Online research in philosophy

The Church-Fitch argument, or ‘paradox’ of knowability, apparently shows that, if all truths are knowable, then all truths are known. As some truths are unknown, anti-realists who hold that truths must be knowable have been at pains to block the argument. Here, I consider two such approaches: denying that knowledge distributes over conjunction, and moving to a typed logic. I argue that neither approach works. I first show that a Church-Fitch argument can be run with an assumption weaker than distribution (...) of knowledge over conjunction. I then argue that a modified Church-Fitch argument can be constructed in a typed logic. So neither approach will help those who hold that all truths are knowable. (shrink)

The paper discusses whether there are strictly inexpressible properties. Three main points are argued for: (i) Two different senses of ‘predicate t expresses property p ’ should be distinguished. (ii) The property of being a predicate that does not apply to itself is inexpressible in one of the senses of ‘express’, but not in the other. (iii) Since the said property is related to Grelling’s Antinomy, it is further argued that the antinomy does not imply the non-existence of that property.

I defend Frank Jackson's knowledge argument against physicalism in the philosophy of mind from a criticism that has been advanced by Laurence Nemirow and David Lewis. According to their criticism, what Mary lacked when she was in her black and white room was a set of abilities; she did not know how to recognize or imagine certain types of experience from a first-person perspective. Her subsequent discovery of what it is like to experience redness amounts to no more than her (...) acquisition of these abilities. The physicalist can admit this, since it does not commit one to the view that there are any facts of which Mary was ignorant (in spite of her exhaustive knowledge of truths about the physical world). I argue against this view, on the grounds that the knowledge of what an experience is like cannot be equated with the possession of any set of abilities. (shrink)