The Knowability Paradox

Jonathan L. Kvanvig



The paradox of knowability poses real difficulities to our understanding of truth. It does so by claiming that if we assume a truth is knowable, we can demonstrate that it is known. This demonstration threatens our understanding of truth in two quite different ways, only one of which has been recognized to this point in the literature on the paradox. Jonathan Kvanvig first unearths the ways in which the paradox is threatening, and then delineates an approach to the paradox that solves both of the problems raised by the paradox for our understanding of truth. His book will be of interest throughout philosophy, but especially to logicians and epistemologists.