Date: November 12, 2025, 4:00 PM (CET)
Format: Online lecture
Organizers: Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica (Slovakia), University of Ostrava (Czech Republic), University of Warsaw (Poland), with the support of the Visegrad Fund
Project website: https://ff.osu.eu/ap-in-v4/
Lecture
Zoltán Gendler Szabó (Yale University)
Title: The Unity of Knowledge
Abstract:
Contemporary orthodoxy holds that knowledge is a propositional attitude. When it comes to sentences like “I know my car” and “I know how to drive,” this view leaves us with two options. We can deny that they ascribe knowledge (saying instead that they ascribe acquaintance and skill, respectively), or we can claim that these sentences are ascriptions of propositional knowledge. The first option denies the unity of knowledge; the second is beset with serious difficulties. Rather than making the choice, I argue that we should abandon orthodoxy. Knowledge is not propositional; it is uniformly inquisitive: a relation between a knower and a question.
About the Speaker
Zoltán Gendler Szabó is Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. His research focuses on philosophy of language and metaphysics, particularly: the semantics of modality, quantification, tense, and aspect, the relationship between lexical and ontological categories, the nature of context.
More information:
https://campuspress.yale.edu/zoltanszabo/
If you are interested to join, please contact: zuzana.rybarikova@osu.cz