Fitch's paradox and probabilistic antirealism (Q2454642)

Fitch's paradox shows, from fairly innocent assumptions, that if there are any unknown truths, then there are unknowable truths. This is generally thought to pose a problem to antirealist positions which imply that all truths are knowable. The present paper argues that if we replace the factive ``know'' by a non-factive evidence operator E, to be construed in Bayesian terms, as the requirement for assertion, then the Fitchian argument fails for contingent truths. The resulting thesis is difficult to reconcile with the thesis of Empirical Equivalence (that every theoretical hypothesis has at least one empirically equivalent, or observationally indistinguishable, rival). The paper concludes by arguing that the modified thesis provides all that antirealists should demand.