The Knowability Paradox and Unsuccessful Updates

Sundholm’s Paradox of Knowability: A Novel Paradox?

In this paper I take a closer look at a recently published paradox by Göran Sundholm involving the notion of knowability. I point out that this paradox is not a novel, genuine paradox, but rather an important variant of the Knower Paradox. I briefly discuss further variations of the Knower Paradox, and in a final section I try to show that it is not unproblematic to assume that knowability is f...

New Essays on the Knowability Paradox

A Solution to Fitch' Paradox of Knowability

There is an argument (first presented by Fitch), which tries to show by formal means that the anti-realistic thesis that every truth might possibly be known, is equivalent to the unacceptable thesis that every truth actually is known (at some time in the past, present or future). First, the argument is presented and some proposals for the solution of Fitch’s Paradox are briefly discussed. Then,...

The Paradox of Knowability and Semantic Anti-Realism

ing away from its implications for knowledge and knowability, at least to begin with. He thinks that once this is done, Fitch’s result is only initially surprising; for it is clear that the result is derived simply because truth-entailing operators can be used to construct self-refuting expressions. Mackie gives the following example to illustrate this: Let J be an operator variable that has an...

The Knowability Paradox: does logic come before metaphysics?

The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument which states that if all truths are knowable, then all truths are actually known. In 1963 Frederich Fitch published ‘A Logical Analysis of Some Value Concepts’[3]. This brief article appeared on the Journal of Symbolic Logic and it immediately became a classic of philosophical logic. It is in this paper that Fitch presented the Knowability Paradox, ...