Epistemologists have long believed that epistemic luck undermines propositional knowledge. Action theorists have long believed that agentive luck undermines intentional action. But is there a relationship between agentive luck and epistemic luck? While agentive luck and epistemic luck have been widely thought to be independent phenomena, we argue that agentive luck has an epistemic dimension. We present several thought experiments where epistemic luck seems to undermine both knowledge-how and intentional action and we report experimental results that corroborate these judgments. These (...) findings have implications for the role of knowledge in a theory of intentional action and for debates about the nature of knowledge-how and the significance of knowledge representation in folk psychology. (shrink)

Paying attention to the inner workings of mathematicians has led to a proliferation of new themes in the philosophy of mathematics. Several of these have to do with epistemology. Philosophers of mathematical practice, however, have not (yet) systematically engaged with general (analytic) epistemology. To be sure, there are some exceptions, but they are few and far between. In this chapter, I offer an explanation of why this might be the case and show how the situation could be remedied. I contend (...) that it is only by conceiving the knowing subject(s) as embodied, fallible, and embedded in a specific context (along the lines of what has been done within social and feminist epistemology) that we can pursue an epistemology of mathematics sensitive to actual mathematical practice. I further suggest that this reconception of the knowing subject(s) does not force us to abandon the traditional framework of epistemology in which knowledge requires justified true belief. It does, however, lead to a fallible conception of mathematical justification that, among other things, makes Gettier cases possible. This shows that topics considered to be far removed from the interests of philosophers of mathematical practice might reveal to be relevant to them. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Gilbert Ryle’s claim that ordinary competence with logical principles or rules is a kind of knowing how, where such knowledge is understood as a skill, a multi-track disposition. Ryle argues that his account of ordinary logical competence helps avoid Lewis Carroll’s famous regress argument (Carroll 1895), which suggests that elementary deductive reasoning might be impossible. Indeed, Carroll’s regress is the central motivation for Ryle’s account. I argue that this account is inadequate on two counts: it (...) cannot serve to articulate the way ordinary reasoners might exercise their knowledge in reasoning and it does not do much to help us avoid Carroll’s regress. I sketch an alternative view, still Rylean in spirit, that fares better on both counts. (shrink)

Which role do concepts play in a person's actions? Do concepts underwrite the very idea of agency in somebody's acting? Or is the appeal to concepts in action a problematic form of over-intellectualization which obstructs a proper picture of genuine agency? Within the large and complicated terrain of these questions, the debate about know-how has been of special interest in recent years. In this paper, I shall try to spell out what know-how can tell us about the role of concepts (...) in action. I will argue that the fact that people possess and exercise know-how is indeed suited to deliver a number of important insights as to where and how concepts play a role in action. But I shall argue that these insights are limited in that they fail to cover the whole realm of relevant phenomena. (shrink)

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make high-stakes decisions is sometimes thought to create a troubling responsibility gap – that is, a situation where nobody can be held morally responsible for the outcomes that are brought about. However, philosophers and practitioners have recently claimed that, even though no individual can be held morally responsible, groups of individuals might be. Consequently, they think, we have less to fear from the use of AI than might appear to be the case. This (...) paper assesses this claim. Drawing on existing philosophical models of collective responsibility, I consider whether changing focus from the individual to the collective level can help us identify a locus of responsibility in a greater range of cases of AI deployment. I find that appeal to collective responsibility will be of limited use in filling the responsibility gap: the models considered either do not apply to the case at hand or else the relevant sort of collective responsibility, even if present, will not be sufficient to remove the costs that are often associated with an absence of responsibility. (shrink)

Developing an intellectualist account of skill, Stanley and Williamson define skill as a kind of disposition to action-guiding knowledge. The present paper challenges their definition of skill. While we don’t dispute that skill may consist of a cognitive, a dispositional, and an action-guiding component, we argue that Stanley and Williamson’s account of each component is problematic. In the first section, we argue, against Stanley and Williamson, that the cognitive component of skill is not a case of propositional knowledge-wh, which is (...) typically indexical. In the second section, we seek to show that Stanley and Williamson face difficulties in arguing for a generic claim about skill as a kind of disposition, and they fail to defend intellectualism about skill based on the dispositional account. In the third section we argue that Stanley and Williamson need a more detailed account of the action-guiding aspect of skill to avoid several difficulties, including a threat of a regress. We close with some lessons for the debate over intellectualism and anti-intellectualism about skill. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs Susan Stebbing’s account of intelligent dealing with a problem and defends this account against charges that it relies on a “censurable kind” of intellectualism. This charge was made in Stebbing’s own time by Laird and Wittgenstein. Michael Kremer has recently made the case that Stebbing is also a proximate target of Gilbert Ryle’s attack on intellectualism. This paper argues that Stebbing should indeed be counted as an intellectualist since she holds that intelligent dealing with a problem requires (...) propositional thought. Yet, for Stebbing, thinking is an activity of a whole person and is enabled and constrained by their dispositions. This complex picture of a thinker enables Stebbing’s account to resist arguments targeting certain forms of intellectualism such as Ryle’s regress argument. It also helps her to respond to the charge that she overemphasizes the importance of intellectual failures. On the picture that emerges, Stebbing offers a strikingly modern epistemology that incorporates the social features of a person as well as their purely intellectual features. (shrink)

Roughly speaking, intellectualists contend that practical knowledge is always a matter of having the right kind of propositional knowledge. This article argues that intellectualism faces a serious explanatory challenge when practical knowledge crucially relies on ecological information, i.e. when know-how is scaffolded. More precisely, intellectualists struggle to provide a satisfactory explanation of seeming know-how contrasts in structurally similar cases of scaffolded ability manifestation. In contrast, even if anti-intellectualism is similarly challenged, at least some varieties of anti-intellectualism seemingly hold resources to (...) account for the relevant contrasts. (shrink)

The intellectualist strategy of appealing to the notion of a practical mode of presentation to explain the practical component of know-how faces two standard objections. According to the first, the notion of a practical mode of presentation is mysterious; according to the second, intellectualists get the order of explanation wrong when they use the practical mode of presentation to explain know-how. In the first section, after reviewing recent literature on defusing the first objection, I employ some phenomenological insights to develop (...) four lines of argument which do show that the objection does not work. In the second section, I maintain that although the current version of the second objection is not conclusive, a restricted version of it is tenable. According to this restricted version, intellectualists do indeed get the order of explanation wrong at the level of basic action. The upshot is twofold: a challenge for anti-intellectualism to make room for the well-defined notion of the practical mode of presentation, and a challenge for intellectualism to explain the practical component of know-how at the basic level. (shrink)

Developing an intellectualist account of skill, Stanley and Williamson define skill as a kind of disposition to action-guiding knowledge. The present paper challenges their definition of skill. While we don’t dispute that skill may consist of a cognitive, a dispositional, and an action-guiding component, we argue that Stanley and Williamson’s account of each component is problematic. In the first section, we argue, against Stanley and Williamson, that the cognitive component of skill is not a case of propositional knowledge-wh, which is (...) typically indexical. In the second section, we seek to show that Stanley and Williamson face difficulties in arguing for a generic claim about skill as a kind of disposition, and they fail to defend intellectualism about skill based on the dispositional account. In the third section we argue that Stanley and Williamson need a more detailed account of the action-guiding aspect of skill to avoid several difficulties, including a threat of a regress. We close with some lessons for the debate over intellectualism and anti-intellectualism about skill. (shrink)

An overview of the knowing-how debates over the last ten years.

Two traditions in action theory offer different accounts of what distinguishes intentional action from mere behavior. According to the causalist tradition, intentional action has certain distinguished causal antecedents, and according to the Anscombian tradition, intentional action has certain distinguished epistemological features. I offer a way to reconcile these ostensibly conflicting accounts of intentional action by way of appealing to “ability-constituting knowledge”. After explaining what such knowledge is, and in particular its relationship to inadvertent virtue and knowledge-how, I suggest that, among (...) other things, appealing to ability-constituting knowledge can help us flesh out what it is for an agent’s reasons to non-deviantly cause and sustain her purposive behavior. (shrink)

How, if at all, is knowing how to do something defeasible? Some, the “intellectualists”, treat the defeasibility of knowledge-how as in some way derivative on the defeasibility of knowledge-that. According to a recent proposal by Carter and Navarro (Philos Phenomenol Res 3:662–685, 2017), knowledge-how defeat cannot be explained in terms of knowledge-that defeat; instead, knowledge-how defeat merits and entirely separate treatment. The thought behind “separatism” is easy to articulate. Assuming that knowledge of any kind is defeasible, since knowledge-that and knowledge-how (...) are fundamentally different beasts, the best accounts of their defeasibility must reflect the underlying differences between them. I reject a separatist treatment of the defeasibility of knowledge-that and knowledge-how. One can acknowledge certain important differences between knowledge-that and knowledge-how without thereby needing two theories of defeasibility. Ultimately, though, I’ll argue that the defeasibility of basic knowledge-how, unlike non-basic knowledge-how, is a much more difficult issue than has been acknowledged. (shrink)

Inspired by Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology, I propose a position on practical knowledge that can be called the ‘know-how-first view’; yet whereas Williamson is one of the pioneers of the new intellectualism about know-how, I employ the know-how-first view to argue against intellectualism and instead develop a know-how-first version of anti-intellectualism. Williamson argues that propositional knowledge is a sui generis unanalyzable mental state that comes first in the epistemic realm; in parallel, I propose that know-how is a sui generis unanalyzable power (...) that comes first in the practical realm. To motivate this suggestion, I put forward two arguments: drawing on dispositionalist ideas, I argue that the practical component of know-how is unanalyzable; based on an investigation of the natures of intentionality and intelligence, I argue that know-how is prior to intentional and intelligent abilities in the order of explanation of agential action. Deploying this know-how-first anti-intellectualism, I then set out know-how-first solutions to two challenging problems for anti-intellectualism: the sufficiency problem and the necessary condition problem. (shrink)

According to a prominent account of knowledge-how, knowledge-how is a species of propositional knowledge. A related view has it that to know how to perform an action is for it to seem to one that a way to perform that action is in fact a way to do so. According to a further view, knowledge-how is a species of objectual knowledge. Each of these intellectualist views has significant virtues including, notably, the ability to account for the seemingly epistemic dimensions of (...) knowledge-how. However, while intellectualist views can account for the seemingly epistemic dimensions of knowledge-how, such views have difficulty accounting for the practical dimensions of knowledge-how. The objection I level against existing intellectualist views here seizes on this deficiency. I argue that, in virtue of the practical dimensions of knowledge-how, propositional knowledge under a practical mode of presentation is not sufficient for knowledge-how. Even when the sufficiency conditions for knowledge-how set out by extant intellectualist views are met, one may fail to know how to perform an action in virtue of a disposition to act on a false belief about a way for one to perform that action. Thus, whereas critics of intellectualist views often allege that such views place overly demanding conditions on knowledge-how, the objection developed here suggests that existing intellectualist views place insufficiently demanding conditions on knowledge-how. (shrink)

Knowledge intellectualism is the view that knowledge-how requires propositional knowledge. Knowledge intellectualism has a Gettier problem, or so many of its critics allege. The essence of this problem is that knowledge-how is compatible with epistemic luck in a way that ordinary propositional knowledge is not. Hence, knowledge-how can allegedly be had in the absence of knowledge-that, a fact inconsistent with knowledge intellectualism. This paper develops two responses to this challenge to knowledge intellectualism. First, it is not clear that propositional knowledge (...) is incompatible with the forms of epistemic luck with which knowledge-how is allegedly compatible. Second, existing cases intended to serve as counterexamples to knowledge intellectualism are flawed, and revised versions of these cases no longer elicit the judgments necessary to challenge knowledge intellectualism. (shrink)

According to Intellectualism knowing how to V is a matter of knowing a suitable proposition about a way of V-ing. In this paper, I consider the question of which ways of acting might figure in the propositions which Intellectualists claim constitute the object of knowledge-how. I argue that Intellectualists face a version of the Generality Problem – familiar from discussions of Reliabilism – since not all ways of V-ing are such that knowledge about them suffices for knowledge-how. I consider various (...) responses to this problem, and argue that none are satisfactory. (shrink)

How should we measure knowledge? According to the Counting Approach, we can measure knowledge by counting pieces of knowledge. Versions of the Counting Approach that try to measure knowledge by counting true beliefs with suitable support or by counting propositions known run into problems, stemming from infinite numbers of propositions and beliefs, difficulties in individuating propositions and beliefs, and cases in which knowing the same number of propositions contributes differently to knowledge. In this paper I develop a novel question-relative and (...) contextualist version of the counting approach, which measures an agent's knowledge by counting the number of complete answers of a contextually salient issue they can rule out. The question-relative and contextualist version of the Counting Approach avoids the issues for the proposition and belief-based systems, and offers a general, systematic, and explanatory system for measuring knowledge. (shrink)

Group agents can act, and they can have knowledge. How should we understand the species of collective action which aims at knowledge? In this paper, I present an account of group inquiry. This account faces two challenges: to make sense of how large-scale distributed activities might be a kind of group action, and to make sense of the kind of division of labour involved in collective inquiry. In the first part of the paper, I argue that existing accounts of group (...) action face problems dealing with large-scale group actions, and propose a minimal alternative account. In the second part of the paper, I draw on an analogy between inquiry and conversation, arguing that work by Robert Stalnaker and Craige Roberts helps us to think about the division of labour. In the final part of the paper I put the accounts of group action and inquiry together, and consider how to think about group knowledge, deep ignorance, and the different kinds of division of labour. (shrink)

In this paper we apply social epistemology to mathematical proofs and their role in mathematical knowledge. The most famous modern collaborative mathematical proof effort is the Classification of Finite Simple Groups. The history and sociology of this proof have been well-documented by Alma Steingart (2012), who highlights a number of surprising and unusual features of this collaborative endeavour that set it apart from smaller-scale pieces of mathematics. These features raise a number of interesting philosophical issues, but have received very little (...) attention. In this paper, we will consider the philosophical tensions that Steingart uncovers, and use them to argue that the best account of the epistemic status of the Classification Theorem will be essentially and ineliminably social. This forms part of the broader argument that in order to understand mathematical proofs, we must appreciate their social aspects. (shrink)

What does it take for a group of people to know how to do something? An account of collective practical knowledge ought to be compatible with the linguistic evidence about the semantics for collective knowledge-how ascriptions, be able to explain the practicality of collective knowledge, be able to explain both the connection between individual and collective know-how and the possibility of a group knowing how to do something none of its members know, and be applicable to a suitably wide range (...) of groups. In this paper I develop a view which can meet all of these desiderata, which combines a Fragmented account of collective knowledge (Habgood-Coote, 2019a), with the view that practical knowledge is an Interrogative Capacity (Habgood-Coote, 2019b). (shrink)

For sentences such as (1), "Columbus knows that the sea is unpredictable", there is a face-value theory, according to which ‘that’-clauses are singular terms denoting propositions. Famously, Prior raised an objection to the theory, but defenders of the face-value theory such as Forbes, King, Künne, Pietroski and Stanley urged that the objection could be met by maintaining that in (1) ‘to know’ designates a complex relation along the lines of being in a state of knowledge having as content. Is the (...) theory safe, then? The aim of this paper is to show that a new problem for the theory arises if we consider attributions of skills, knacks, propensities and abilities. (shrink)

Following Gilbert Ryle’s arguments, many philosophers took it for granted that someone knows how to do something just in case they have the ability to do it. Within the last couple decades, new intellectualists have challenged this longstanding anti-intellectualist assumption. Their central contention is that mere abilities aren’t on the same rational, epistemic level as know how. My goal is to intellectualize know how without over-intellectualizing it. Intelligent behavior is characteristically flexible or responsive to novelty, and the distinctive feature of (...) creatures who exhibit flexible behavior is their capacity to learn. As it turns out, Ryle already identified a core characteristic of learning shared widely across the animal kingdom from the lowly rat to the top athlete. Taking my cues from Ryle, I argue that know how is successful performance resulting from self-regulated abilities. To regulate an ability is to be disposed to adjust to error and respond to feedback. While regulating sophisticated human abilities often requires propositional knowledge, in many simpler cases it does not. I focus on the navigational know how of rats and honeybees. Although they possess know how, whether they possess propositional knowledge is at best an open question. (shrink)

Following Gilbert Ryle’s arguments, many philosophers took it for granted that someone knows how to do something just in case they have the ability to do it. Within the last couple decades, new intellectualists have challenged this longstanding anti-intellectualist assumption. Their central contention is that mere abilities aren’t on the same rational, epistemic level as know how. My goal is to intellectualize know how without over-intellectualizing it. Intelligent behavior is characteristically flexible or responsive to novelty, and the distinctive feature of (...) creatures who exhibit flexible behavior is their capacity to learn. As it turns out, Ryle already identified a core characteristic of learning shared widely across the animal kingdom from the lowly rat to the top athlete. Taking my cues from Ryle, I argue that know how is successful performance resulting from self-regulated abilities. To regulate an ability is to be disposed to adjust to error and respond to feedback. While regulating sophisticated human abilities often requires propositional knowledge, in many simpler cases it does not. I focus on the navigational know how of rats and honeybees. Although they possess know how, whether they possess propositional knowledge is at best an open question. (shrink)

I demarcate skills from other kinds of cognitive and bodily abilities and I discuss old and novel issues that arise for the epistemology of skills.

A critical discussion of Seumas Miller's view on knowing-how and joint abilities.

Knowledge intellectualism is the view that knowledge-how requires propositional knowledge. Knowledge intellectualism has a Gettier problem, or so many of its critics allege. The essence of this problem is that knowledge-how is compatible with epistemic luck in a way that ordinary propositional knowledge is not. Hence, knowledge-how can allegedly be had in the absence of knowledge-that, a fact inconsistent with knowledge intellectualism. -/- This paper develops two responses to this challenge to knowledge intellectualism. First, it is not clear that propositional (...) knowledge is incompatible with the forms of epistemic luck with which knowledge-how is allegedly compatible. Second, existing cases intended to serve as counterexamples to knowledge intellectualism are flawed, and revised versions of these cases no longer elicit the judgments necessary to challenge knowledge intellectualism. (shrink)