Intuition—spontaneous, nondeliberative assessment—has long been indispensable in theoretical and practical philosophy alike. Recent research by psychologists and experimental philosophers has challenged our understanding of the nature and authority of moral intuitions by tracing them to “fast,” “automatic,” “button-pushing” responses of the affective system. This view of the affective system contrasts with a growing body of research in affective neuroscience which suggests that it is instead a flexible learning system that generates and updates a multidimensional evaluative landscape to guide decision and (...) action. With this latter view in mind, I revisit some of the classic hypothetical scenarios used in experimental moral psychology. (shrink)

Knowledge is a highly valued state in which a person is in cognitive contact with reality. It is, therefore, a relation. On one side of the relation is a conscious subject, and on the other side is a portion of reality to which the knower is directly or indirectly related. While directness is a matter of degree, it is convenient to think of knowledge of things as a direct form of knowledge in comparison to which knowledge about things is indirect. (...) The former has often been called knowledge by acquaintance since the subject is in experiential contact with the portion of reality known, whereas the latter is propositional knowledge since what the subject knows is a true proposition about the world. Knowing Roger is an example of knowledge by acquaintance, while knowing that Roger is a philosopher is an example of propositional knowledge. Knowledge by acquaintance includes not only knowledge of persons and things, but also knowledge of my own mental states. In fact, the knower's own mental states are often thought to be the most directly knowable portion of reality. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there is a notion of 'counterfactual success' which stands to knowledge how as true belief stands to propositional knowledge. (I attempt to avoid the question of whether knowledge how is a type of propositional knowledge.).

Some of our actions manifest states or qualities of intelligence, such as skill or cleverness. But what are these states or qualities, and how are they manifested in action? We articulate and examine general intellectualist and anti-intellectualist answers to such questions. We show how these answers — two distinct philosophical theories of intelligence and intelligent action — reflect quite different conceptions of mind and action. One of our principal aims is to illuminate some of the main issues and arguments in (...) the contemporary debate over knowledge how. A second aim is to highlight the broader theoretical significance of knowledge how, which (we argue) may serve as a hinge on which our general understanding of mind and action turns. The role of knowledge how in various debates in ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science is also discussed. (shrink)

This paper presents a non-standard and rather free-wheeling interpretation of "being and time", with emphasis on the first division. the author makes heidegger out to be less like husserl and/or sartre than is usual, and more like dewey and (to a lesser extent) sellars and the later wittgenstein. his central point concerns heidegger's radical divergence from the cartesian-kantian tradition regarding the fundamental question: what is a person?

You know that George W. Bush is the U.S. president, but you know how to ride a bicycle. What's the difference? According to intellectualists, not much: either knowing how to do something is a matter of knowing that something is the case or, at the very least, know-how requires a prior bit of theoretical knowledge. Anti-intellectualists deny this order of priority: either knowing-how and knowing-that are independent or, at the very least, knowing that something is the case requires a prior (...) bit of know-how. Much of the dispute centers on the relationship between knowing how to do something and having an ability to do it. If having an ability is necessary and sufficient for knowing-how, this is thought to provide comfort for anti-intellectualists. This paper traces the place of ability in the know-how/know-that debate from Ryle's seminal statement of anti-intellectualism through Stanley and Williamson's more recent defense of intellectualism. (shrink)

Much of what we learn from talking and listening does not qualify as testimonial knowledge: we can learn a great deal from other people without simply accepting what they say as being true. In this article, I examine the ways in which we acquire skills or knowledge how from our interactions with other people, and I discuss whether there is a useful notion of testimonial knowledge how.Keywords: Knowledge how; Practical knowledge; Tacit knowledge; Testimony; Skills; Assertion.

The ideas (i) that skill is a form of knowledge and (ii) that it can be taught are commonplace in both ancient philosophy and everyday life. I argue that contemporary epistemology lacks the resources to adequately accommodate them. Intellectualist and anti-intellectualist accounts of knowledge how struggle to represent the transmission of skill via teaching and learning (§II), in part because each adopts a fundamentally individualistic approach to the acquisition of skill that focuses on individual practice and experience; consequently, learning from (...) an expert’s teaching is rendered at best peripheral (§III). An account of the transmission of skill that focuses on guided practice is shown to be immanent in an anti-individualist account of skill (§IV) that takes seriously the Aristotelian ideas that skills are rational capacities and second natures by developing the thought that doing, teaching, and practising are three moments of an a priori unity: the life-cycle of a skill (§V). (shrink)

Epistemologists generally think that genuine warrant that is available to anyone must be available to everyone who is exposed to the relevant causal inputs and is able and willing to properly exercise her rationality. The motivating idea behind this requirement is roughly that an objective view is one that is not bound to a particular perspective. In this paper I ask whether the aperspectivality of our warrants is a precondition for securing the objectivity of our claims. I draw upon a (...) Sellarsian account of perception in order to argue that it is not; rather, inquirers can have contingent properties and perspectives that give them access to forms of rational warrant and objective knowledge that others do not have. The universal accessibility of reasons, on my account, is not a precondition for the legitimacy of any actual warrant, but rather a regulative ideal governing inquiry and communication. (shrink)

In this article I return to an argument that I presented in earlier work to the effect that virtue epistemology is at worse false and at best unmotivated. In the light of recent responses to this argument from such figures as John Greco, Guy Axtell, and Kelly Becker, I here re-state and re-evaluate this argument. In the process the original argument is refined and supplemented in key respects and some of the main charges against it are shown to be unfounded. (...) Nevertheless, I also argue that at least one of the objections to the original argument—due to Becker—may well be on the right lines, and I draw some conclusions in this regard. (shrink)