{"id":14886,"date":"2026-09-24T08:19:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T08:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/?page_id=14886"},"modified":"2026-09-24T08:20:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T08:20:20","slug":"14886-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/14886-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Valente 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Matheus Valente: New Knowledge of Old Facts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tuesday October 20 2026 @11:30 (CET)<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/place\/UNED+-+Humanidades\/@40.4366067,-3.7379162,17z\/data=!3m2!4b1!5s0xd4228238189d7b7:0x62044c79ae77dfac!4m6!3m5!1s0xd42295f507d8465:0xc8bff2c2c262c868!8m2!3d40.4366067!4d-3.7353359!16s%2Fg%2F11d_d4qny9?entry=ttu\"> Edificio de Humanidades, UNED<\/a>\u00a0&amp;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/contact\/\">online<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Abstract<\/em><br>Familiar instances of Frege&#8217;s Puzzle suggest that one may make genuine epistemic progress by coming to know facts which one already knew, that is, that one may acquire new knowledge of old facts. For example, discovering that Hesperus is Phosphorus was a breakthrough epistemic achievement even though everybody already knew that Hesperus is Hesperus. At a very abstract level, what the puzzle appears to show is that epistemic progress related to propositional knowledge need not consist in the discovery of any new facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many have attempted to deflate other philosophical puzzles along similar lines. If cases of essentially indexical ignorance and Jackson&#8217;s knowledge argument are just instances of Frege&#8217;s Puzzle, then there is no mystery in a subject who knows every third-personal fact but is yet to learn who she herself is, or in a subject like Mary who knows every physical fact but is yet to learn what seeing red is like: each is only acquiring new knowledge of old facts, and two puzzles that seemed to turn on distinctive features of, respectively, first-person thought and phenomenal consciousness, turn out to be mere instances of Frege\u2019s Puzzle. In this talk I want to critically evaluate that manoeuvre in light of recent contributions to these debates, such as Elisabetta Sassarini\u2019s (2025) contention that the knowledge argument is just a Frege case, and Torre &amp; Weber\u2019s (2019) arguments to the effect that cases of essentially indexical ignorance are not.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Bio<\/em><br>Matheus Valente is Assistant Professor (Ayudante Doctor) in the Departamento de L\u00f3gica, Historia y Filosof\u00eda de la Ciencia at UNED, Madrid and a member of the METIS research group. He obtained his PhD from the University of Barcelona (2020) and subsequently held research positions at Institut Jean Nicod, UNICAMP, Valencia and Lisbon (Lancog). His work is centred on singular thought, indexicality, and the semantics and epistemology of de se attitudes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matheus Valente: New Knowledge of Old Facts Tuesday October 20 2026 @11:30 (CET) Edificio de Humanidades, UNED\u00a0&amp;\u00a0online AbstractFamiliar instances of Frege&#8217;s Puzzle suggest that one may make genuine epistemic progress by coming to know facts which one already knew, that is, that one may acquire new knowledge of old facts. For example, discovering that Hesperus [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7949,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14886","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7949"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14886"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14888,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14886\/revisions\/14888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uned.es\/metis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}