ABOUT THIS BOOK

Epistemic logic is the branch of philosophical thought that seeks to formalize the discourse about knowledge. Its object is to articulate and clarify the general principles of reasoning about claims to and attributions of knowledge. This comprehensive survey of the topic offers the first systematic account of the subject as it has developed in the journal literature over recent decades.

Rescher gives an overview of the discipline by setting out the general principles for reasoning about such matters as propositional knowledge and interrogative knowledge. Aimed at graduate students and specialists, Epistemic Logic elucidates both Rescher's pragmatic view of knowledge and the field in general.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Nicholas Rescher is Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and co-chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has served as president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, the Leibniz Society of North America, the Charles S. Peirce Society, the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and the Metaphysical Society of America. Rescher is the author or editor of more than one hundred books, including Ignorance (On the Wider Implications of Deficient Knowledge), Philosophical Inquiries: An Introduction to Problems of Philosophy, and A Journey through Philosophy in 101 Anecdotes.

REVIEWS

”’Epistemic Logic’ is the shining star of Rescher’s provocative trilogy on realism, knowledge, and our cognitive imitations. EL is a unique and crucial addition to the literature in formal epistemology because it locates the debate over the knowability principle within an overall system of the logic of knowledge.”
—Mind

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Contents
Preface	000
1. Setting the Stage	000
2. Basic Principles	000
3. Deductivity and Knowledge Ampliation	000
4. Metaknowledge	000
5. For Aught That Someone Knows	000
6. Group Knowledge	000
7. Propositional versus Interrogative Knowledge		000
8. Collective versus Distributive Knowledge and Knower Limitedness	000
9. Modality	000
10. Problems of Epistemic Democracy	000
11. Possibility and Conceivability	000
12. Unknowability	000
13. Fitch's Theorem and Its Consequences	000
14. Finite and Infinite Knowers	000
15. Vagrant Predicates and Noninstantiability	000
16. Unanswerable Questions and Insolubilia	000
17. Unknowable Truth	000
18. Implications of Cognitive Limitation	000
Appendix 1: A Survey of Thesis Acceptability	000
Appendix 2: On Quantifying Knowledge (and the Gulf Between Linguistic Truth and Objective Fact)	000
Notes 000
Bibliography	000
Index 000

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