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11Divine Omniscience: Complete Knowledge or Supreme Knowledge?In Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.), Ontology of Divinity, De Gruyter. pp. 109-124. 2024.One of the divine attributes is omniscience. The standard concept of omniscience is the concept of having complete knowledge: God knows every truth. But there are also other concepts of omniscience that are consistent with having incomplete knowledge. I will propose a new concept of omniscience, namely the concept of having supreme knowledge. It is inspired by how Anselm talks about God's knowledge and it makes good sense of a key premise in an Anselmian argument for omniscience. Moreover, it ca…Read more
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44Conceptos de cognoscibilidadRevista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 23 287-308. 2023.Many philosophical discussions hinge on the concept of knowability. For example, there is a blooming literature on the so-called paradox of knowability. How to understand this notion, however? In this paper, we examine several approaches to the notion: the naive approach to take knowability as the possibility to know, the counterfactual approach endorsed by Edgington (1985) and Schlöder (2019) , approaches based on the notion of a capacity or ability to know (Fara 2010, Humphreys 2011), and fina…Read more
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30Over wetenschappelijk denkenAcco. 2019.Het meest succesvolle denken over de natuur vind je in de natuurwetenschappen. Filosofie wordt wel eens omschreven als denken over denken. In het handboek Over wetenschappelijk denken behandelen we het denken over het wetenschappelijk denken. Dat maakt van dit boek zowel een algemene inleiding in de wijsbegeerte als meer in het bijzonder een inleiding tot de wetenschapsfilosofie. Eerst gaan we in dit handboek dieper in op de natuurfilosofische revolutie in het antieke Griekenland. De mythische…Read more
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53Transcendental Knowability, Closure, Luminosity and Factivity: Reply to StephensonHistory of Philosophy & Logical Analysis. forthcoming.Stephenson (2022) has argued that Kant’s thesis that all transcendental truths are transcendentally a priori knowable leads to omniscience of all transcendental truths. His arguments depend on luminosity principles and closure principles for transcendental knowability. We will argue that one pair of a luminosity and a closure principle should not be used, because the closure principle is too strong, while the other pair of a luminosity and a closure principle should not be used, because the lumi…Read more
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43Confusion in the Bishop’s ChurchPhilosophia 51 (4): 1993-2003. 2023.Kearns (2021) reconstructs Berkeley’s (1713) Master Argument as a formally valid argument against the Materialist Thesis, with the key premise the Distinct Conceivability Thesis, namely the thesis that truths about sensible objects having or lacking thinkable qualities are (distinctly) conceivable and as its conclusion that all sensible objects are conceived. It will be shown that Distinct Conceivability Thesis entails the Reduction Thesis, which states that de dicto propositional (ordinary or d…Read more
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78Existence hedges, neutral free logic and truthInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.Semantic externalism in the style of McDowell and Evans faces a puzzle formulated by Pryor: to explain that a sentence such as 'Jack exists' is only a posteriori knowable, despite being logically entailed by the seemingly logical truth 'Jack is self-identical', and hence being itself a logical truth and therefore a priori knowable. Free logics can dissolve the puzzle. Moreover, Pryor has argued that the existentially hedged 'If Jack exists, then Jack is self-identical', when properly formalised,…Read more
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181Strict conditionalsCroatian Journal of Philosophy 22 (64): 123-131. 2022.Both Lowe and Tsai have presented their own versions of the theory that both indicative and subjunctive conditionals are strict conditionals. We critically discuss both versions and we find each version wanting.
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242Anti-Realism and Modal-Epistemic Collapse: Reply to MartonErkenntnis 88 (1): 397-408. 2021.Marton ( 2019 ) argues that that it follows from the standard antirealist theory of truth, which states that truth and possible knowledge are equivalent, that knowing possibilities is equivalent to the possibility of knowing, whereas these notions should be distinct. Moreover, he argues that the usual strategies of dealing with the Church–Fitch paradox of knowability are either not able to deal with his modal-epistemic collapse result or they only do so at a high price. Against this, I argue tha…Read more
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289Counterfactual Knowledge, Factivity, and the Overgeneration of KnowledgeErkenntnis 87 (5): 2243-2263. 2020.Antirealists who hold the knowability thesis, namely that all truths are knowable, have been put on the defensive by the Church-Fitch paradox of knowability. Rejecting the non-factivity of the concept of knowability used in that paradox, Edgington has adopted a factive notion of knowability, according to which only actual truths are knowable. She has used this new notion to reformulate the knowability thesis. The result has been argued to be immune against the Church-Fitch paradox, but it has en…Read more
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224Rosenkranz’s Logic of Justification and UnprovabilityJournal of Philosophical Logic 49 (6): 1243-1256. 2020.Rosenkranz has recently proposed a logic for propositional, non-factive, all-things-considered justification, which is based on a logic for the notion of being in a position to know, 309–338 2018). Starting from three quite weak assumptions in addition to some of the core principles that are already accepted by Rosenkranz, I prove that, if one has positive introspective and modally robust knowledge of the axioms of minimal arithmetic, then one is in a position to know that a sentence is not prov…Read more
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21Carnapian Modal and Epistemic Logic and Arithmetic with DescriptionsDissertation, KU Leuven. 2009.In the first chapter I have introduced Carnapian intensional logic against the background of Frege's and Quine's puzzles. The main body of the dissertation consists of two parts. In the first part I discussed Carnapian modal logic and arithmetic with descriptions. In the second chapter, I have described three Carnapian theories, CCL, CFL, and CNL. All three theories have three things in common. First, they are formulated in languages containing description terms. Second, they contain a system of…Read more
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3Carnapian Modal and Epistemic ArithmeticIn Carrara Massimiliano & Morato Vittorio (eds.), Language, Knowledge, and Metaphysics. Selected papers from the First SIFA Graduate Conference, College Publications. 2009.
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7I will examine three claims made by Ackerman and Kripke. First, they claim that not any arithmetical terms is eligible for universal instantiation and existential generalisation in doxastic or epistemic contexts. Second, Ackerman claims that Peano numerals are eligible for universal instantiation and existential generalisation in doxastic or epistemic contexts. Kripke's position is a bit more subtle. Third, they claim that the successor relation and the smaller-than relation must be effectively …Read more
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374Apophatic Finitism and InfinitismLogique Et Analyse 62 (247): 319-337. 2019.This article is about the ontological dispute between finitists, who claim that only finitely many numbers exist, and infinitists, who claim that infinitely many numbers exist. Van Bendegem set out to solve the 'general problem' for finitism: how can one recast finite fragments of classical mathematics in finitist terms? To solve this problem Van Bendegem comes up with a new brand of finitism, namely so-called 'apophatic finitism'. In this article it will be argued that apophatic finitism is una…Read more
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406The Enhanced Indispensability Argument, the circularity problem, and the interpretability strategySynthese 198 (4): 3033-3045. 2019.Within the context of the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument, one discussion about the status of mathematics is concerned with the ‘Enhanced Indispensability Argument’, which makes explicit in what way mathematics is supposed to be indispensable in science, namely explanatory. If there are genuine mathematical explanations of empirical phenomena, an argument for mathematical platonism could be extracted by using inference to the best explanation. The best explanation of the primeness of the …Read more
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357Factive knowability and the problem of possible omnisciencePhilosophical Studies 177 (1): 65-87. 2020.Famously, the Church–Fitch paradox of knowability is a deductive argument from the thesis that all truths are knowable to the conclusion that all truths are known. In this argument, knowability is analyzed in terms of having the possibility to know. Several philosophers have objected to this analysis, because it turns knowability into a nonfactive notion. In addition, they claim that, if the knowability thesis is reformulated with the help of factive concepts of knowability, then omniscience can…Read more
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429Russell's Revenge: A Problem for Bivalent Fregean Theories of DescriptionsPacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (4): 636-652. 2017.Fregean theories of descriptions as terms have to deal with improper descriptions. To save bivalence various proposals have been made that involve assigning referents to improper descriptions. While bivalence is indeed saved, there is a price to be paid. Instantiations of the same general scheme, viz. the one and only individual that is F and G is G, are not only allowed but even required to have different truth values.
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20Bremmer, R., Ten Kate, L., Warrink, E.(red.), Encyclopedie van de Filosofie. Van de Oudheid tot vandaag. Termen, begrippen, namen en stromingen. Amsterdam, Boom, 2007 (review)Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 99 (4): 313-315. 2007.
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349Zelfpredicatie: Middeleeuwse en hedendaagse perspectievenTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 79 (2): 239-258. 2017.The focus of the article is the self-predication principle, according to which the/a such-and-such is such-and-such. We consider contemporary approaches (Frege, Russell, Meinong) to the self-predication principle, as well as fourteenth-century approaches (Burley, Ockham, Buridan). In crucial ways, the Ockham-Buridan view prefigures Russell’s view, and Burley’s view shows a striking resemblance to Meinong’s view. In short the Russell-Ockham-Buridan view holds: no existence, no truth. The Burley-M…Read more
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306Truth and ExistenceThought: A Journal of Philosophy 6 (1): 106-114. 2017.Halbach has argued that Tarski biconditionals are not ontologically conservative over classical logic, but his argument is undermined by the fact that he cannot include a theory of arithmetic, which functions as a theory of syntax. This article is an improvement on Halbach's argument. By adding the Tarski biconditionals to inclusive negative free logic and the universal closure of minimal arithmetic, which is by itself an ontologically neutral combination, one can prove that at least one thing e…Read more
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Carnapian Arithmetic with DescriptionsIn Weber Erik, Libert Thierry, Vanpaemel Geert & Marage P. (eds.), Logic, Philosophy and History of Science in Belgium. Proceedings of the Young Researchers Days 2008, Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie Van België Voor Wetenschappen En Kunsten. pp. 28-34. 2009.
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Scott Soames, Reference and Description. The Case against Two-Dimensionalism. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2005 (review)Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 68 (2): 406-408. 2006.
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168Horsten, Leon, The Tarskian Turn: Deflationism and Axiomatic Truth, MIT Press, 2011 (review)Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 74 (2): 377-379. 2012.
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307The epistemic significance of numeralsSynthese 198 (Suppl 5): 1019-1045. 2014.The central topic of this article is (the possibility of) de re knowledge about natural numbers and its relation with names for numbers. It is held by several prominent philosophers that (Peano) numerals are eligible for existential quantification in epistemic contexts (‘canonical’), whereas other names for natural numbers are not. In other words, (Peano) numerals are intimately linked with de re knowledge about natural numbers, whereas the other names for natural numbers are not. In this articl…Read more
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592Descriptions and unknowabilityAnalysis 70 (1): 50-52. 2010.In a recent paper Horsten embarked on a journey along the limits of the domain of the unknowable. Rather than knowability simpliciter, he considered a priori knowability, and by the latter he meant absolute provability, i.e. provability that is not relativized to a formal system. He presented an argument for the conclusion that it is not absolutely provable that there is a natural number of which it is true but absolutely unprovable that it has a certain property. The argument depends on a descr…Read more
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20Nicholas Rescher, Epistemic Logic. A Survey of the Logic of Knowledge. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005 (review)Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 68 (3): 644-646. 2006.
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656Being in a Position to Know and ClosureThought: A Journal of Philosophy 5 (1): 63-67. 2016.The focus of this article is the question whether the notion of being in a position to know is closed under modus ponens. The question is answered negatively.
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2314Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing? A Logical InvestigationErkenntnis 82 (3): 531-559. 2017.From Leibniz to Krauss philosophers and scientists have raised the question as to why there is something rather than nothing. Why-questions request a type of explanation and this is often thought to include a deductive component. With classical logic in the background only trivial answers are forthcoming. With free logics in the background, be they of the negative, positive or neutral variety, only question-begging answers are to be expected. The same conclusion is reached for the modal version …Read more
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29Lieven Decock, Trading Ontology for Ideology. The Interplay of Logic, Set Theory and Semantics in Quine's Philosophy (Synthese Library, Vol. 313). Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002 (review)Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 66 (2): 370-371. 2004.
Leuven, Belgium
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Mathematics |
Formal Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
General Philosophy of Science |