September 11, 2004
Williamson and vagueness
Williamson's theory of vagueness has always struck me as being very odd. Roughly, he holds that we know that there is a clear cut off line between what counts as, say, bold and what counts are not bold, although we don't know which one it is. I understand the considerations that lead him to his theory. For one think he rejects supervaluationism on the grounds that it requires rejection of inference rules. He also thinks that it is incoherent to suppose that vague utterances in borderline cases both say something and fail to be either true or false. Yet his theory struck me as very counter-intuitive. Then one day as I was reading Pascal's wager (I was preparing to teach it) I realized that Pascal gives an example that makes Williamson's theory more digestible, at least for me. Pascal says that we can know that infinite numbers exist without being able to identify them. If we can know that infinite numbers exist without knowing which one they are, it's possible that we can know that there are such clear cut off between what counts as bold and what does not. Who would of thought that Pascal could influence one to accept Williamson's theory! I realize this might not interesting to the already Williamson converts but perhaps it is to the non-believers...
Posted by dgatzia at 11:57 AM | Comments (6)
July 17, 2004
Knowing That and Knowing How
I've begun delving into the literature recently on the difference between knowing that and knowing how (re-delving, actually, but that's neither here nor there). I've been quite surprised to find that it almost all jumps off from Ryle's discussion of the topic in The Concept of Mind which I believe was published @ 1950. I see hardly any mention of this topic other than in response to Ryle, and not much on the topic pre-Ryle. This strikes me as odd for such an important epistemological distinction (I realize that the distinction was recognized, pre-Ryle -- I'm wondering if it was philosophically analyzed). Am I missing a mountain of books/journals/articles out there (perhaps in the non-analytic tradition)? Or did Ryle really essentially begin this discussion?
Posted by dbzdak at 3:59 AM | Comments (11)