Inquisitive Knowledge Attribution and the Gettier Problem

Abstract

A disjunctive belief cannot be described as knowledge if the subject does not justifiably believe a true disjunct, even if the whole disjunctive belief is true and justified (Gettier 1963). This phenomenon is problematic if the verb know semantically operates on a (classical) proposition, as standardly assumed. In this paper, I offer a solution to this problem using Inquisitive Semantics, arguing that know operates on the set of alternative possibilities expressed by its complement. It will also be shown that the proposed semantics for know provides a novel account of its compatibility with both declarative and interrogative complements.