Habgood-Coote, J (2022) Knowing More (About Questions). Synthese, 200. 37. ISSN 0039-7857
Abstract
How should we measure knowledge? According to the Counting Approach, we can measure knowledge by counting pieces of knowledge. Versions of the Counting Approach that try to measure knowledge by counting true beliefs with suitable support or by counting propositions known run into problems, stemming from infinite numbers of propositions and beliefs, difficulties in individuating propositions and beliefs, and cases in which knowing the same number of propositions contributes differently to knowledge. In this paper I develop a novel question-relative and contextualist version of the counting approach, which measures an agent's knowledge by counting the number of complete answers of a contextually salient issue they can rule out. The question-relative and contextualist version of the Counting Approach avoids the issues for the proposition and belief-based systems, and offers a general, systematic, and explanatory system for measuring knowledge.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2022. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) |
Keywords: | Knowledge; Questions; Subject-matter; Measurement theory; Inquiry |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EU - European Union 818633 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 25 Jan 2022 15:38 |
Last Modified: | 10 May 2022 08:14 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11229-022-03594-1 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:182808 |
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