Epistemic modal predicate logic raises conceptual problems not faced in the case of alethic modal predicate logic: Frege’s “Hesperus-Phosphorus” problem—how to make sense of ascribing to agents ignorance of necessarily true identity statements—and the related “Hintikka-Kripke” problem—how to set up a logical system combining epistemic and alethic modalities, as well as others problems, such as Quine’s “Double Vision” problem and problems of self-knowledge. In this paper, we lay out a philosophical approach to epistemic predicate logic, implemented formally in Melvin Fitting’s First-Order Intensional Logic, that we argue solves these and other conceptual problems. Topics covered include: Quine on the “collapse” of modal distinctions; the rigidity of names; belief reports and unarticulated constituents; epistemic roles; counterfactual attitudes; representational versus interpretational semantics; ignorance of co-reference versus ignorance of identity; two-dimensional epistemic models; quantification into epistemic contexts; and an approach to multi-agent epistemic logic based on centered worlds and hybrid logic.
CITATION STYLE
Holliday, W. H., & Perry, J. (2014). Roles, Rigidity, and Quantification in Epistemic Logic. In Outstanding Contributions to Logic (Vol. 5, pp. 591–629). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06025-5_22
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