Abstract

In 1963, Frederic Fitch published a paper in which he attempted to provide a logical analysis of value concepts. Although knowledge was not the primary thrust of this paper, Fitch included knowledge in his discussion of so-called alpha-operators. He pointed out that these value concepts all function in a similar way and have the same general form: ∼alpha. Fitch argued that any statement of this form leads to a contradiction. Fitch's reasoning about value concepts led to his Theorem 5 which states: ;If there is some true proposition which nobody knows to be true, then there is a true proposition which nobody can know to be true.1 ;In other words, if there is at least one fact, the truth of which remains forever unknown, then it is not the case that all truths are knowable even in principle. Fitch's argument was rediscovered and named the "knowability paradox" in 1985 by Dorothy Edgington. ;Most anti-realists endorse the idea that all truths are knowable; hence, Fitch's proof poses a potential threat to epistemic conceptions of truth. Anti-realists have, consequently, treated his result as a paradox and have attempted to show how it may be resolved while leaving much of verificationism intact. To date, there are three classes of proposed solutions: semantic restriction; syntactic restriction and logical revision. In my dissertation, I examine the prospects for each type of solution and argue that they all fail to rescue anti-realism. I conclude that Fitch's proof is not a paradox but, rather, a valid refutation of any form of anti-realism which entails the knowability principle. ;1Frederic B. Fitch, "A Logical Analysis of Some Value Concepts," Journal of Symbolic Logic 28, Issue 2 : 137