Opiniatrety

De Re Knowledge The, For Real

[NOTE: This whole post is pretty much redundant; see the discussion after (8).]

In the update to the previous post I mentioned that I had left out the best examples of de re ascriptions of knowing the way. These be they, with the de re term bolded:

(1) Alice knows the way to my office.

(2) Alice knows the way to that woman's office.

(3) Does Alice know the way to your office? [All said when Alice is not present]

In each case, Alice may be able to correctly answer the question, "What is the way to X's office?" for some term X that corefers with the bolded term (as used in (1)-(3)). But she's not in a position to directly answer the question "What is the way to my/that woman's/your office?" because she doesn't have access to the context in which the indexical is used. So sometimes Alice's knowledge of the way will be manifested in knowledge of a singular proposition, if you believe in such things (we hates them), or in knowledge of a proposition that contains a term that isn't the one used in the "knowing the way" ascription.

Now consider this scenario: A conference is held in the University of Utah seminar room. Mischievous scamp that I am, I am not wearing my nametag. I say to Alice, "Let me get something from my office." She then sees me walk to the door of my office, two doors down, but she doesn't know my name.

Here (1) is certainly true. But is (4) true?

(4) Alice knows the way to Matt Weiner's office.

If you think that (1) expresses knowledge of a singular proposition, then (4) expresses knowledge of the same singular proposition, so it should come out with the same truth value. If you think that (1) expresses knowledge of some de dicto proposition, with some co-referring term substituted for a term in the known proposition, then the question is which substitutions are possible? Alice knows

(6) The office of the guy who just spoke to me [or that guy is two doors down from the seminar room;

the question is whether it's acceptable to substitute "Matt Weiner" for the corefering bolded terms.

It seems to me that it would be OK for people discussing Alice's knowledge to say

(7) Alice knows the way to Matt Weiner's office, as the way to the office of the guy who just spoke to her.

For instance, if you wanted to know the way to MW's office, Alice is a good source if you ask her using the right terms. But then it seems OK to say

(8) Alice knows the way to Matt Weiner's office, but not as such.

Having typed all this out, I see that Brian already mentioned cases like this; "as such" is acceptable when it binds a description or name smaller than the whole definite description after "the."

Yet I don't think that will account for every case. Take this: Sarah knows the way to the seminar room, but not that the conference is held there. If you know that, and that the conference is held there, then Sarah is a good person to ask the way to the conference if you phrase it right. So you might say:

(9) Sarah knows the way to the conference, as the way to the seminar room.

(10) Sarah knows the way to the conference, but not as such.

It seems to me that if (7) and (8) are acceptable, (9) and (10) should be too. But in (10) "as such" can't bind any definite description short of "the way to," because the bolded terms in (9) don't co-refer. Sarah may not know any proposition containing any term that co-refers with "the conference."

*******
If knowing X not as such is always objectual knowledge of X, then this suggests that ways themselves might be abstract objects that can be known under one guise or another, but the knowing of which is always the knowing of the answer to a question "What is the way to Y?" (Similarly for answers, locations, etc.) That would predict that "way" is ambiguous, since ways are also places, as in

(11) The way to Lauratia is dangerous and bandit-infested.

Is there this amibiguity in "knowing the way"? Maybe....next post.

Posted by Matt Weiner at May 10, 2004 02:01 PM