Do you know more when it matters less?
Chris Zarpentine2010, Philosophical Psychology
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Abstract
According to intellectualism, what a person knows is solely a function of the evidential features of the person's situation. Anti-intellectualism is the view that what a person knows is more than simply a function of the evidential features of the person's situation. Jason Stanley (2005) argues that, in addition to "traditional factors," our ordinary practice of knowledge ascription is sensitive to the practical facts of a subject's situation. In this paper, we investigate this question empirically. Our results indicate that Stanley's assumptions about knowledge ascriptions do not reflect our ordinary practices in some paradigmatic cases. If our data generalize, then arguments for anti-intellectualism that rely on ordinary knowledge ascriptions fail: the case for anti-intellectualism cannot depend on our ordinary practices of knowledge ascription. Imagine that you and your friend Bill are hiking in the woods. You come across a rickety old bridge over a shallow, five-foot ravine. Bill ventures safely across. Do you know that the bridge is safe for you to cross given that it is safe to cross? Imagine that the bridge spans a one hundred-foot drop. Now do you know? Intellectualism implies that the answer to both questions must be the same. According to intellectualism, what a person knows is solely a function of the truth-conducive features of the person's situation. Anti-intellectualist views claim that what a person knows is more than simply a function of these truth-conducive features of her situation. Anti-intellectualism allows for the possibility that you know the bridge is safe when it spans a five-foot drop but not when it spans a one hundred-foot drop. Some anti-intellectualists have claimed that anti-intellectualism captures part of our ordinary practices of knowledge ascription. Recently, similar untested empirical claims made by * Authorship is equal. We would like to thank [OMITTED FOR BLIND REVIEW] for helpful comments on this paper.
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Problems with intellectualism
Philosophical Studies, 2012
In his most recent book, Know How, Stanley [Know how, Oxford University Press: Oxford, (2011b)] defends an Intellectualist account of knowledge how. In this paper, I will focus specifically on one claim that Stanley forwards in chapter one: I will focus on Stanley's claim that automatic mechanisms can be used by the Intellectualist in order to terminate Ryle's regress. I will argue that the proposed solution to the regress, regardless of how propositions are individuated, cannot provide an adequate Intellectualist account of skillful action. I should note that the solution to Ryle's regress is central to the Intellectualist agenda. If Stanley fails to stop the regress or stops the regress by appealing to nonpropositional knowledge, then his Intellectualist project fails.
Overcoming intellectualism about understanding and knowledge: a unified approach
Logos & Episteme: An International Journal of Epistemology, 2018
In this paper I defend a unified approach to knowledge and understanding. Both are achievements due to cognitive abilities or skills. The difference between them is a difference of aspects. Knowledge emphasizes the successful aspect of an achievement and the exclusion of epistemic luck, whereas understanding emphasizes the agent's contribution in bringing about an achievement through the exercise of one's cognitive skills. Knowledge and understanding cannot be separated. I argue against the claim that understanding is distinct from knowledge because the former is compatible with environmental luck. Achievements rule out environmental luck because abilities can be exercised only in their proper environment. I also reject the intellectualist claim that understanding requires the ability to explain what one intends to understand. The understanding of an item is reflected in our ability to solve cognitive tasks using that item. The more tasks one can deal with by using an item, the deeper is one's understanding of that item. Being able to explain why a claim holds is not necessary for possessing understanding, even though it may be necessary for accomplishing some very specific tasks. Neither understanding nor knowledge require any kind of second-order cognition by default.
(Anti)-Anti-Intellectualism and the Sufficiency Thesis
Anti-intellectualists about knowledge-how insist that, when an agent S knows how to φ, it is in virtue of some ability, rather than in virtue of any propositional attitudes, S has. Recently, a popular strategy for attacking the anti-intellectualist position proceeds by appealing to cases where an agent is claimed to possess a reliable ability to φ while nonetheless intuitively lacking knowledge-how to φ. John Bengson & Marc Moffett (2009; 2011a; 2011b) and Carlotta Pavese (2015a; 2015b) have embraced precisely this strategy and have thus claimed, for different reasons, that anti-intellectualism is defective on the grounds that possessing the ability to φ is not sufficient for knowing how to φ. We investigate this strategy of argument-by-counterexample to the anti-intellectualist's sufficiency thesis and show that, at the end of the day, anti-intellectualism remains unscathed.
Intellectualism and the argument from cognitive science
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Intellectualism is the claim that practical knowledge or ‘know-how’ is a kind of propositional knowledge. The debate over intellectualism has appealed to two different kinds of evidence, semantic and scientific. This paper concerns the relationship between intellectualist arguments based on truth-conditional semantics of practical knowledge ascriptions and anti-intellectualist arguments based on cognitive science and propositional representation. The first half of the paper argues that the anti-intellectualist argument from cognitive science rests on a naturalistic approach to metaphysics: Its proponents assume that findings from cognitive science provide evidence about the nature of mental states. We demonstrate that this fact has been overlooked in the ensuing debate, resulting in inconsistency and confusion. Defenders of the semantic approach to intellectualism engage with the argument from cognitive science in a way that implicitly endorses this naturalistic metaphysics, and they even rely on it to claim that cognitive science supports intellectualism. In the course of their arguments, however, they also reject that scientific findings can have metaphysical import. We argue that this situation is preventing productive debate about intellectualism, which would benefit from both sides being more transparent about their metaphilosophical assumptions.
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(Forthcoming in Synthese). Intellectualists claim that knowing how to do something is a matter of knowing, for some w, that w is a way to do that thing. However, standard accounts fail to account for the way that knowing how sometimes seems to require ability (although at other times does not). I argue that the way to make sense of this situation is via a 'subject-specific' intellectualism according to which knowing how to do something is a matter of knowing that w is a way for some relevant person to do that thing, but who the relevant person is can change from context to context. If it is the utterer themselves, then knowing how will require ability, but otherwise it will not. 1
The Analysis of Knowledge-How: An Anti-Intellectualist Manifesto
Draft version December 2017. Comments welcome.
Intellectualism—viz., the thesis that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that—bears straightforward relevance in epistemology and has received rigorous development in recent years (e.g., Stanley and Williamson 2001; Brogaard 2008, 2009, 2011; Stanley 2011; Pavese 2015, 2017). By contrast, anti-intellectualism—construed as a positive theory of knowledge-how—is hardly in a more developed state today than Ryle left it in the middle of the 20th century. We hope to change this trend, and to prepare the ground for a positive anti-intellectualist epistemology of knowledge-how, one that goes beyond the inchoate suggestion that knowledge-how is, or involves, abilities or dispositions. Our primary goal is to propose a tripartite analysis of knowledge-how that is broadly analogous to the JTB analysis of knowledge-that in that it offers a parallel set of conditions related to agents’ powers and capacities (mastery, success and ability). This objective is principally programmatic; we do not try here to solve but to map in a novel way a range of new epistemological problems such an analysis would raise, and to show thereby that anti-intellectualist epistemology could be as fruitful, engaging, and interestingly controversial as the epistemology of knowledge-that, even if it preserves the core Rylean idea that knowledge-how is non-representational, non-truth-directed and non-propositional.
A Cognitive Perspective on Knowledge How: Why Intellectualism Is Neuro-Psychologically Implausible
Philosophies, 2020
We defend two theses: (1) Knowledge how and knowledge that are two distinct forms of knowledge, and; (2) Stanley-style intellectualism is neuro-psychologically implausible. Our naturalistic argument for the distinction between knowledge how and knowledge that is based on a consideration of the nature of slips and basic activities. We further argue that Stanley’s brand of intellectualism has certain ontological consequences that go against modern cognitive neuroscience and psychology. We tie up our line of thought by showing that input from cognitive neuroscience and psychology, on multiple levels of analysis, cohere in supporting the distinction between two separate forms of knowledge. The upshot is a neuro-psychologically plausible understanding of knowledge.
Knowledge-How, Understanding-Why, and Epistemic Luck: An Experimental Study
Review of Philosophy and Psychology (Forthcoming)
Reductive intellectualists about knowledge-how (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011a, 2011b; Brogaard 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2011) hold, contra Ryle (1946, 1949), that knowing how to do something is just a kind of propositional knowledge. In a similar vein, traditional reductivists about understanding-why (e.g., Salmon 1984; Lipton 2004; Woodward 2003; Grimm 2006; Greco 2009; Kelp 2014) insist, in accordance with a tradition beginning with Aristotle, that the epistemic standing one attains when one understands why something is so is itself just a kind of propositional knowledge—viz., propositional knowledge of causes. A point that has been granted on both sides of these debates is that if these reductive proposals are right, then knowledge-how and understanding-why should be susceptible to the same extent as knowledge-that is to being undermined by epistemic luck. This paper reports experimental results that test these luck-based predictions. Interestingly, these results suggest a striking (albeit, imperfect) positive correlation between self-reported philosophical expertise and attributions of knowledge-how, understanding-why and knowledge-that which run contrary to reductive proposals. We contextualize these results by showing how they align very well with a particular kind of overarching non-reductive proposal, one that two of the authors have defended elsewhere (e.g., Carter and Pritchard 2015a; 2015b; Pritchard 2010) according to which knowledge-how and understanding-why, but not knowledge-that, essentially involve cognitive achievement (i.e., cognitive success that is primarily creditable to cognitive ability). We conclude by situating the interpretive narrative advanced within contemporary discussions about the role of expertise in philosophical judgment.
Deciding where knowledge comes from depends on where you look
Journal of Educational Psychology, 1996
The purpose of this investigation was to replicate the findings of K. E. Stanovich and A. E. Cunningham (1993) concerning the antecedents of declarative knowledge, using different measures of general ability and TV exposure. In addition, the authors were interested in the relationship between epistemological knowledge and these measures. Ninety-seven introductory psychology students participated. Results showed that measures of both general ability and TV exposure exhibited a stronger relationship to declarative knowledge than that found by K. E. Stanovich and A. E. Cunningham. These differences in results concerning TV exposure were explained by suggesting the possibility that watching educational TV increases literacy whereas watching noneducational TV may actually limit it. The epistemological beliefs of simple and certain knowledge were statistically related to composites of knowledge, ability, and both types of exposure.
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Knowledge Judgements and Cognitive Psychology
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Certain well-known intuitions suggest that, contrary to traditional thinking in epistemology, knowledge judgements are shifty—i.e., that judgements about whether somebody knows something can shift in stringency with context. Some take these intuitions to show that knowledge judgements are shifty. Jennifer Nagel and Mikkel Gerken have argued, however, that closer attention to the psychological processes which underlie knowledge judgements shows how traditional non-shifty thinking can be preserved. They each defend moderate classical invariantism—the view that the epistemic standard for knowing is always moderate—by drawing on recent work in cognitive psychology. This paper argues that neither defense succeeds.
Bartels, A. & May, M. (2015). What a Theory of Knowledge-how Should Explain - A Framework for Practical Knowledge beyond Intellectualism and Anti-Intellectualism
We argue against both intellectualist and anti-intellectualist approaches to knowledge-how. Whereas intellectualist approaches are right in denying that knowledge-how can be convincingly demarcated from knowledge-that by its supposed non-propositional nature (as is assumed by the anti-intellectualists), they fail to provide positive accounts of the obvious phenomenological and empirical peculiarities that make knowledge-how distinct from knowledge-that. In contrast to the intellectualist position, we provide a minimal notion of conceptuality as an alternative demarcation criterion. We suggest that conceptuality gives a sound basis for a theory of knowledge-how which is empirically fruitful and suitable for further empirical research. We give support to this suggestion by showing that, by means of an adequate notion of conceptuality, five central peculiarities of knowledge-how as compared to knowledge-that can be accounted for. These peculiarities are its context-bound, impenetrable and implicit nature, as well as the automatic and continuous forms of processing that are connected to it.
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