On the assumption that "implicate" means something like "imply," I maintain
that the claim that if you say "I know" you implicate that you cannot be wrong
is false. And this for propositional, procedural and familial senses of "I
know." Any knowledge claim must in principle be able to be false (or be able to
be true.) That is why we must provide reasons or evidence for them.
Epistemically, any such claim CAN be false (wrong), but in saying "I know that"
we imply that we ARE not mistaken. If a proposition CANNOT be false, it CANNOT
be an object of knowledge-that. If a knowledge claim is false, then it is a
proposition.
This is why, I believe, that Witters maintained, over some very nice brie at
Malcolm's home, that Moore knew nothing when he did his hand waving routine in
attempting to prove the reality of an external world. We don't doubt "riverbed"
propositions and if we did, all epistemic hell would break loose. Witters
suggested Moore would do better by asserting "Salzburg is in between Munch and
Vienna." Such an assertion CAN be false, and because it can we may
intelligibly say that it ain't false. And indeed it ain't so.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
In the Canadian vernacular,
Walter O
Newfoundland, Canada
Quoting dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx:
In a message dated 7/30/2015 2:30:07 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"[Speranza's] attribution to Popper of "Everything can be denied", and its
contrasting with "Anything may be denied" (which might be taken by some to
have the same sense, as "Everything" is composed of every "Anything"), is
opaque - the shift in sense from "can" to "may" is opaque, and even the
notion of "denied" is opaque."
Well, we were recently discussing 'couth' and 'uncouth', which is cognate
with English 'can' and German 'kennen'. So it might be said that the
distinction between 'can' and 'may' can be made clear:
'can' applies best to 'capacities', as when you ask, "Do you ken, i.e. can,
John Peele?".
'may' is more related to a potency or power, as in 'right is might", or
'might is right' -- "might" being cognate with 'may'.
A purist would say that it MIGHT rain, but not that it COULD rain, because
'it' (the weather, that is) doesn't 'know' (nicht kennen), whereas it (the
weather) might display some might.
As to the distinction between 'everything' and 'anything' it indeed might
(or could?) become otiose once we formalise it in quantificational logic.
McEvoy continues:
"Put another way, it may be denied that the sentence "Everything can be
denied" can be found in Popper's work. What Popper does maintain is that
there
is no infallible knowledge, and so any knowledge-claim may be false in
this fallibilistic sense. In other words, Popper maintains (and clearly
states) that all knowledge is conjectural."
-- which is what irritated Harnish in "Logical form and implicature",
because the standard Oxonian (rather than continental, alla Popper) analysis
of
'know' is JTB (_pace_ Gettier, with restricted clause): i.e. people like
Harnish use 'know' when they want to display their highest possibly
certainty
about something. In Griceian terms, there is a sort of a scale:
<know, believe>
If you say, "I know" you IMPLICATE that you cannot be wrong. If you say "I
believe" you don't. As Grice would say, "How clever language is". Popper's
analysis leaves unanswered the question as to why English would care to
distinguish between 'know' and 'believe', but I grant that Austrian
vernaculars (such as Popper spoke) are not my _forte_.
Cheers,
Speranza
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