Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Relevance and Non-Factive Knowledge Attributions

  • Published:
Acta Analytica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Notes

  1. Since Gettier’s (1963) seminal work, epistemologists have broadly questioned the validity of the tripartite analyses, arguing that entertaining a justified true belief is sometimes neither sufficient nor necessary for attributing knowledge to a cognitive subject.

  2. Filler items were constructed as follows: one of them was characterized by a violation of Subject/Verb agreement in Italian to obtain ungrammatical constructions; three of them were fully meaningful and grammatical sentences, but they were less appropriate with respect to the context provided in the stories; four of them were fully grammatical sentences.

  3. Two norming studies were conducted to control the experimental material. In the first study, the plausibility of the critical sentence of the stories was assessed, that is participants had to rate on a 1-to-5 Likert scale how plausible it was to interpret the sentences as true, false, or true or false. The second norming study was done to control the 8 filler items: on a 1-to-5 Likert scale, participants had to rate the grammaticality, ungrammaticality, and appropriateness (with respect to the context) of the filler items.

  4. This was done for two main reasons: first, grouping the responses allowed us to eliminate the variance in the data due to the difference between values expressing similar judgments of naturalness and whose difference reflects some slight details not useful for the purpose of the present analysis; second, this allowed us to increase the number of observations within each condition and, thus, consequently increase the statistical power of the test statistics.

  5. In this experiment, we focused only on three possible interpretations of know. However, note that further readings might be admitted and further experiments should be run in order to verify whether or not other possible readings might be associated to know.

  6. It has to be noted that in experiment 2 we assume that “simply believe” has been interpreted as “not really knowing.” We are aware that this assumption is not uncontroversial and that the only way to address this point would be to design an experiment with a control condition involving “not really knowing,” to check if results in this condition correlates with those in “simply believing.”

  7. By using the expression “epistemic strength,” we do not commit ourselves with any epistemological claim that the expression “know” is a gradable expression like “tall” or “flat” (cf. Stanley 2005). We are adopting that expression as a way to describe how we have operationalized in experimental terms the three possible degrees of informativeness that can be conveyed by the ordinary use of the verb to know.

  8. If we consider R(i.ii), the fact that knowledge attributions under false belief are generally assessed as natural but significantly less natural than in condition p = T constitutes a further evidence of the fact that, when used in knowledge attributions under false belief, it occurs with a non-literal meaning. The reason why know is judged as generally natural by ordinary speakers when used non-literally with a false proposition depends on the fact that the non-literal meaning conveyed by know in this condition is overall acceptable and meaningful. The occurrence of a false proposition in knowledge attribution, however, conflicts directly with the literal meaning of the expression know that, as a factive verb, imposes a truth-condition. In virtue of this conflict, thus, participants have recognized knowledge attributions under false belief as generally less natural than those under true belief, which meet all the truth-conditions entailed by the literal meaning of know.

  9. A third potential line of explanation for our data could be that know is polisemous and conveys different expression types (Colonna-Dahlman, 2016). This solution, however, as argued by Hazlett, is theoretically costly and conflicts with Grice’s Modified Occam’s Razor: “Following Grice, I take the positing of polysemy to be a vice, ceteris paribus, for a linguistic theory. So while polysemy should not be ruled out, we should first seek a theory on which ‘knows’ is univocal” (2010:503).

  10. We are adopting the common convention of indicating concepts in capital letters and marking ad hoc concepts with an asterisk usually adopted in the relevance-theoretic literature and in the literature on concepts.

  11. Carston claims that this is essentially the main difference between narrowing and loosening which are considered two possible outcomes of a single process: “a process of picking and choosing from among the elements of logical and encyclopaedic information that are made available by the encoded concept. The only difference between them is that, in the case of narrowing, all the logical properties are retained, while in the case of loosening, some of them are dropped. Both outcomes involve a move away from strict literalness, albeit in opposite directions (above and below literalness), so we might well expect that either both sorts of result figure in the proposition expressed by the utterance, or that neither does” (2002:334).

  12. Where accessibility has to be interpreted as “the ease or difficulty with which an assumption can be retrieved (from memory) or constructed (on the basis of clues in the stimulus currently being processed) […]” (Carston, R., 2002: 376).

References

  • Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modelling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59(4), 390–412.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. M., & Walker, S. C. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buckwalter, W., Rose, D., & Turri, J. (2015). Belief through thick and thin. Think, 49(4), 748–775.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buckwalter, W. (2014). Factive verbs and protagonist projection. Episteme, 11, 391–409.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carston, R. (2002). Thoughts and utterances. The pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Carston, R. (1996). Enrichment and loosening: Complementary processes in deriving the proposition expressed. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics, 8, 1–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chisholm, R. (1989). Theory of knowledge. 3rd ed. Prentice-Hall.

  • Cohen, J. (1966). More about knowing and feeling sure. Analysis, 27, 11–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, S. (1987). Knowledge, context, and social standards. Synthese, 73(1), 3–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colonna Dahlman, R. (2016). Did people in the middle ages Know that the earth was flat? Acta Analytica, 31(2), 139–152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DeRose, K. (2002). Assertion, knowledge, and context. Philosophical Review, 111(2), 167–203.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gettier, E. (1963). Is justified true belief knowledge? Analysis, 23, 121–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hazlett, A. (2010). The myth of Factive verbs. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 80, 497–522.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hazlett, A. (2012). Factive presupposition and the truth condition on knowledge. Acta Analytica. Online First: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12136-012-0163-3, 27, 461–478.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holton, R. (1997). Some telling examples: A reply to Tsohatzidis. Journal of Pragmatics, 28, 624–628.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, O. R. (1971). Knowing and guessing: By examples. Analysis, 32, 19–23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lehrer, K. (1974). Knowledge. Clarendon Press.

  • Myers-Schulz, B., & Schwitzgebel, E. (2013). Knowing that P without believing that P. Noûs, 47(2), 371–384.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Radford, C. (1966). Knowledge—By examples. Analysis, 27, 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, D., & Schaffer, J. (2013). Knowledge entails dispositional belief. Philosophical Studies, 166, 19–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sackris, D., Beebe, J. (2014). Is justification necessary for knowledge?. In Beebe J. R. (ed.). Advances in experimental epistemology. Bloomsbury Academic.

  • Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance. Communication and cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stanley, J. (2005). Knowledge and practical interests. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Turri, J., Buckwalter, W., & Blouw, P. (in press). Knowledge and luck. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

  • Weinberg, J. M., Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2001). Normativity and epistemic intuitions. Philosophical Topics, 29, 429–460.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, D., & Carston, R. (2007). A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics: Relevance, inference and ad hoc concepts. In N. Burton-Roberts (Ed.), Advances in pragmatics (pp. 230–260). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (2004). Relevance theory. In L. Horn & G. Ward (Eds.), The handbook of pragmatics (pp. 607–632). Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, D. (2003). Relevance and lexical pragmatics. Italian Journal of Linguistics, 15(2), 273–291.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. DISFOR—Department of Educational Sciences, Psychology Unit, Laboratory of Psychology of Language, University of Genoa, Corso Podestà, 2, Room 3C3, 16128, Genoa, Italy

    Filippo Domaneschi & Simona Di Paola

Authors
  1. Filippo Domaneschi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Simona Di Paola
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Filippo Domaneschi.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interests

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Original version in Italian of the examples of experimental stimuli used in the main text.

1.1 Experiment 1

Context sentence.

Marco ha comprato un biglietto della lotteria.

Critical sentences

  • Ha assistito all’estrazione in TV e ha vinto (cond: p = T)

  • Marco in realtà, non ha vinto, ma ha assistito in TV a un’altra lotteria in cui sono stati estratti i suoi numeri (cond: p = F)

  • Non ha ancora assistito all’estrazione in TV e, al momento, può aver sia vinto che perso (cond: p = T∨F)

Sentences

Marco spenderà i suoi soldi per una casa da vendere

Filler item 1

Ora Marco incontrerà i suoi amici

Filler item 2

*Marco pensavano di avere i soldi per acquistare un altro biglietto

Filler item 3

Riprenderà in considerazione il sogno di un viaggio

Filler item 4

Marco sa che il suo è il biglietto vincente

TARGET SENTENCE

Marco pondererà sugli esiti della sua vittoria attentamente

Filler item 5

Ora andrà a cena fuori per festeggiare

Filler item 6

Adesso telefonerà subito a sua sorella

Filler item 7

Marco comprerà un periodo di ferie

Filler item 8

1.2 Experiment 2

Context sentence.

Marco ha comprato un biglietto della lotteria.

Critical sentences

  • Ha assistito all’estrazione in TV e ha vinto (cond: p = T)

  • Marco in realtà non ha vinto, ma ha assistito in TV a un’altra lotteria in cui sono stati estratti i suoi numeri (cond: p = F)

  • Non ha ancora assistito all’estrazione in TV e, al momento, può aver sia vinto che perso (cond: p = TvF)

Sentences

Marco spenderà i suoi soldi per una casa da arredare/vendere/acquistare

Filler item 1

Ora Marco incontrerà/rivedrà/saluterà i suoi amici

Filler item 2

Marco *pensavano/pensava/pensa di avere i soldi per/con cui acquistare un altro biglietto

Filler item 3

Riprenderà in considerazione l’ipotesi/l’eventualità/il sogno di un viaggio

Filler item 4

Marco sa davvero/crede semplicemente/ha solo la sensazione che il suo è/sia il biglietto vincente

TARGET SENTENCE

Marco ponderà/rifletterà/ragionerà sugli esiti della sua vittoria attentamente/con attenzione

attentamente/con attenzione

Filler item 5

Ora andrà a colazione/pranzo/cena fuori per festeggiare

Filler item 6

Adesso scriverà/ritelefonerà/si rivolgerà subito a sua sorella Chiara

Filler item 7

Marco comprerà/chiederà/si assicurerà un periodo di ferie

Filler item 8

1.3 Experiment 3

Context sentence.

Marco ha comprato un biglietto della lotteria.

Critical sentences

  • Ha assistito all’estrazione in TV e ha vinto (cond: p = T)

  • Marco in realtà, non ha vinto, ma ha assistito in TV a un’altra lotteria in cui sono stati estratti i suoi numeri (cond: p = F)

  • Non ha ancora assistito all’estrazione in TV e, al momento, può aver sia vinto che perso (cond: p = TvF)

Experiment

Target sentence

Experiment 3.1

Marco sa davvero che it suo è il biglietto vincente

Experiment 3.2

Marco crede semplicemente che il suo sia il biglietto vincente

Experiment 3.3

Marco ha solo la sensazione che il suo sia il biglietto vincente

Appendix 2

Results of the within- and across-condition statistical analyses for experiments 1 (Table 1), 2 (Table 2) and experiments 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 (Table 3). Within-condition analyses: χ2 statistics. Across-condition analyses: linear-mixed models statistics and post hoc pairwise comparisons.

Table 4 Experiment 1
Full size table
Table 5 Experiment 2
Full size table
Table 6 Experiments 3.1, 3.2, 3.3
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Domaneschi, F., Di Paola, S. Relevance and Non-Factive Knowledge Attributions. Acta Anal 34, 83–115 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-018-0362-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-018-0362-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation