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Knowledge and its Objects

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The Possibility of an All-Knowing God

Abstract

The last chapter assumed that the objects of knowledge are propositions. This assumption requires defence and part of this chapter will be devoted to this. In addition, we must discuss the nature of knowledge in order to be clear about the requirements of omniscience, and therefore this chapter will investigate the nature of knowledge and its objects. This statement of purpose is, of course, a little overstated; for certainly a complete epistemology cannot be presented in one chapter. Rather, I shall investigate the nature of knowledge in so far as it bears on the doctrine of omniscience. First, I shall discuss the nature of knowledge in sufficient detail to develop a preliminary understanding of the claim that there is an omniscient being, and I shall also distinguish that claim from the claim that there is a being who has the property of being omniscient essentially.

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Notes and References

  1. Peter Geach, Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) p. 40.

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  2. Cf. David Armstrong, Belief, Truth and Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).

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  3. Cf. Alvin Goldman, ‘What Is Justified Belief?’, in George Pappas (ed.) Justification and Knowledge (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979) pp. 1–25

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  4. Fred Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information (Boston: MIT Press, 1981).

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  5. Edmund Gettier, ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’, Analysis, 23 (1963) pp. 121–3.

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  6. Patrick Grim, ‘Some Neglected Problems of Omniscience’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 20 (1983) p. 266.

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  7. Willard Van Orman Quine, ‘Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes’, in his The Ways of Paradox (New York: Random House, 1966) pp. 185–96.

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  8. Bertrand Russell, ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, in R. C. Marsh (ed.) Logic and Knowledge (New York: Capricorn Books, 1956) pp. 175–282.

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  9. Bertrand Russell, ‘On the Nature of Acquaintance’, in Logic and Knowledge, p. 130.

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  10. David Kaplan, ‘Quantifying In’, in D. Davidson and J. Hintikka (eds) Words and Objections (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969) pp. 206–42.

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  11. Ernest Sosa, ‘Propositional Attitudes De Dicto and De Re’, The Journal of Philosophy, 67, (1970) pp. 883–96.

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  12. Ibid., p. 892.

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  13. Roderick Chisholm, Person and Object (La Salle: Open Court, 1976)

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  14. Ibid., p. 169.

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  15. Ibid.

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  16. Ibid.

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  17. Ibid.

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  18. Tyler Burge, ‘Belief De Re’, The Journal of Philosophy, 74 (1977) pp. 338–61.

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  19. Myles Brand, ‘Intending and Believing’, in James Tomberlin (ed.) Agent, Language, and the Structure of the World (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983) pp. 181–2.

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  20. John Perry, ‘The Problem of the Essential Indexical’, Nous, 13 (1979) p. 3.

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  21. Ibid., pp. 4–5.

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  22. Chisholm defends this view in Person and Object.

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  23. Ibid., pp. 33–6.

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  24. Ibid.

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  25. Ibid.

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  26. G. E. M. Anscombe, ‘The First Person’, in Samuel Guttenplan (ed.) Mind and Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975) p. 61.

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  27. ‘The First Person’, p. 21.

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  28. Hector Castaneda, Thinking and Doing (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1975) p. 159.

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  29. ‘On the Phenomeno-Logic of the I’, Akten des XIV. Internationalen Kongresses fur Philosphie, III (Vienna: University of Vienna, 1969) pp. 260–9.

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  30. Ernest Sosa, ‘Consciousness of the Self and of the Present’, in Tomberlin (ed.) Agent, Language, and the Structure of the World, p. 140.

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  31. Sosa, p. 141.

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  32. Cf. Roderick Chisholm, The First Person; John Perry, ‘The Problem of the Essential Indexical’; David Lewis, ‘Attitudes de dicto and de se’, The Philosophical Review, 88, (1979) pp. 513–43.

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  33. Anscombe, ‘The First Person’, p. 24.

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  34. Ibid., p. 28.

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  35. Ibid.

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  36. Ibid., p. 31.

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  37. Ibid.

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  38. Peter J. Markie develops this criticism of Chisholm’s property theory in detail in ‘De Dicto and De Se’, Philosophical Studies, 45, (1984) pp. 231–8.

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  39. Chisholm most clearly affirms this view in correspondence with Peter J. Markie on issues surrounding Markie’s criticism of Chisholm’s property view.

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  40. This definition is one suggested to me by Edward Wierenga in correspondence.

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  41. I owe awareness of both the arguments to discussions with Peter J. Markie.

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  42. Chisholm suggests this view in Person and Object, pp. 31–7.

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  43. For a discussion and bibliography concerning the issues surrounding a triadic theory of belief which takes the meaning of the sentence to be one component of belief, cf. Mark Richard, ‘Direct Reference and Ascriptions of Belief’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 12, (1983) pp. 425–52.

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  44. Reliabilist theories of justification are especially guilty of confusing epistemic ideality with justification. They claim that a justified belief is a belief produced by a reliable mechanism. Yet, what mechanisms are reliable is sometimes a matter of what epistemic dispositions a person has to form beliefs, and thus reliabilists claim that unless a person has proper dispositions to form beliefs, many of his beliefs will be unjustified. This seems to me to confuse what we want an epistemically ideal agent to be like (we want him not only to justifiably believe all and only what is true, but to be disposed to form beliefs conforming to this requirement as well) with whether a person has a justified belief at present. Justified beliefs can be obtained in the process of forming our intellectual characters (even in the midst of, and as a result of, intellectual deficiencies) just as morally proper behaviour can occur even in the morally tainted. For more discussion on this matter, see Keith Lehrer’s gypsy lawyer example in Knowledge, pp. 124–5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), and my own ‘How to Be a Reliabilist’, forthcoming, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1986.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A & M University, USA

    Jonathan L. Kvanvig (Assistant Professor of Philosophy)

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  1. Jonathan L. Kvanvig
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© 1986 Jonathan L. Kvanvig

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Kvanvig, J.L. (1986). Knowledge and its Objects. In: The Possibility of an All-Knowing God. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18437-8_2

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