Those who disturb the hornets’ nest better be thick skinned. Keeping that in mind, thus far I kept my silence in the face of the adverse reactions my essay “On What One Knows” has provoked in the literature. As to the merits of the various objections, moreover, I trusted the judgement of the philosophical community to sort them out, and either recognize their futility, or make the necessary adjustments in my arguments without the need to reject the conclusions.

In the case of Dunn and Suter, however, I decided to make an exception. The reason is that they indeed succeeded in pointing out certain difficulties in my position, which are not due to misunderstandings, conflicting linguistic intuitions, or other superficial sources. And, second, meeting their objections gives me the opportunity of proposing a significant refinement of my theory, the need for which I increasingly felt in the meanwhile myself.