Abstract
In “Facts: Particulars of Information Units?” (Linguistics and Philosophy 2002), Kratzer proposed a causal analysis of knowledge in which knowledge is defined as a form of de re belief of facts. In support of Kratzer’s view, I show that a certain articulation of the de re/de dicto distinction can be used to integrally account for the original pair of Gettier cases. In contrast to Kratzer, however, I think such an account does not fundamentally require a distinction between facts and true propositions. I then discuss whether this account might be generalized and whether it can give us a reductive analysis of knowledge as de re true belief. Like Kratzer, I think it will not, in particular the distinction appears inadequate to account for Ginet-Goldman cases of causally connected but unreliable belief. Nevertheless, I argue that the de re belief analysis allows us to account for a distinction Starmans and Friedman recently introduced between apparent evidence and authentic evidence in their empirical study of Gettier cases, in a way that questions their claim that a causal disconnect is not operative in the contrasts they found.
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Notes
An alternative would be to use the quantifier \(\exists !x\) with its usual meaning, but it would do less service to use it. We could also use a non-Russellian treatment of the definite description altogether. This does not matter for the main point at issue, so long as the scope relations to be discussed in what follows are operative.
I am assuming a standard quantified epistemic semantics, with a constant domain assumption, where for example \(w\models \exists x B_{s}Sx\) is true provided some element in the domain of w is such that in every possible world \(w'\) compatible with s’s belief, that element falls in the extension of S in \(w'\). See Fitting and Mendelsohn (1998) for details. I am not using Fitting and Mendelsohn’s specific formalism in this paper, based on lambda-abstracts, but one could easily use it. In their framework one may represent the description “the late Prime Minister” by the description
denoting Bannerman in the actual world and Balfour in Ralph’s belief worlds. In their formalism, the de re interpretation of “Ralph believes that the late Prime Minister is a late Prime Minister and has a name starting with a B” would correspond to: 
, and the de dicto interpretation to: 
. The former would be false and the latter true in the intended model, as for (10) below.We could replace every occurrence of True(p) with p. I keep the operator for more clarity here.
Thanks to T. Williamson for bringing this example to my notice many years ago, in a different context.
Uegaki and Marti’s analysis is not motivated by the idea that knowledge rests on a a form of de re belief, but rather by the contrastivist idea that to know a proposition is to be justified in believing a proposition that is the strongest within a certain set of alternatives.
I am indebted to J. Nagel, M. Blome-Tillmann, J. Pryor and an anonymous reviewer for pressing this point.
The contrast was even more pronounced in just one of the two pairs, with 76 versus 14 % of knowledge attribution from Authentic to Apparent condition.
denoting Bannerman in the actual world and Balfour in Ralph’s belief worlds. In their formalism, the de re interpretation of “Ralph believes that the late Prime Minister is a late Prime Minister and has a name starting with a B” would correspond to: 
, and the de dicto interpretation to: 
. The former would be false and the latter true in the intended model, as for References
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Acknowledgments
This is a revised and amended version of a paper that initially appeared in the Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel edited by A. Meylan, J. Dutant and D. Fassio, on the Occasion of P. Engel’s 60th birthday. I am indebted to Bryan Renne, Jennifer Nagel, Paul Marty, Ivano Ciardelli, Floris Roelofsen, Michael Blome-Tillmann, Jim Pryor, Natasha Wights-Hickman, Bill Child, Timothy Williamson, and to four anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and criticisms. I also wish to thank audiences in Madrid, Paris, and Oxford, for questions and discussions. Thanks to grants ANR-10-LABX-0087 IEC and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL* for research conducted at the Department of Cognitive Studies at ENS, and to the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study where this paper was set in final form.
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Egré, P. Knowledge as de re true belief?. Synthese 194, 1517–1529 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1115-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1115-z