"Knowledge
of Logical Truth"
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Abstract:
Logical and other necessary truths present a challenge to both
internalist and externalist views of knowledge, for different reasons.
The internalist can’t avoid making it unrealistically difficult
to know obvious logical truths, because he requires awareness of
reasons. The externalist’s main problem is that the necessity of
the logical truth combines with many of the usual externalist standards
to make it far too easy to know a logical truth, even one of arbitrary
complexity. I define an externalist account of knowledge of logical
truth that avoids these problems and takes its bearings from an
externalist account of knowledge of logical implication. Then, to know
a logical truth (that isn’t an implication) it is enough to be
responsive to the fact that the logical truth is implied by every
proposition. Thus, on this view knowing a logical truth is a matter of
being responsive to the special relationship that proposition has to
other propositions in the language. This account implies that logical
truths cannot be known by authority, and provides a neat resolution of
the paradox of entailment.