Mindreading Knowledge

Is knowing a mental state in its own right, as believing is, or is it, at best, a mental state in an attenuated sense due to being a species of belief? Jennifer Nagel has recently contended that there is a strong empirical case for the former view of knowledge, arguing indirectly for this conclusion by drawing on work in developmental and comparative psychology that she takes to suggest that the concept of knowledge is acquired before the concept of belief. This chapter critically reassesses the bearing of the relevant empirical results and argues that they present a messy, complicated, and inherently inconclusive picture of when children and other creatures acquire the concepts in question. It concludes that the available empirical evidence does not support Nagel’s conceptual priority claim, let alone her further metaphysical conclusions about the nature of knowledge.