Contrastivism about knowledge is the view that one does not just know some proposition. It is more adequate to say that one knows something rather than something else: I know that I am looking at a tree rather than a bush but I do not know that I am looking at a tree rather than a cleverly done tree imitation. Knowledge is a three-place relation between a subject, a proposition and a contrast set of propositions. There are several advantages of (...) a contrastivist view but also certain problems with it. (shrink)

I can make no sense of a true, literal application of the notion of proper (nontemporal) components or parts to things that occupy no space. Others apparently can, and some construct elaborate theories of propositional structure… Perhaps I am blind to a possibility that other, cognitively better endowed philosophers see. From my unseeing perspective, though, it is more likely that the appearance of sight deceives.