Knowability, the end of inquiry, and epistemic hope: Outline for a Peircean response to Fitch’s paradox

Abstract

Fitch’s paradox establishes the claim that if all truths are knowable, then all truths are known. Peirce’s pragmatist epistemology is committed to the antecedent claim, and so it entails the unintuitive consequent, a conclusion that can be seen as a decisive objection against Peirce’s epistemology. In this paper, I argue that, by modifying Peirce’s finitist account of inquiry into an infinitist account, key aspects of his epistemology can be saved from this objection, including Peirce’s epistemic theory of truth, his anti-skeptical fallibilism, his anti-foundationalism, and his reliance on epistemic hope.