Knowledge is Closed Under Analytic Content

Abstract

I am concerned with epistemic closure—the phenomenon in which some knowledge requires other knowledge. In particular, I defend a version of the closure principle in terms of analyticity; if an agent S knows that p is true, then S knows that all analytic parts of p are true as well. After targeting the relevant notion of analyticity, I argue that this principle accommodates intuitive cases and possesses the theoretical resources to avoid the preface paradox. I close by arguing that contextualists who maintain that knowledge attributions are closed within—but not between—linguistic contexts are tacitly committed to this principle’s truth

Author's Profile

Samuel Elgin
University of California, San Diego

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2019-02-21

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