Edgington on Possible Knowledge of Unknown Truth
Edgington on Possible Knowledge of Unknown Truth
The chapter responds to Dorothy Edgington’s article ‘Possible Knowledge of Unknown Truth’, which defends her seminal diagnosis of the Church–Fitch refutation of verificationist knowability principles. Using counterfactual conditionals, she reformulates those principles to block that objection. The chapter argues that, to avoid trivialization, Edgington must supply a more general constraint on how the knower specifies a counterfactual situation for purposes of her reformulated principles; it is unclear how to do so. The philosophical motivation for her strategy is also questioned, with special reference to her treatment of Putnam’s epistemic account of truth. In passing, it is questioned how dangerous Church–Fitch arguments are for verificationist principles with non-factive evidential attitudes in place of knowledge. Finally, a doubt is raised about the compatibility of Edgington’s reformulation strategy with her view that counterfactual conditionals lack truth-conditions.
Keywords: verificationist, knowability, counterfactual, conditionals, truth, non-factive, Edgington, Church, Fitch, Putnam
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