Properly Answering the Question What is Knowledge of What Things Are? On André Abath’s Erotetic View

Abstract While philosophers are and have always been interested in, if not obsessed by, questions of the kind What is x?, somehow ironically, the question What is knowledge of what x is? did not receive much attention. Thankfully, to properly answer this question, André Abath suggested his erotetic view, according to which S knows what x is in context c if and only if S knows a proposition (or propositions) that properly answer (that is, provide a proper answer to) the question of what x is in c, where for a proposition to properly answer a question in a context it should be such that, in that context, it settles the question, it brings the inquiry to a close. In my commentary, I will discuss whether the erotetic view might be taken to give us too few or too many knowers. During such discussion, I will investigate into Abath’s notion of partial knowledge and his sophisticated rejection of the claim that his view is excessively intellectualist.