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Non-Accidentally Factive Mental States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2016

MAHDI RANAEE
MAHDI RANAEE*
Affiliation:
The St. Andrews and Stirling Graduate Programme in Philosophy
*
*<[email protected]>
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Abstract

I offer a counterexample to Timothy Williamson’s conjecture that knowledge is the most general factive mental state; i.e., that every factive mental state entails knowledge. I describe two counterexamples (Ernest Sosa’s and Baron Reed’s) that I find unpersuasive, and argue that they fail due to a specific feature they have in common. I then argue that there is a primitive mental state that is factive but does not entail knowledge, and that constitutes a counterexample to Williamson’s conjecture that is not subject to the problems faced by Sosa’s and Reed’s counterexamples.

Je propose un contre-exemple à la conjecture de Timothy Williamson selon laquelle la connaissance est l’état mental factif le plus général, c’est-à-dire que tout état mental factif implique la connaissance. Je décris deux contre-exemples (développés par Ernest Sosa et Baron Reed) que je considère comme étant peu probants, et je souligne que l’un et l’autre échouent à convaincre de par une caractéristique spécifique qu’ils partagent. Je soutiens ensuite qu’il existe un état mental primitif, factif mais n’impliquant pas la connaissance : ce dernier constitue un contre-exemple à la conjecture de Williamson sans être sujet aux problèmes rencontrés par les deux contre-exemples précédents.

Keywords

knowledgeanalyzabilityWilliamsonfactivemental stateprimitive
Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 493 - 510
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Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2016 

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References

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