“Knows” – Monograph Outline

1. Section: Epistemological Problems as Modal Claims

1.1. Epistemological Problems and Paradoxes
This chapter draws from the first chapter of my PhD. It will be extended however, to touch upon the debate surrounding internalism/externalism in epistemology. The central outcome of this chapter is to set the stage.(Draft-stage)
1.2. Skeptical Counterclaims as Possibilities
This chapter draws on chapter 4 of my PhD and on the journal article ‘modal analysis of the skeptical paradox and the Gettier-problem’ (submitted). Essintially, it is argued here that many epistemological paradoxes owe their force to a specific type of possibility. I will extend this chapter to include the lottery-paradox and a reaction to John Hawthorne’s (forthcoming monograph 2004) discussion on his ‘lottery proposition’.(draft)

2. Section: Knowledge Attribution - Assertion and Content

2.1. Knowledge Attributions as Assertions
In this chapter I argue that associating knowledge attributions with assertions is a mistake, because it confuses assertability conditions with truth-conditions. It will also be argued that despite the fact that knowledge attributions and assertions ought to be kept separate, assertion as a norm for knowledge is plausible because this is essentially a meta-epistemic norm . (In progress)
2.2. Criticism of Invariantism
In this chapter I will argue that the invariantist claim, that sentences of the form ‘S knows p’ express a definite truth-condition independently of the context of utterance, is not persuasive and ought to be rejected. The evidence for my claim comes from thought-experiments familiar from the writings surroundinng deomonstratives and from observations concerning the hearer’s understanding. (In progress )
2.3. Knowledge Attributions as Contents
In this chapter I explain and defend a theory of the content of knowledge attributions. According to this account knowledge attributions express truth-conditions that contain a ‘semantic hole’ that can be filled with the hearer’s/speaker’s presuppositions. So, it will be argued, following certain views of belief-attributions, that sentences of the from ‘S knows p’ are semantically indeterminate in that they do not express complete truth-conditions outside the context of utterance. (based on the 3^rd chapter of my PhD, draft)

3. Section: Epistemology versus a Theory of Properties of Knowledge Attributions

In this last section I lay out the background conception that emerges from the detailed discussion in the above chapters. I will argue that most of traditional epistemology, internalism vs. externalism for instance, is conducted as comparable to normative ethics. These debates turn on arguments that essentially concern a subject’s epistemic duties and different intuitions and philosophical accounts concerning those duties. Debates highlighted in this book, such as contextualism vs. invariantism are debates that turn on exactly what are taken to be conditions under which tokenings of 'S knows p' or 'S's evidence is good enough for knowledge' express a content or proposition. Traditional epistemological debates have skipped this discussion and rather been arguing when those sentences are true/false. However, as the recent debate shows, an attitude towards the truth-conditions ought to guide these arguments. This section draws heavily upon the distinction between normative ethics and meta-ethics and from an application of this distinction to Epistemology. (In progress)