“Know” and Its Japanese Counterparts, Shitte-iru and Wakatte-iru

This chapter examines two Japanese (purported) knowledge verbs, shitte-iru and wakatte-iru, first through the data of felicity judgment and then data from questionnaire surveys with standard epistemological vignettes. Even though they are mostly intersubstitutable, such data show significant differences in usage, where shitte-iru seems independent of practical concerns while wakatte-iru looks sensitive to practical abilities. The comparison with the English “know” shows that it is consistently closer to wakatte-iru, contrary to what almost all Japanese speakers think. But the differences between shitte-iru and wakatte-iru correspond to the many debates in anglophone epistemology, which raises a serious question about the nature of the debates therein, or even the nature of epistemology in general.