Properly answering the question what is knowledge of what things are? On André Abath’s erotetic view

Abstract

While philosophers are and have always been interested in, if not obsessed by, questions of the kind What is x?, somehow ironically, the question What is knowledge of what x is? did not receive much attention. Thankfully, to properly answer this question, André Abath suggested his erotetic view. As he convincingly argues, there might be many contexts in which, in order to know what x is, it is not necessary to know an answer to the question What is x? that provides us with necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be x (p. 65), as that is excessively demanding in many if not most contexts (p. 66). But the context that is relevant to our discussion of whether André’s erotetic view properly answers the question What is knowledge of what x is? is the context of a classic philosophical discussion. In a context of that kind, we are exactly after necessary and sufficient conditions, and this is the relevant necessary and sufficient condition according to André:

S knows what x is in context c if and only if S knows a proposition (or propositions) that properly answer (that is, provide a proper answer to) the question of what x is in c (p. 42),

where for a proposition to properly answer a question in a context it should be such that, in that context, it settles the question, it brings the inquiry to a close (pp. 27–30; 42). In our classic philosophical context, when a philosopher is confronted with a stimulating definition providing a necessary and sufficient condition, it is natural to investigate whether the condition is indeed necessary and whether it is indeed sufficient. Finding myself in that context, in this commentary I will investigate exactly into that. First, I will discuss André’s notion of partial knowledge, to understand whether the erotetic view gives us too many or too few knowers and to raise the question as to whether the view could be even more contextualist than it currently is. Second, I will discuss whether the erotetic view leaves some knowers out, to also understand whether André’s sophisticated rejection of the claim that his view is excessively intellectualist is completely convincing.

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ORCID for Giulia Felappi: orcid.org/0000-0002-0110-6371

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