Contrafactives and facts for knowledge
Abstract Holton (2017) draws on the observation that no natural language has a contrafactive to argue that the object of knowledge is a fact. I fill in Holton’s argument sketch by asking how the truth and falsity presuppositions of, respectively, know and a contrafactive could arise. I defuse previous objections to his argument sketch, but, in the final section, suggest that Holton’s argument fails because presupposition triggering requires less than his argument assumes.
Authors
- Simon Wimmer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5346-9986)
Institutions
- Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Linguistics and Philosophy
- Published
- 2026-07-24
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-026-09465-z
- Primary Topic
- Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf