Distributed knowability and Fitch's paradox (Q2464652)

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scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5220710
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    Distributed knowability and Fitch's paradox
    scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5220710

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      Distributed knowability and Fitch's paradox (English)
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      17 December 2007
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      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.
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      modal epistemic logic
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      group knowledge
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      knowability
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      Fitch's paradox
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      anti-realism
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