iv) It may do to relate Omar's examples above to scientists. Popper seems
to value (in "Sources of Ignorance and Knowledge") what Newton ignored.
Popper quotes from Ramsey to the effect that the heavens (or skies) are so
vast (a point also made by Geary) that what Newton ignored by far exceeded
what he KNEW. Popper is less clear as to what Eddington IGNORES (after all,
Popper's main point is that we are aware of what Newton ignored because of
Eddington's experiments). I submit that there was some bit of a defence (or
defense or even praise) of ignorance on Popper's part -- his focus on
'ignorance whether' rather than 'knowledge-that' (even, to use McEvoy's and
Popper's parlance, 'objective-knowledge-that).
(v) Grice discusses bits of this in terms of (a) 'neg-raising' (the
implicature of "He knows that not-p" becoming "He doesn't know that p", and the
prevalence of this in conversation, even in the first person) and (b)
factiveness in the words of the Kiparskys (that he quotes): "He doesn't know
that
p", or "he doesn't realise that p" or "He he didn't discover that..." carry
'factive' implicatures which should be treated on a case-by-case basis and
in terms of their embedded contexts. Grice's favourite was "regret" ("He
didn't regret his father's death", "He knew he regretted his father's dead",
"He believed he knew he regretted his father's dead"). Another 'discover':
Captain Cook didn't discover that p, because p wasn't the case. And so on.
(vi) Other. And Etc. Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
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