Tennant on knowability

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 77, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 422-428

  Hand, Michael ^a   Kvanvig, Jonathan L ^a  

^a Texas AM University

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33745759223     PISSN: 00048402     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00048409912349191     Document Type: Article

References (12)

1. Dorothy Edgington, 'The Paradox of Knowability', Mind 94 (1985), 557-68;
2. Timothy Williamson,'Intuitionism Disproved', Analysis 42 (1982), 203-7;
3. Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Knowability Paradox and the Prospects for Anti-Realism', Nous 29 (1995), 481-500.
4. Neil Tennant, The Taming of the True (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Chapter 8.
5. Hilary Putnam, 'Reference and Truth', in Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 69-86.
6. The idea of existential inconsistency is due to Jaakko Hintikka, 'Cogito Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance', Philosophical Review 72 (1961), 3-32.
7. Tennant uses a distribution principle of epistemic logic that is not universally accepted,K(p&q) ⊢ Kp,though he does not defend the rule at any length. On some theories of knowledge, e.g. Robert Nozick's truth-tracking theory, this principle fails; see his Philosophical Explanations, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), chapter 3.
8. It is worth noting that this principle is not required for the derivation, as is shown by an alternative derivation by Timothy Williamson, 'Verificationism and Non-Distributive Knowledge', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 71 (1993), 78-86.
9. Tennant, p. 274.
10. Tennant, p. 275.
11. Contra Alvin Plantinga, 'How to be an Anti-Realist', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 56, pp. 47-70, where Plantinga argues that antirealism is true precisely because God is necessarily existent and essentially omniscient
12. Tennant, pp. 275-6.