Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T20:28:47.131Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

FACTIVE VERBS AND PROTAGONIST PROJECTION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2014

Wesley Buckwalter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Nearly all philosophers agree that only true things can be known. But does this principle reflect actual patterns of ordinary usage? Several examples in ordinary language seem to show that ‘know’ is literally used non-factively. By contrast, this paper reports five experiments utilizing explicit paraphrasing tasks, which suggest that these non-factive uses are actually not literal. Instead, they are better explained by a phenomenon known as protagonist projection. It is argued that armchair philosophical orthodoxy regarding the truth requirement for knowledge withstands current empirical scrutiny.

Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 391 - 409
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Armstrong, D. 1969. ‘Does Knowledge Entail Belief?’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 70: 21–36.Google Scholar
Austin, J. L. 1956. ‘A Plea for Excuses.’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 57: 1–30.Google Scholar
Beebe, J. R. 2014. Advances in Experimental Epistemology. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Booth, J. R., Hall, W. S., Robison, G. C., and Kim, S. Y. 1997. Acquisition of the mental state verb know by 2- to 5-year-old children. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26: 581–603. doi: 10.1023/A:1025093906884. CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buckwalter, W. 2010. ‘Knowledge Isn't Closed on Saturdays.’ Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1: 395–406.Google Scholar
Buckwalter, W. 2012. ‘Non-traditional Factors in Judgments about Knowledge.’ Philosophy Compass, 7: 278–289.Google Scholar
Buckwalter, W. and Turri, J. 2014. ‘Telling, Showing and Knowing: A Unified Account of Pedagogical Norms.’ Analysis, 74: 16–20.Google Scholar
Buckwalter, W., Rose, D. and Turri, J. In press. ‘Belief Through Thick and Thin.’ Noû s.Google Scholar
Buckwalter, W. and Turri, J. Under review. ‘Descartes's Schism, Locke's Reunion: Completing the Pragmatic Turn in Epistemology.’Google Scholar
Chisholm, R. 1989. Theory of Knowledge, 3rd edn. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. 1966. ‘More about Knowing and Feeling Sure.’ Analysis, 27: 11–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, S. 1988. ‘How to be a Fallibilist.’ Philosophical Perspectives, 2: 91–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, S. 1999. ‘Contextualism, Skepticism, and the Structure of Reasons.’ Philosophical Perspectives, 13: 57–89.Google Scholar
DeRose, K. 1992. ‘Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52: 913–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeRose, K. 2009. The Case for Contextualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dretske, F. I. 1981. Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fantl, J. and McGrath, M. 2009. Knowledge in an Uncertain World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, R. 2003. Epistemology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Friedman, O. and Turri, J. In press. ‘Is Probabilistic Evidence a Source of Knowledge?’ Cognitive Science.Google Scholar
Goldman, A. I. 1986. Epistemology and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, J. 2004. Knowledge and Lotteries. Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, J. and Stanley, J. 2008. ‘Knowledge and Action.’ Journal of Philosophy, 105: 571–90.Google Scholar
Hazlett, A. 2010. ‘The Myth of Factive Verbs.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 80: 497–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hazlett, A. 2012. ‘Factive Presupposition and the Truth Condition on Knowledge.’ Acta Analytica. Online First: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12136-012-0163-3.Google Scholar
Holton, R. 1997. ‘Some Telling Examples: A Reply to Tsohatzidis.’ Journal of Pragmatics, 28: 624–8.Google Scholar
Jones, O. R. 1971. ‘Knowing and Guessing: By Examples.’ Analysis, 32: 19–23.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, P. and Kiparsky, C. 1971. ‘Fact.’ Reprinted in Steinberg, D. and Jakobovits, L. (eds), Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader, pp. 345–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lehrer, K. 1974. Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. 1996. ‘Elusive Knowledge.’ Reprinted in Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, pp. 418–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Marshall, B. J., Armstrong, J. A., McGechie, D. B., and Glancy, R. J. 1985. ‘Attempt to Fulfill Koch's Postulates for Pyloric Campylobacter.’ Medical Journal of Australia, 142: 436–9.Google Scholar
Moore, G. E. 1942. ‘A Reply to My Critics.’ In Schilpp, P. (ed.), The Philosophy of G.E. Moore, Vol. 2, pp. 533–677. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Murray, D., Sytsma, J. and Livengood, J. 2013. ‘God Knows (but does God Believe?).’ Philosophical Studies, 166: 83–107. doi: 10.1007/s11098-012-0022-5. Google Scholar
Myers-Schulz, B. and Schwitzgebel, E. 2013. ‘Knowing that P without Believing that P.’ Noûs, 47: 371–84.Google Scholar
Nagel, J. 2008. ‘Knowledge Ascriptions and the Psychological Consequences of Changing Stakes.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 86: 279–94.Google Scholar
Nagel, J., Juan, V. S. and Mar, R. A. 2013. ‘Lay Denial of Knowledge for Justified True Beliefs.’ Cognition, 129: 652–61.Google Scholar
Nolan, D. 2008. ‘Non-Factivity About Knowledge: A Defensive Move.’ The Reasoner, 2.11: 6–7.Google Scholar
Nozick, R. 1981. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Phelan, M. 2010. ‘The Inadequacy of Paraphrase is the Dogma of Metaphor.’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 91: 481–506.Google Scholar
Phelan, M., Arico, A. and Nichols, S. 2013. ‘Thinking Things and Feeling Things: On an Alleged Discontinuity in Folk Metaphysics of Mind.’ Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 12: 703–25.Google Scholar
Plato, Cooper, J. M. (ed.), and Hutchinson, D. S. (assoc. ed.) 1997. Plato: Complete Works: Edited with Introduction and Notes. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.Google Scholar
Reid, T. [1785] 2002. Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Brookes, D., ed.). University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, D. and Schaffer, J. 2013. ‘Knowledge Entails Dispositional Belief.’ Philosophical Studies, 166: 19–50.Google Scholar
Ross, W. D. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation, Vol. 2, Barnes, J., ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Russell, B. 1948 [2012]. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rysiew, P. 2001. ‘The Context-Sensitivity of Knowledge Attributions.’ Noûs, 35: 477–514.Google Scholar
Sackris, D. and Beebe, J. 2014. ‘Is Justification Necessary for Knowledge?’ In Beebe, J. R. (ed.), Advances in Experimental Epistemology. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Schaffer, J. 2005. ‘Contrastive Knowledge.’ In Gendler, T. S. & Hawthorne, J. (eds), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, pp. 235–71. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schaffer, J. and Knobe, K. 2012. ‘Contrastivism Surveyed.’ Noûs, 46: 675–708.Google Scholar
Sellars, W. 1963. Science, Perception and Reality. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Shatz, M., Wellman, H. M., and Silber, S. 1983. ‘The Acquisition of Mental Verbs: A Systematic Investigation of the First Reference to Mental State.’ Cognition, 14: 301–21.Google Scholar
Sodian, B. 1988. ‘Children's Attributions of Knowledge to the Listener in a Referential Communication Task.’ Child Development, 59: 378–85.Google Scholar
Sosa, E. 1991. Knowledge in Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stanley, J. 2005. Knowledge and Practical Interests. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Starmans, C. and Friedman, O. 2012. ‘The Folk Conception of Knowledge.’ Cognition, 124: 272–83.Google Scholar
Steup, M. 2006. ‘The Analysis of Knowledge.’ In Zalta, E. N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#IEX.Google Scholar
Stroud, B. 1984. The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Tsohatzidis, S. 2012. ‘How to Forget that ‘Know’ is Factive.’ Acta Analytica. doi: 10.1007/s12136-012-0150-8.Google Scholar
Turri, J. 2011 a. ‘Manifest Failure: The Gettier Problem Solved.’ Philosophers' Imprint, 11.8: 1–11.Google Scholar
Turri, J. 2011 b. ‘Mythology of the Factive.’ Logos & Episteme, 2: 143–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turri, J. 2013. ‘The Test of Truth: An Experimental Investigation of the Norm of Assertion.’ Cognition, 129: 279–91.Google Scholar
Turri, J. Forthcoming. ‘Knowledge as Achievement, More or Less.’ In Fernandez, M. A. (ed.), The Present and Future of Virtue Epistemology.Google Scholar
Turri, J., Buckwalter, W., and Blouw, P. In press. ‘Knowledge and Luck.’ Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.Google Scholar
Vogel, J. 1990. ‘Are there Counterexamples to the Closure Principle?’ In Roth, M. D. and Ross, G. (eds), Philosophical Studies Series, Vol. 48, pp. 13–27. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Buckwalter Supplementary Material

Supplementary Material

Download Buckwalter Supplementary Material(PDF)
PDF 87.6 KB