Interpersonal independence of knowledge and belief

Ehud Lehrer*, Dov Samet

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We show that knowledge satisfies interpersonal independence, meaning that a non-trivial sentence describing one agent’s knowledge cannot be equivalent to a sentence describing another agent’s knowledge. The same property of interpersonal independence holds, mutatis mutandis, for belief. In the case of knowledge, interpersonal independence is implied by the fact that there are no non-trivial sentences that are common knowledge in every model of knowledge. In the case of belief, interpersonal independence follows from a strong interpersonal independence that knowledge does not have. Specifically, there is no sentence describing the beliefs of one person that implies a sentence describing the beliefs of another person.

Original languageEnglish
Article number21
JournalSynthese
Volume204
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2024
Externally publishedYes

Funding

FundersFunder number
Israel Science Foundation591/21
Israel Science Foundation

    Keywords

    • Belief
    • Common knowledge
    • Interpersonal independence
    • Knowledge
    • Partition
    • Strong interpersonal independence

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