No Knowledge from Falsehood but from Reflective Knowledge in advance
Some philosophers have claimed that there is knowledge from falsehood (KFF, in short), i.e., inferential knowledge that involves a relevant false premise. The main thesis of this paper is that there are no standard cases of KFF. By ‘standard cases’ we mean cases in which the subject employs a measurement procedure in order to determine the value of some quantity, such as the time or the number of people present in a room. If knowledge is attained at all, it is attained by inference not from a false premise but, instead, from two pieces of reflective knowledge. A brief look at putative non-standard cases of KFF reveals that they can be explained away in a different way, albeit a way that shares a common pattern with standard cases.
Authors
- Frank Hofmann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9730-8930)
- Yannick Kohl
Publication Details
- Journal
- Thought A Journal of Philosophy
- Published
- 2025-01-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5840/tht2025102853
- Primary Topic
- Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00