When I say ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’, I seem to express a proposition. And when I say ‘Joan believes that Hesperus is Phosphorus’, I seem to ascribe to Joan an attitude to the same proposition. But what are propositions? And what is involved in ascribing propositional attitudes?

This paper presents a generalized form of Fitch's paradox of knowability, with the aim of showing that the questions it raises are not peculiar to the topics of knowledge, belief, or other epistemic notions. Drawing lessons from the generalization, the paper offers a solution to Fitch's paradox that exploits an understanding of modal talk about what could be known in terms of capacities to know. It is argued that, in rare cases, one might have the capacity to know that p (...) even if it is metaphysically impossible for anyone to know that p, and that recognizing this fact provides the resources to solve Fitch's paradox. (shrink)

Fitch’s argument purports to show that for any unknown truth, p , there is an unknowable truth, namely, that p is true and unknown; for a contradiction follows from the assumption that it is possible to know that p is true and unknown. In earlier work I argued that there is a sense in which it is possible to know that p is true and unknown, from a counterfactual perspective; that is, there can be possible, non-actual knowledge, of the actual (...) situation, that in that situation, p is true and unknown. Here I further elaborate that claim and respond to objections by Williamson, who argued that there cannot be non-trivial knowledge of this kind. I give conditions which suffice for such non-trivial counterfactual knowledge. (shrink)