We know a lot about what the world is like. We know less, it seems, about what we know about what the world is like. According to a common thought, it is easier for us to come to know about the state of the world than to come to know about the state of our own knowledge. What explains this gap? An attractively simple hypothesis is that our ignorance about what we know is explained by our ignorance about the world. (...) There are things we fail to know about what we know about the world because there are things we fail to know about the world. This hypothesis is often motivated by the idea that knowledge requires a margin‐for‐error. In this paper, I'll argue that this simple hypothesis is inadequate. Not all our ignorance of our knowledge can be explained by our ignorance about the world. In this sense, at least some of our ignorance about what we know is brute. (shrink)

If the semantic values of predicates are, as Williamson assumes (_Philsophical Perspectives,_ _13_, 505–517, 1999, 509) properties in the intensional sense, then epistemicism is immediate. Epistemicism fails, so also this properties account of predicates. I deploy examination of Williamson’s account as a foil against properties as semantic values, showing that his two positive arguments for bivalence fail, as do his efforts to rescue epistemicism from obvious problems. In Part II I argue that, despite the properties account’s problems, it has an (...) important role to play in compositional semantics. We may separate the problem of how smallest parts of language get attached to the world from the problem of how those parts compose to form complex semantic values. For the latter problem we idealize and treat the smallest semantic values as properties (and referents). So doing functions to put to one side how the smallest parts get worldly attachment, a problem that would just get in the way of understanding composition. Attachment to the world must be studied separately, and I review some of the options. As a bonus we see why the requirement of higher order vagueness is an artifact of taking properties as semantic values literally instead of as a simplifying idealization. (shrink)