Knowing‐Wh and Embedded Questions

Abstract

Do you know who you are? If the question seems unclear, it might owe to the notion of 'knowing-wh' (knowing-who, knowing-what, knowing-when, etc.). Such knowledge contrasts with 'knowing-that', the more familiar topic of epistemologists. But these days, knowing-wh is receiving more attention than ever, and here we will survey three current debates on the nature of knowing-wh. These debates concern, respectively, (1) whether all knowing-wh is reducible to knowing-that ('generalized intellectualism'), (2) whether all knowing-wh is relativized to a contrast proposition ('contrastivism about knowing-wh'), and (3) whether the context-sensitivity of knowing-wh is a semantic or purely pragmatic phenomenon ('contextualism vs. invariantism about knowing-wh').

The generality problem for intellectualism

“…Contemporary intellectualism (Pavese, ; Stanley, ; Stanley & Williamson, ) takes as its starting point what we might call the answer theory of knowledge‐wh (I take this label from Braun, , p. 249, see also Higginbotham (), Schaffer (), Parent ()). The answer theory starts with the linguistic insight that interrogative phrases such as “who came to the party?” or “how to swim?” semantically express the proposition (or propositions) that answer the question expressed by the phrase…”

“…I will italicize questions and put interrogative phrases in quotation marks. 6 On the semantics of knowledge-wh ascriptions, see (Bhatt, 2006;Groenendijk & Stokhof, 1984;Hamblin, 1958Hamblin, , 1973Karttunen, The application of the answer theory to knowledge-how has been subject to a good deal of criticism, focusing on whether it is the correct general account of knowledge-wh (Brogaard, 2009;Farkas, 2016;George, 2013;Masto, 2010;Parent, 2014;Schaffer, 2007), whether the linguistic evidence supports applying the answer theory to knowledge-how (Habgood-Coote, 2018;Roberts, 2009), and whether linguistic evidence is a legitimate source of evidence on philosophical issues (Brown, 2013;Devitt, 2011;Noë, 2005). My focus will be on the philosophical success of the account of knowledge-how suggested by the answer theory, and I will assume both that linguistic theory is relevant to the nature of knowledge-how and that ANS is the best linguistic account of knowledge-wh ascriptions.…”

“…This isn’t quite Boër and Lycan’s view: in their view, the answerhood relation is context‐sensitive (Parent, , n. 29) (see footnote 20). See also (Ginzburg, , , ).…”

Practical Know‐Wh

“…(Although know‐wh attributions may be context‐sensitive also with respect to evidential standards.) Rather, “the context‐sensitivity of knowing‐wh concerns the information needed to settle the embedded question” (Parent , p. 88). According to a further plausible proposal, the nature of the information needed to settle the question is (at least partly) determined by the inquisitor's goals or purposes (Parent , p. 88).…”

Knowing ‘Wh’ and Knowing How: Constructing Professional Curricula and Integrating Epistemic Fields

“…is not actually asked; b) the ‘answer’ in ‘where B is’ transposes the ‘is’ within the complement, and c) a force marker ‘?’ is added to form the question. Some commentators suggest that KWh constructions are better seen as attaching a complement to the knows claim, thus ‘where B is’ is attached to ‘A knows …’ (see Parent‚ , pp. 87–88 for more on this).…”