Social media has transformed how individuals handle their illnesses. While many patients increasingly use these online platforms to understand embodied information surrounding their conditions, healthcare professionals often frame these practices as negative and do not consider the expertise that patients generate through social media. Through a combination of insights from social epistemology and ignorance studies, this paper problematizes the distinctive understandings of social media between patients and healthcare professionals from a different perspective. A total of four ideas are introduced: (1) (...) healthcare professionals see embodied knowledge that arises from patients’ social media practices as uncomfortable knowledge; (2) healthcare professionals engage in several behaviours to preserve their authority and power in front of embodied knowledge created through these online platforms; (3) failing to consider embodied knowledge can have consequences not only in terms of trust between patients and healthcare professionals but also in connection with epistemological populism and the transition towards patient-centred care; and (4) media and digital health literacy could help healthcare professionals enhance the uses of social media in healthcare. Adopting this framework allows not only to offer valuable insights into how healthcare professionals manage patients’ social media practices, but also opens new avenues to improve healthcare digitisation. (shrink)

The aim of this contribution is to provide an overview of conceptual approaches to incorporating a decision maker’s non-knowledge into economic theory. We will focus here on the particular kind of non-knowledge which we consider to be one of the most important for economic discussions: non-knowledge of possible consequence-relevant uncertain events which a decision maker would have to take into account when selecting between different strategies.

Remarks in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty present a view according to which all knowledge rests on commitments to things we do not know. In his usual manner, Wittgenstein does not present a clearly defined set of premises designed to support this view. Instead, the reasons emerge along with the view through a series of often cryptic remarks. But this does not prevent us from critically assessing the position (or positions) one finds in the work. This paper attempts to do that (...) in the form of a philosophical dialogue. The challenges to Wittgenstein’s view raised here center on: the extent to which hinge commitments can plausibly be regarded as rules of a language-game rather than rationally assessable propositions, mutual support versus bottom up notions of justification, the subject and context relativity of hinge commitments, the difference between justification and persuasion, whether propositions of the form p is hinge are themselves hinge, and the general viability of Wittgenstein’s view as an alternative to epistemological skepticism and Moorean anti-skepticism. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has had far-reaching effects on public health around the world. Attempts to prevent the spread of the disease by quarantine have led to large-scale global socioeconomic disrup- tion. During the outbreak, public authorities and politicians have struggled with how to manage widespread ignorance regarding the virus. Drawing on insights from social epistemology and the emerging interdisciplinary field of ignorance studies, this article provides evidence that the temporality of non- knowing and its intersection with knowing is (...) a force that leads political decision-making during a crisis. Illuminating the epistemic analysis with statements given by the Finnish government to the media in decision- making documents and in press conferences, this paper proposes that a crisis situation, itself, seems to demand from political decision-makers dynamic action while simultaneously knowing little (‘non-knowing’) about the different fronts of tackling the pandemic. We conclude that non-knowing must be recognized explicitly as an enduring and central condition in deci- sion-making, which we call ‘epistemic humility.’. (shrink)

Intuitively, the knowledge of one’s own intentional actions is different from the knowledge of actions of other sorts, including those of other people and unintentional actions of one's own. But how are we to understand this phenomenon? Does it pertain to all actions, under every description under which they are known? If so, then how is this possible? If not, then how should we think about cases that are exceptions to this principle? This paper is a critical survey (...) of recent attempts to answer these questions. I consider views under three headings: "special source" views, which hold that the knowledge of one's intentional actions has a non-perceptual source; "special domain" views, which hold that some but not all aspects of one's intentional actions are known in a special way; and "special character" views, which hold that the knowledge of intentional actions is special not because of where it comes from, but because of some other respect in which it is different in kind from the knowledge of other things. (shrink)

According to a view I’ll call Epistemic Normativism, knowledge is normative in the same sense in which paradigmatically normative properties like justification are normative. This paper argues against EN in two stages and defends a positive non-normativist alternative. After clarifying the target in §1, I consider in §2 some arguments for EN from the premise that knowledge entails justification. I first raise some worries about inferring constitution from entailment. I then rehearse the reasons why some epistemologists reject the (...) Entailment Thesis and argue that a non-normativist picture provides the best explanation of all the intuitions surrounding this thesis, favorable and unfavorable. On this picture, human knowledge is a structured non-normative complex that has as one of its parts a justification-making property, analogous in role to good-making properties like pleasurableness. After giving three arguments against EN in §3 and answering an objection in §4, I turn in §5 to further develop the positive view sketched in §2. In §6, I take stock and conclude. (shrink)

This paper contains a critical examination of the prospects for analyses of knowledge that weaken the factivity condition such that knowledge implies approximate truth.

The thesis that knowledge is a factive mental state plays a central role in knowledge-first epistemology, but accepting this thesis requires also accepting an unusually severe version of externalism about the mind. On this strong attitude externalism, whether S is in the mental state of knowledge can and often will rapidly change in virtue of changes in external states of reality with which S has no causal contact. It is commonly thought that this externalism requirement originates in (...) the factivity of knowledge. However, despite a number of recent defenses of non-factive accounts of knowledge, epistemology has yet to consider whether a non-factive approach might produce a version of the mental state thesis that can avoid strong externalism. Here I do just that, exploring how three different proposals for weakening factivity might be adapted to theories of knowledge as a non-factive mental state. Contrary to what we might expect, however, none of these proposals are compatible with anything close to attitude internalism about knowledge—or even a substantially weaker externalism. All told, the widespread view that wraps up the severe externalism required for knowledge to be a mental state in factivity is mistaken. Knowledge’s external-world connection runs far deeper than the factivity constraint. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Tristan Haze offers two examples that, he claims, are counterexamples to Nozick's Theory of Knowledge. Haze claims his examples work against Nozick's theory understood as relativized to belief forming methods M. We believe that they fail to be counterexamples to Nozick's theory. Since he aims the examples at tracking theories generally, we will also explain why they are not counterexamples to Dretske's Conclusive Reasons Theory of Knowledge.

The Knower paradox purports to place surprising a priori limitations on what we can know. According to orthodoxy, it shows that we need to abandon one of three plausible and widely-held ideas: that knowledge is factive, that we can know that knowledge is factive, and that we can use logical/mathematical reasoning to extend our knowledge via very weak single-premise closure principles. I argue that classical logic, not any of these epistemic principles, is the culprit. I develop a (...) consistent theory validating all these principles by combining Hartry Field's theory of truth with a modal enrichment developed for a different purpose by Michael Caie. The only casualty is classical logic: the theory avoids paradox by using a weaker-than-classical K3 logic. I then assess the philosophical merits of this approach. I argue that, unlike the traditional semantic paradoxes involving extensional notions like truth, its plausibility depends on the way in which sentences are referred to--whether in natural languages via direct sentential reference, or in mathematical theories via indirect sentential reference by Gödel coding. In particular, I argue that from the perspective of natural language, my non-classical treatment of knowledge as a predicate is plausible, while from the perspective of mathematical theories, its plausibility depends on unresolved questions about the limits of our idealized deductive capacities. (shrink)

The paper discusses Saul Kripke's Normativity Argument against semantic dispositionalism: it criticizes the orthodox interpretation of the argument, defends an alternative reading and argues that, contrary to what Kripke himself seems to have been thinking, the real point of the Normativity Argument is not that meaning is normative. According to the orthodox interpretation, the argument can be summarized as follows: (1) it is constitutive of the concept of meaning that its instances imply an ought, but (2) it is not constitutive (...) of the concept of a disposition that dispositions imply an ought, hence (3) no dispositional analysis of meaning can work. According to my alternative reading, the point of the argument is another one, namely that while (1) dispositionalism is committed to the thesis that speakers have non-inferential knowledge of their unmanifested linguistic dispositions, (2) speakers, as a matter of fact, do not have such a knowledge. A point that is in principle independent from the issue of the normativity of meaning. (shrink)

In this paper we present a framework for the dynamic and automatic generation of novel knowledge obtained through a process of commonsense reasoning based on typicality-based concept combination. We exploit a recently introduced extension of a Description Logic of typicality able to combine prototypical descriptions of concepts in order to generate new prototypical concepts and deal with problem like the PET FISH (Osherson and Smith, 1981; Lieto & Pozzato, 2019). Intuitively, in the context of our application of this logic, (...) the overall pipeline of our system works as follows: given a goal expressed as a set of properties, if the knowledge base does not contain a concept able to fulfill all these properties, then our system looks for two concepts to recombine in order to extend the original knowledge based satisfy the goal. (shrink)

According to the standard story given by reductive versions of the Causal Theory of Action, an action is an intrinsically mindless bodily movement that is appropriately caused by an intention. Those who embrace this story typically take this intention to have a coarse-grained content, specifying the action only down to the level of the agent's habits and skills. Markos Valaris argues that, because of this, the standard story cannot make sense of the deep reach of our non-observational knowledge of (...) action. He concludes that we therefore have to jettison its conception of actions as mindless bodily movements animated from the outside by intentions. Here we defend the standard story. We can make sense of the reach of non-observational knowledge of action once we reject the following two assumptions: (i) that an intended habitual or skilled action is a so-called basic action—that is, an action that doesn't involve any finer-grained intentions—and (ii) that an agent, in acting, is merely executing one intention rather than a whole hierarchy of more or less fine-grained intentions. We argue that (i) and (ii) are false. (shrink)

Although Spinoza’s words about intuition, also called “the third kind of knowledge,” remain among the most difficult to grasp, I argue that he succeeds in providing an account of its distinctive character. Moreover, the special place that intuition holds in Spinoza’s philosophy is grounded not in its epistemological distinctiveness, but in its ethical promise. I will not go as far as one commentator to claim that the epistemological distinction is negligible (Malinowski-Charles 2003),but I do argue that its privileged place (...) in Spinoza’s system belongs primarily to its ethical importance, by which I mean that intuition’s value is prized by virtue of the agency it confers upon those who enjoy it. Spinoza often notes that what distinguishes the “wise man” is that he is more powerful, able to do more. That is,the wise and free person with whose description the Ethics culminates is set apart not, first and foremost, by virtue of possessing a scientific account of the true cosmological order. The Ethics is perhaps called an ethics, rather than a treatise on metaphysics or knowledge, because it concludes with a demonstration of how one comes to be able to do what is best and to live a more joyful life. Intuitive science is essential to the characterization of the power to think and live well. (shrink)

How a group G can know that p has been the subject of much investigation in social epistemology in recent years. This paper clarifies and defends a form of non-supervenient, non-summative group knowledge: G can know that p even if none of the members of G knows that p, and whether or not G knows that p does not locally supervene on the mental states of the members of G. Instead, we argue that what is central to G knowing (...) that p is whether G has an epistemic structure that is functioning appropriately in accord with the action-related purposes of the group, and this structure may include non-agential elements such as devices that retain or process information. We argue that recent objections to non-summative group knowledge given by Jennifer Lackey do not in fact succeed in undermining the view, but do help to clarify the nature of non-summative group knowledge. The main upshot of our response to Lackey’s objections is that groups put their knowledge into action in ways that often differ from how individuals do so, and social epistemologists should be careful to notice these differences, especially insofar as groups often structure themselves by employing various epistemically-relevant devices. (shrink)

Inventing novel knowledge to solve problems is a crucial, creative, mechanism employed by humans, to extend their range of action. In this paper, we present TCL (typicality-based compositional logic): a probabilistic, non monotonic extension of standard Description Logics of typicality, and will show how this framework is able to endow artificial systems of a human-like, commonsense based, concept composition procedure that allows its employment in a number of applications (ranging from computational creativity to goal-based reasoning to recommender systems and (...) affective computing). -/- The framework relies on 3 main ingredients: a non monotonic extension of standard Description Logics (allowing to reason on exceptions to inheritance in standard knowledge bases) a probabilistic extension coming from the field of logic programming (the DISPONTE semantics) a cognitive heuristics known ad HEAD-Modifier determining preference rules for the inheritance mechanisms of the novel concepts to be generated via commonsense rules. -/- We report the obtained results and the lessons learned of this research path in the context of model-based AI applications. -/- . (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that if an agent acts intentionally, she must know what she is doing. Although the scholarly consensus for many years was to reject the thesis in light of presumed counterexamples by Donald Davidson, several scholars have recently argued that attention to aspectual distinctions and the practical nature of this knowledge shows that these counterexamples fail. In this paper I defend a new objection against the thesis, one modelled after Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument. Since this argument relies (...) on general principles about the nature of knowledge rather than on intuitions about fringe cases, the recent responses that have been given to defuse the force of Davidson’s objection are silent against it. Moreover, the argument suggests that even weaker theses connecting practical entities with knowledge are also false. Recent defenders of the thesis that there is a necessary connection between knowledge and intentional action are motivated by the insight that this connection is non-accidental. I close with a positive proposal to account for the non-accidentality of this link without appeal to necessary connections by drawing an extended analogy between practical and perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

This is a thesis in support of the conceptual yoking of analytic truth to a priori knowledge. My approach is a semantic one; the primary subject matter throughout the thesis is linguistic objects, such as propositions or sentences. I evaluate arguments, and also forward my own, about how such linguistic objects’ truth is determined, how their meaning is fixed and how we, respectively, know the conditions under which their truth and meaning are obtained. The strategy is to make explicit (...) what is distinctive about analytic truths. The objective is to show that truths, known a priori, are trivial in a highly circumscribed way. My arguments are premised on a language-relative account of analytic truth. The language relative account which underwrites much of what I do has two central tenets: 1. Conventionalism about truth and, 2. Non-factualism about meaning. I argue that one decisive way of establishing conventionalism and non-factualism is to prioritise epistemological questions. Once it is established that some truths are not known empirically an account of truth must follow which precludes factual truths being known non-empirically. The function of Part 1 is, chiefly, to render Carnap’s language-relative account of analytic truth. I do not offer arguments in support of Carnap at this stage, but throughout Parts 2 and 3, by looking at more current literature on a priori knowledge and analytic truth, it becomes quickly evident that I take Carnap to be correct, and why. In order to illustrate the extent to which Carnap’s account is conventionalist and non-factualist I pose his arguments against those of his predecessors, Kant and Frege. Part 1 is a lightly retrospective background to the concepts of ‘analytic’ and ‘a priori’. The strategy therein is more mercenary than exegetical: I select the parts from Kant and Frege most relevant to Carnap’s eventual reaction to them. Hereby I give the reasons why Carnap foregoes a factual and objective basis for logical truth. The upshot of this is an account of analytic truth (i.e. logical truth, to him) which ensures its trivial nature. In opposition to accounts of a priori knowledge, which describe it as knowledge gained from rational apprehension, I argue that it is either knowledge from logical deduction or knowledge of stipulations. I therefore reject, in Part 2, three epistemologies for knowing linguistic conventions (e.g. implicit definitions): 1. intuition, 2. inferential a priori knowledge and, 3. a posteriori knowledge. At base, all three epistemologies are rejected because they are incompatible with conventionalism and non-factualism. I argue this point by signalling that such accounts of knowledge yield unsubstantiated second-order claims and/or they render the relevant linguistic conventions epistemically arrogant. For a convention to be arrogant it must be stipulated to be true. The stipulation is then considered arrogant when its meaning cannot be fixed, and its truth cannot be determined without empirical ‘work’. Once a working explication of ‘a priori’ has been given, partially in Part 1 (as inferential) and then in Part 2 (as non-inferential) I look, in Part 3, at an apriorist account of analytic truth, which, I argue, renders analytic truth non-trivial. The particular subject matter here is the implicit definitions of logical terms. The opposition’s argument holds that logical truths are known a priori (this is part of their identification criteria) and that their meaning is factually based. From here it follows that analytic truth, being determined by factually based meaning, is also factual. I oppose these arguments by exposing the internal inconsistencies; that implicit definition is premised on the arbitrary stipulation of truth which is inconsistent with saying that there are facts which determine the same truth. In doing so, I endorse the standard irrealist position about implicit definition and analytic truth (along with the “early friends of implicit definition” such as Wittgenstein and Carnap). What is it that I am trying to get at by doing all of the abovementioned? Here is a very abstracted explanation. The unmitigated realism of the rationalists of old, e.g. Plato, Descartes, Kant, have stoically borne the brunt of the allegation of yielding ‘synthetic a priori’ claims. The anti-rationalist phase of this accusation I am most interested in is that forwarded by the semantically driven empiricism of the early 20th century. It is here that the charge of the ‘synthetic a priori’ really takes hold. Since then new methods and accusatory terms are employed by, chiefly, non-realist positions. I plan to give these proper attention in due course. However, it seems to me that the reframing of the debate in these new terms has also created the illusion that current philosophical realism, whether naturalistic realism, realism in science, realism in logic and mathematics, is somehow not guilty of the same epistemological and semantic charges levelled against Plato, Descartes and Kant. It is of interest to me that in, particularly, current analytic philosophy (given its rationale) realism in many areas seems to escape the accusation of yielding synthetic priori claims. Yet yielding synthetic a priori claims is something which realism so easily falls prey to. Perhaps this is a function of the fact that the phrase, ‘synthetic a priori’, used as an allegation, is now outmoded. This thesis is nothing other than an indictment of metaphysics, or speculative philosophy (this being the crime), brought against a specific selection of realist arguments. I, therefore, ask of my reader to see my explicit, and perhaps outmoded, charge of the ‘synthetic a priori’ levelled against respective theorists as an attempt to draw a direct comparison with the speculative metaphysics so many analytic philosophers now love to hate. I think the phrase ‘synthetic a priori’ still does a lot of work in this regard, precisely because so many current theorists wrongly think they are immune to this charge. Consequently, I shall say much about what is not permitted. Such is, I suppose, the nature of arguing ‘against’ something. I’ll argue that it is not permitted to be a factualist about logical principles and say that they are known a priori. I’ll argue that it is not permitted to say linguistic conventions are a posteriori, when there is a complete failure in locating such a posteriori conventions. Both such philosophical claims are candidates for the synthetic a priori, for unmitigated rationalism. But on the positive side, we now have these two assets: Firstly, I do not ask us to abandon any of the linguistic practises discussed; merely to adopt the correct attitude towards them. For instance, where we use the laws of logic, let us remember that there are no known/knowable facts about logic. These laws are therefore, to the best of our knowledge, conventions not dissimilar to the rules of a game. And, secondly, once we pass sentence on knowing, a priori, anything but trivial truths we shall have at our disposal the sharpest of philosophical tools. A tool which can only proffer a better brand of empiricism. (shrink)

A central debate in philosophy of action concerns whether agential knowledge, the knowledge agents characteristically have of their own actions, is inferential. While inferentialists like Sarah Paul hold that it is inferential, others like Lucy O’Brien and Kieran Setiya argue that it is not. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for the view that agential knowledge is non-inferential, by posing a dilemma for inferentialists: on the first horn, inferentialism is committed to holding that agents have (...) only alienated knowledge of their own actions; on the second horn, inferentialism is caught in a vicious regress. Neither option is attractive, so inferentialism should be rejected. (shrink)

The suppression thesis is the theological claim that theistic non-belief results from culpable mistreatment of one’s knowledge of God or one’s evidence for God. The thesis is a traditional one but unpopular today. This article examines whether it can gain new credibility from the philosophy of self-deception and from the cognitive science of religion. The thesis is analysed in terms of the intentionalist and the non-intentionalist model of self-deception. The first proposed model views non-belief as intentional suppression of one’s (...) implicit knowledge of God. It is less feasible psychologically but has a good theological fit with Paul’s and Calvin’s versions of the thesis. This model also helps the argument for the culpability of non-belief. The second model views suppression as a process of subconscious motivated reasoning driven by a desire to avoid an uncomfortable truth. It fits Pascal’s view that one’s desire for or against God determines whether one sees general revelation as providing sufficient evidence for God. There is some empirical and anecdotal evidence for both models, but obvious cases of non-resistant non-belief present a major problem for the suppression thesis. Also, it is hard to see what might motivate anyone to deceive oneself about God’s existence. (shrink)

A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that folk knowledge attribution practices regarding some epistemological thought experiments differ significantly from the consensus found in the philosophical literature. More specifically, laypersons are likely to ascribe knowledge in the so-called Authentic Evidence Gettier-style cases, while most philosophers deny knowledge in these cases. The intuitions shared by philosophers are often used as evidence in favor (or against) certain philosophical analyses of the notion of knowledge. However, the fact that these (...) intuitions are not universal, as non-philosophers do not sympathize with verdicts made by philosophers, is problematic and requires some explanation. Recently, a promising theoretical approach emerged that could be used to explain away unexpected folk knowledge attributions. According to the protagonist projection hypothesis, when subjects answer questions about some hypothetical scenario, their judgments might result from adopting the cognitive perspective of the protagonist in the given scenario. Previous experimental findings suggest protagonist projection might be responsible for problematic knowledge attributions in Gettier-style cases. This paper reports data collected in an experiment which focused on five different Authentic Evidence Gettier-style scenarios and investigated the impact of protagonist projection on folk knowledge ascriptions in such cases. The results bring some support to the protagonist projection hypothesis, but do not allow to explain away a substantial number of problematic folk knowledge attributions. (shrink)

After distinguishing between a metaphysical and a contemplative strategy interpretation of the no-self doctrine, I argue that the latter allows for the illumination of significant and under-discussed Kantian affinities with Buddhist views of the self and moral psychology. Unlike its metaphysical counterpart, the contemplative strategy interpretation, understands the doctrine of no-self as a technique of perception, undertaken from the practical standpoint of action. I argue that if we think of the contemplative strategy version of the no-self doctrine as a process (...) engaged in, in order to free oneself from delusion and to see things more objectively in order to promote right action, then we find a clear parallel in Kant’s duty of self-knowledge which demands that we rid ourselves of deluded moral self-descriptions. While in Buddhism the aim is a selflessness that liberates one from suffering, for Kant the aim is an agency free of the conceit that interferes with clear moral vision, sound judgement, and dutiful action. I conclude by responding to objections advanced by Charles Goodman which aim to show that the Kantian position is deeply at odds with Buddhist thinking, arguing that neither Kantian agency nor Kantian self-legislation is undermined by the doctrine of no-self. (shrink)

The boundaries of social categories are frequently altered to serve normative projects, such as social reform. Griffiths and Khalidi argue that the value-driven modification of categories diminishes the epistemic value of social categories. I argue that concerns over value-modified categories stem from problematic assumptions of the value-free ideal of science. Contrary to those concerns, non-epistemic value considerations can contribute to the epistemic improvement of a scientific category. For example, the early history of the category infantile autism shows how non-epistemic value (...) considerations can contribute to delimiting and establishing infantile autism as a distinct category in mainstream psychiatry. In the case of infantile autism, non-epistemic considerations have led to a new interpretation of existing data, the expansion of research to include biology, and the creation of diagnostic criteria that further contribute to collecting relevant data. Given this case study, it can be argued that non-epistemic values can improve our knowledge of scientific categories. (shrink)

The norm of assertion, to be in force, is a social norm. What is the content of our social norm of assertion? Various linguistic arguments purport to show that to assert is to represent oneself as knowing. But to represent oneself as knowing does not entail that assertion is governed by a knowledge norm. At best these linguistic arguments provide indirect support for a knowledge norm. Furthermore, there are alternative, non-normative explanations for the linguistic data (as in recent (...) work from Van Elswyk). Direct arguments would rely on normative judgments about the permissibility or impermissibility of assertions with and without the speaker knowing the content asserted. John Turri's work experimental results purport to show that our norm of assertion is factive, and probably knowledge. But as a number of recent experimentalists (Kneer, Reuter and Broessel, Marsili and Wiegmann) have shown, Turri's results rely on the problemmatic use of 'should' as in 'Maria should assert that she owns a 1990 watch.' Correcting for this, these experimentalists provide strong evidence that our norm of assertion is not factive. The standard reply to evidence like this from the assertion of unlucky falsehoods is the excuse maneuver. But Marsili and Wiegmann, following Turri's protocol for testing for excuse validation, show that participants who judge that assertions unlucky falsehoods are permissible are not guilty of excuse validation. Given our current understanding of the experimental evidence, knowledge is not our norm of assertion. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the knowledge management processes and their role in achieving competitive advantage at Al-Quds Open University. The study was based on the descriptive analytical method, and the study population consists of academic and administrative staff in each of the branches of Al-Quds Open University in (Tulkarm, Nablus and Jenin). The researchers selected a sample of the study population by the intentional non-probability method, the size of (70) employees. A questionnaire was prepared and supervised by a (...) number of specialists in order to obtain the results of the study. The study concluded that there is a positive direct relationship, that is, the higher the degree of application of knowledge management processes, the greater the degree of competitive advantage. Knowledge Technology came first with a score of 80.02% on all items. Competitive advantage came second with 81.74%. In the third place came "knowledge generation" where the total score on all paragraphs in this area (78.24%). In the fourth place, "knowledge transfer" (77.21%). "Developing and storing knowledge" came in fifth place (77.13%). "Acquisition of knowledge" came in sixth place (76.45%). Knowledge Organization ranked seventh (74.26%). The study recommended that the university should enable the employees to benefit from the experiences and expertise available to help generate knowledge. The University encourages the creation of knowledge through the system of incentives and open the way for creators to apply their creations and spread and invest in excellence and creativity. The university should design work performance levels based on the integration of knowledge and organize it according to policies that support freedom of research. The need for Palestinian universities to adopt a knowledge management approach. The need to adopt a system of incentives that rewards cognitive efforts, and give workers enough freedom to enable them to apply their knowledge. (shrink)

This paper investigates ‘authoritative knowledge’, a neglected species of practical knowledge gained on the basis of exercising practical authority. I argue that, like perceptual knowledge, authoritative knowledge is non-inferential. I then present a broadly reliabilist account of the process by which authority yields knowledge, and use this account to address certain objections.

It is widely held in philosophy that knowing is not a state of mind. On this view, rather than knowledge itself constituting a mental state, when we know, we occupy a belief state that exhibits some additional non-mental characteristics. Fascinatingly, however, new empirical findings from cognitive neuroscience and experimental philosophy now offer direct, converging evidence that the brain can—and often does—treat knowledge as if it is a mental state in its own right. While some might be tempted to (...) keep the metaphysics of epistemic states separate from the neurocognitive mechanics of our judgements about them, here I will argue that these empirical findings give us sufficient reason to conclude that knowledge is at least sometimes a mental state. The basis of this argument is the epistemological principle of neurocognitive parity—roughly, if the contents of a given judgement reflect the structure of knowledge, so do the neurocognitive mechanics that produced them. This principle, which I defend here, straightforwardly supports the inference from the empirical observation that the brain sometimes treats knowledge like a mental state to the epistemological conclusion that knowledge is at least sometimes a mental state. All told, the composite, belief-centric metaphysics of knowledge widely assumed in epistemology is almost certainly mistaken. (shrink)

We describe the three place relation of contrastive knowledge, which holds between a person, a target proposition, and a contrasting proposition. The person knows that p rather than that q. We argue for three claims about this relation. (a) Many common sense and philosophical ascriptions of knowledge can be understood in terms of it. (b) Its application is subject to fewer complications than non-contrastive knowledge is. (c) It applies over a wide range of human and nonhuman cases.

According to one interpretation of Aristotle’s famous thesis, to say that action is the conclusion of practical reasoning is to say that action is itself a judgment about what to do. A central motivation for the thesis is that it suggests a path for understanding the non-observational character of practical knowledge. If actions are judgments, then whatever explains an agent’s knowledge of the relevant judgment can explain her knowledge of the action. I call the approach to action (...) that accepts Aristotle’s thesis so understood Normativism. There are many reasons to doubt Normativism. My aim in this paper is to defend Normativism from a pair of arguments that purport to show that a normative judgment could not constitute an event in material reality and also the knowledge of such a happening. Both highlight a putative mismatch between the natures of, on the one hand, an agent’s knowledge of her normative judgment and, on the other, her knowledge of her own action. According to these objections, knowledge of action includes (a) perceptual knowledge and (b) knowledge of what one has already done. But knowledge of a normative judgment includes neither. Hence knowledge of action cannot simply be knowledge of a normative judgment. (shrink)

We often claim to know what might be—or probably is—the case. Modal knowledge along these lines creates a puzzle for information-sensitive semantics for epistemic modals. This paper develops a solution. We start with the idea that knowledge requires safe belief: a belief amounts to knowledge only if it could not easily have been held falsely. We then develop an interpretation of the modal operator in safety that allows it to non-trivially embed information-sensitive contents. The resulting theory avoids (...) various paradoxes that arise from other accounts of modal knowledge. It also delivers plausible predictions about modal Gettier cases. (shrink)

Safety principles in epistemology are often hailed as providing us with an explanation of why we fail to have knowledge in Gettier cases and lottery examples, while at the same time allowing for the fact that we know the negations of sceptical hypotheses. In a recent paper, Sinhababu and Williams have produced an example—the Backward Clock—that is meant to spell trouble for safety accounts of knowledge. I argue that the Backward Clock case is, in fact, unproblematic for the (...) more sophisticated formulations of safety in the literature. However, I then proceed to construct two novel examples that turn out problematic for those formulations—one that provides us with a lottery-style case of safe ignorance and one that is a straightforward case of unsafe knowledge. If these examples succeed, then safety as it is usually conceived in the current debate cannot account for ignorance in all Gettier and lottery-style cases, and neither is it a necessary condition for knowledge. I conclude from these troublesome examples that modal epistemologists ought to embrace a much more simple and non-reductive version of safety, according to which the notion of similarity between possible worlds that determines in which worlds the subject must believe truly is an epistemic notion that cannot be defined or reduced to notions independent of knowledge. The resulting view is shown to also lead to desirable results with respect to lottery cases, certain quantum phenomena, and a puzzling case involving a cautious brain-in-a-vat. (shrink)

It has been widely accepted since Stanley and Williamson (2001) that the only linguistically acceptable semantic treatments for sentences of the form ‘S knows how to V’ involve treating the wh-complement ‘how to V’ as an interrogative phrase, denoting a set of propositions. Recently a number of authors have suggested that the ‘how to V’ phrase denotes not a proposition, but an object. This view points toward a prima facie plausible non-propositional semantics for knowledge-how, which treats ‘how to V’ (...) as a free relative noun phrase. In this paper I argue that the free relative semantics is implausible. I show that linguistic phenomena which seem to support a free relative semantics can be explained by the supporter of an interrogative semantics, and demonstrate that standard linguistic tests strongly suggest that ‘how to V’ has an interrogative reading, and no free relative reading. (shrink)

Intentional action is often accompanied by knowledge of what one is doing---knowledge which appears non-observational and non-inferential. G.E.M. Anscombe defends the stronger claim that intentional action always comes with such knowledge. Among those who follow Anscombe, some have altered the features, content, or species of the knowledge claimed to necessarily accompany intentional action. In this paper, I argue that there is no necessary connection between intentional action and knowledge, no matter the assumed features, content, or (...) species of the knowledge. Further, rather than follow the usual methodology in this debate of arguing by counterexample, I present an argument that explains why we continue to find counterexamples: intentional action and knowledge are regulated by thresholds under distinct pressures; in particular, the threshold of control regulating intentional action is disparately influenced by the role of intentional action in practical normativity. (shrink)

According to reductive intellectualists about knowledge-how :147–190, 2008; Philos Phenomenol Res 78:439–467, 2009) knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. To the extent that this is right, then insofar as we might conceive of ways knowledge could be extended with reference to active externalist :7–19, 1998; Clark in Supersizing the mind: embodiment, action, and cognitive extension: embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008) approaches in the philosophy of mind, we should expect no interesting difference (...) between the two. However, insofar as anti-intellectualist approaches to knowledge-how are a viable option, there is an overlooked issue of how knowledge-how might be extended, via active externalism, in ways very differently from knowledge-that. This paper explores this overlooked space, and in doing so, illustrates how a novel form of extended knowledge-how emerges from a pairing of active externalism in the philosophy of mind with anti-intellectualism in the theory of knowledge. Crucial to our argument will be a new way of thinking about the extended mind thesis, as it pertains to the kinds of state one is in when one knows how to do something, and how this state connects with non-accidentally successful performance. (shrink)

Diabetes is a major public health issue that affects the nations of our time to a large extent and is described as a non-communicable epidemic. Diabetes mellitus is a common disease where there is too much sugar (glucose) floating around in your blood. This occurs because either the pancreas can’t produce enough insulin or the cells in body have become resistant to insulin. The concentration in this paper is on diagnosis diabetes by designing a proposed expert system. The main goal (...) of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosing of the illness, dealing with it quickly, and tips for permanent treatment whenever possible is given out. SL5 object expert system language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. (shrink)

Practical knowledge is discussed in close relation to practical expertise. For both anti-intellectualists and intellectualists, the knowledge of how to φ is widely assumed to entail the practical expertise in φ-ing. This paper refutes this assumption. I argue that non-experts can know how to φ via other experts’ knowledge of φ-ing. Know-how can be ‘outsourced’. I defend the outsourceability of know-how, and I refute the objections that reduce outsourced know-how to the knowledge of how to ask (...) for help, of how to get things done, or of external contents. Interestingly, outsourcing differs from social cooperation, collective agency, testimonial transmission, and many other notions in social-epistemological debates. Thus, outsourcing provides not only a hitherto unconsidered form of know-how but also a novel way for knowledge to be social. Furthermore, outsourcing plausibly involves a ‘social’ cognitive extension that does not rest on EMT or HEC. Given the outsourceability of know-how, we must reconsider the nature of know-how and expertise, as well as the relation between non-experts and experts. (shrink)

The knowledge argument is something that is both an ideal for philosophy and yet surprisingly rare: a simple, valid argument for an interesting and important conclusion, with plausible premises. From a compelling thought-experiment and a few apparently innocuous assumptions, the argument seems to give us the conclusion, a priori, that physicalism is false. Given the apparent power of this apparently simple argument, it is not surprising that philosophers have worried over the argument and its proper diagnosis: physicalists have disputed (...) its validity, or soundness or both; in response, non-physicalists have attempted to reformulate the argument to show its real anti-physicalist lesson. (shrink)

How is moral knowledge possible? This paper defends the anti-Humean thesis that we can acquire moral knowledge by deduction from wholly non-moral premises. According to Hume’s Law, as it has become known, we cannot deduce an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, since it is “altogether inconceivable how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it” (Hume, 1739, 3.1.1). This paper explores the prospects for a deductive theory of moral knowledge that rejects (...) Hume’s Law. (shrink)

We think we have lots of substantial knowledge about the future. But contemporary wisdom has it that indeterminism prevails in such a way that just about any proposition about the future has a non-zero objective chance of being false.2, 3 What should one do about this? One, pessimistic, reaction is scepticism about knowledge of the future. We think this should be something of a last resort, especially since this scepticism is likely to infect alleged knowledge of the (...) present and past. One anti-sceptical strategy is to pin our hopes on determinism, conceding that knowledge of the future is unavailable in an indeterministic world. This is not satisfying either: we would rather not be hostage to empirical fortune in the way that this strategy recommends. A final strategy, one that we shall explore in this paper, is one of reconciliation: knowledge of a proposition is compatible with a subject’s belief having a non-zero objective chance of error.4 Following Williamson, we are interested in tying knowledge to the presence or absence of error in close cases, and so we shall explore the connections between knowledge and objective chance within such a framework. We don’t want to get tangled up here in complications involved in attempting to formulate a necessary and sufficient condition for knowledge in terms of safety. Instead, we will assume the following rough and ready necessary condition: a subject knows P only if she could not easily have falsely believed P.5 Assuming that easiness is to be spelt.. (shrink)

I begin by criticizing reductionist knowledge-first epistemology according to which knowledge can be used to reductively analyze other epistemic phenomena. My central concern is that proponents of such an approach commit a similar mistake to the one that they charge their opponents with. This is the mistake of seeking to reductively analyze basic epistemic phenomena in terms of other allegedly more fundamental phenomena. I then turn to non-reductionist brands of knowledge-first epistemology. Specifically, I consider the knowledge (...) norms of assertion and contrast them with an alternative that I have developed elsewhere (Gerken 2011, 2012a, 2013b, 2014, 2015a, 2015c, MS). On the basis of the critical discussion, I question whether a knowledge-first program that is both plausible and distinctive has been identified. On a more positive note, I sketch the contours of an alternative that I label ‘equilibristic epistemology.’ According to this approach, there isn’t a single epistemic phenomenon or concept that is “first.” Rather, there are a number of basic epistemic phenomena that are not reductively analyzable although they may be co-elucidated in a non-reductive manner. This approach preserves some grains of truth in knowledge-first epistemology. For example, it preserves the idea that knowledge can be taken to be explanatorily basic and unanalyzable. However, since no single epistemic phenomenon is first, knowledge is not first. (shrink)

A satisfactory theory of linguistic communication must explain how it is that, through the interpersonal exchange of auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli, the communicative preconditions for the acquisition of testimonial knowledge regularly come to be satisfied. Without an account of knowledge-yielding communication this success condition for linguistic theorizing is left opaque, and we are left with an incomplete understanding of testimony, and communication more generally, as a source of knowledge. This paper argues that knowledge-yielding communication should (...) be modelled on knowledge itself. It is argued that knowledge-yielding communication occurs iff interlocutors coordinate on truth values in a non-lucky and non-deviant way. This account is able to do significant explanatory work: it sheds light on the nature of referential communication, and it allows us to capture, in an informative way, the sense in which interlocutors must entertain similar propositions in order to communicate successfully. (shrink)

I discuss methodology in epistemology. I argue that settling the facts, even the epistemic facts, fails to settle the questions of intellectual policy at the center of our epistemic lives. An upshot is that the standard methodology of analyzing concepts like knowledge, justification, rationality, and so on is misconceived. More generally, any epistemic method that seeks to issue in intellectual policy by settling the facts, whether by way of abductive theorizing or empirical investigation, no matter how reliable, is inapt. (...) The argument is a radicalization of Moore’s Open Question Argument. I conclude by considering the ramifications of this conclusion for the debate surrounding “Modal Security”, a proposed necessary condition on undermining defeat. (shrink)

If there is any consensus about knowledge in contemporary epistemology, it is that there is one primary kind: knowledge-that. I put forth a view, one I find in the works of Aristotle, on which knowledge-of – construed in a fairly demanding sense, as being well-acquainted with things – is the primary, fundamental kind of knowledge. As to knowledge-that, it is not distinct from knowledge-of, let alone more fundamental, but instead a species of it. To (...) know that such-and-such, just like to know a person or place, is to be well-acquainted with a portion of reality – in this case a fact. In part by comparing classic Gettier cases to cases in which one has true impressions of but fails to know a person, I argue that this account not only respects our intuitions about knowledge-that – in particular that it is or entails non-accidentally true justified belief – but also explains them, providing a compelling analysis. (shrink)

Carnap was one of the first to use the term 'non-cognitivism'. His linguistic pluralism and voluntarism, and his deflationary views of ontology and semantics, are highly congenial to those of us who want to take non-cognitivism in the direction of global expressivism. In his own case, however, this move is in tension with his continued endorsement of what he calls 'the general thesis of logical empiricism', that 'there is no third kind of knowledge besides empirical and logical knowledge.’ (...) So while Carnap clears a path towards global expressivism, he doesn't seem to appreciate what it requires him to leave behind. (shrink)

Background: Dengue Disease is a mosquito-borne tropical disease caused by the dengue virus, symptoms typically begin three to fourteen days after infection. This may include a high fever, headache, vomiting, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin rash. Dengue serology is applied in different settings, such as for surveillance, in health care facilities in endemic areas and in travel clinics in non-endemic areas. The applicability and quality of serological tests in dengue endemic regions has to be judged against a (...) background of potential cross reactivity with other flavi-viruses, difficulties in distinguishing primary from secondary infections and technological problems related to the fact that most dengue endemic regions are relatively poor of resources .Objectives: to help doctors and patients in diagnosing Dengue Disease and give them the information of how to prevent Dengue Disease and to be able to understand the signs and symptoms of Dengue Disease. Methods: We collected all relevant material for Dengue Disease. Then we designed and implemented a knowledge based system for diagnosing Dengue Disease using SL5 Object Language. Results: The knowledge based system was evaluated by a group of Patients and specialized doctors and they found it very friendly and easy to use. (shrink)

We defend the view of epistemic `must' as weak and claim that `must p' is used when the speaker does not know p. Novel arguments for this well-known account are provided. The theory is extended to epistemic future.

Keith DeRose and Stewart Cohen object to the fallibilist strand of pragmatic invariantism regarding knowledge ascriptions that it is committed to non-cancelable pragmatic implications. I show that this objection points us to an asymmetry about which aspects of the conveyed content of knowledge ascriptions can be canceled: we can cancel those aspects that ascribe a lesser epistemic standing to the subject but not those that ascribe a better or perfect epistemic standing. This situation supports the infallibilist strand of (...) pragmatic invariantism according to which knowledge semantically requires absolute certainty but this claim is often pragmatically weakened: it turns out that exactly those aspects of the conveyed content are cancelable that this view claims are pragmatic. I also argue that attributor contextualism and relativism do not have an alternative explanation of this phenomenon. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to show how Plato suggested demarcating between knowledge and other kinds of human intellectual activities. The article proposes to distinguish between two ways of such a demarcation. The first, called `the external demarcation', takes place when one differentiates between knowledge and non-knowledge, the rational and non-rational or the reasonable and non-reasonable. The second, called `internal', marks the difference within knowledge itself and could be illustrated by the difference between the (...) so called hard and soft sciences. The analyses lead tothe following conclusions. Plato refers to the whole of human intellectual activity as doxa, which is divided into two spheres. The first of them is knowledge proper whose criterion is phronesis. Three other kinds of doxa are derived from knowledge proper: 1) the traditional peri phuseos investigation (called also sophia); 2) popular doxai concerning virtues; 3) wisdom of the antilogikoi. The difference represents the external demarcation. There may be, however, a difference in the scope of knowledge proper (the internal demarcation). If the peri phuseos investigators were able to explain the field of values, the result of their investigation could be acknowledged as knowledge, although it would still be characterized as inferior due to its being based on senses. What is interesting about knowledge proper is that it is not firm and reliable but only hypothetical. It does not determine the skeptical reading of the Phaedo but it indicates that Plato has just begun his own philosophical project (which is still in progress) and the knowledge presented in the dialogue is his first positive suggestion how to solve the problem of demarcation. (shrink)

The ongoing global pandemic of Covid-19 has exposed SARS-CoV-2 as a potent non-human actant that resists the joint scientific, public health and socio-political efforts to contain and understand both the virus and the illness. Yet, such a narrative appears to conceal more than it reveals. The seeming agentiality of the novel coronavirus is itself but one manifestation of the continuous destruction of biodiversity, climate change, socio-economic inequalities, neocolonialism, overconsumption and the anthropogenic degradation of nature. Furthermore, focusing on the virus – (...) an entity that holds an ambiguous status between the ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ – brings into question the issue of the agentiality of non/living matter. While the story of viral potency seems to get centre stage, overshadowing the complex and perverse entanglement of processes and phenomena which activated these potentials in the first place, the Covid-19 pandemic also becomes a prism that sheds light on the issues of environmental violence; social and environmental injustices; more-than-human agentiality; and ethico-political responses that the present situation may mobilise. -/- This article serves as a written record of joint conversations between artists and researchers in the working group ‘Non/Living Queerings’ that formed part of the online series of events ‘Braiding Friction’ organised by the research project Biofriction. The article strives to capture the collective effort of braiding and weaving a variety of situated perspectives, theoretical toolboxes, knowledges and experiences against the background of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, the text focuses on the issues of crisis, ‘amplification effect’, viral agency and the changing notions of humanity. (shrink)

Whatever F.A. Hayek meant by “knowledge” could not have been the justified true belief conception common in the Western intellectual tradition from at least the time of Plato onward. In this brief note, I aim to uncover and succinctly state Hayek’s unique definition of knowledge.