Two families of positions dominate debates over a metaphysically reductive analysis of knowledge. Traditionalism holds that knowledge has a complete, uniquely identifying analysis, while knowledge-first epistemology contends that knowledge is primitive—admitting of no reductive analysis whatsoever. Drawing on recent work in metaphysics, I argue that these alternatives fail to exhaust the available possibilities. Knowledge may have a merely partial analysis: a real definition that distinguishes it from some, but not all other things. I demonstrate that this position is attractive; it evades concerns that its rivals face.
CITATION STYLE
Elgin, S. Z. (2021). Merely partial definition and the analysis of knowledge. Synthese, 198, 1481–1505. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1846-0
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