Distributed knowability and Fitch's paradox (Q2464652): Difference between revisions

In recent years, formal epistemologists have been interested in the task of representing, in some kind of modal logic, the claim that all truths are knowable. The simplest such representation in the literature is \(x\to Sx\), where \(x\) is any propositional variable, \(S\) is a one-place modal operator for ``someone knows'', and the arrow is truth-functional implication. A more nuanced one is \(x\to PSx\) where \(P\) is an operator for possibility. In this paper, the author discusses apparent difficulties with the latter representation, and proposes instead \(x\to PDx\), where \(D\) is a modal operator for distributed knowledge, i.e. \(Dx\) means that \(x\) is a logical consequence of pooling of what different agents know.