Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Knowledge and the permissibility of action

  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

I argue in favor of a certain connection between knowledge and the permissibility of action. On this approach, we do not think of the relation between those notions as reflecting a universal epistemic principle. Instead, we think of it as something resembling a platitude from folk psychology. With the help of some elementary tools from the logic of normativity and counterfactuals, I attempt to establish the connection by deriving it from more elementary principles. The new formulation involves a ceteris paribus clause. Though it is often difficult to specify the exact content of a ceteris paribus clause, we will see that our clause is derived from a descriptive generalization with independent motivation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Fantl and McGrath (2009, p. 66) eventually settle on a slightly different but unrestricted principle: if you know that p, then p is warranted enough to justify you in X-ing, for any X.

  2. See especially Hawthorne and Stanley (2008) and Fantl and McGrath (2009).

  3. Works that appeal to this strategy include Fantl and McGrath (2002), their (2009) book, Hawthorne and Stanley (2008), and Ross and Schroeder (2014). For experimental work supporting the point that ordinary uses of ‘knows’ are sensitive to practical interests see Pinillos (2012) and Sripada and Stanley (2012). For opposing criticism, see Buckwalter and Schaffer (2015).

  4. Hawthorne and Stanley (2008, p. 578) claim: “For p-dependent choices, it seems highly intuitive that knowledge that p makes it appropriate to treat p as a reason for action”.

  5. See Fantl and McGrath (2009) and Ross and Schroeder (2014).

  6. For extended discussion, see Fantl and McGrath (2009), and Stanley (2005).

  7. For responses which try to save the knowledge action principles, see Fantl and McGrath (2009), Weatherson (2012), and Kasaki (2014).

  8. Fantl and McGrath (2009, pp. 69–76) argue that the alleged counter-examples lose their force against the knowledge-action principle if we restrict it to theoretical reasoning: in those cases, if it is inappropriate to use the propositions in question in theoretical reasoning, then the agents do not have knowledge in the first place. If this is correct, then our motivation for finding a weaker knowledge-action principle will only concern practical reasoning.

  9. As a referee points out, the folk psychology principles take rationality for granted while the knowledge-action principle are explicit about it.

  10. In addition, the knowledge-action principles have been almost exclusively studied by epistemologists while folk psychology has been discussed mainly by philosophers of mind and psychologists. Relatedly, Weatherson (2012) laments how the study of knowledge ascriptions are investigated mostly from the perspective of epistemology as opposed to the philosophy of mind and language. I am sympathetic to his concerns.

  11. In a pair of important papers, Ganson (2008) and Weatherson (2005) try to account for some of the data (that knowledge action principles try to explain) by appealing to principles connecting belief (not knowledge) and action. However, the principles they propose are not ceteris paribus generalizations. In a footnote, Ganson briefly considers a ceteris paribus principle but (too quickly I believe) gives up on it because of the difficulty of specifying the content of the ceteris paribus clause.

  12. The derivation utilizes principles of deontic logic but there is no assumption that ordinary agents have derived the principle in the same way or that they have derived it at all (and even if they have derived it in that way, we do not suppose that deontic logic principles are part of folk psychology any more than modus ponens would be if the agent derived the principle using that rule of inference). What is important is that the principle be true and that it can provide a rational explanation of some of our ordinary practices of attributing or denying knowledge. This may require that the principle be accepted by agents or least that it could be accepted.

  13. What exactly is said to be obligatory? Is it the forming of the belief (an event), the occurrence of a belief (a mental token) or being in a certain belief state (a mental state)? My focus is on this third option.

  14. I assume here that skepticism about doxastic normativity is false. See Alston (1985).

  15. Instead of talking about epistemic requirements/permissibility we can talk about rational requirements/permissibility. Some care is needed, however. Perhaps there is a sense of ‘rational’ in which believing p on bad evidence but because it makes you happy counts as rationally permissible. But it doesn’t count as rational in the epistemic sense I have in mind. Some philosophers mark this distinction by saying that the belief is sustained by the ‘wrong kind of reason’.

  16. See also White (2005).

  17. Kratzer (1977, 1981, 1991).

  18. Portner (2009).

  19. The naïve translation of ‘\(\exists \)x(Sx\(\supset \)Hx)’ (restricted to people) from first order logic is ‘there is someone who is happy (H) if they sing (S)’. But the formal sentence is true if there is at least one person in the domain who is not singing. This suggests that the naïve translation is inaccurate.

  20. Harman (1986).

  21. White (2005, p. 445).

  22. ‘Kp’ means ‘S knows p at t’, ‘Bp’ is ‘S believes p at t’.

  23. See Wedgwood (2012).

  24. See Williamson (2000).

  25. Strictly speaking, the entailment requires the “seriality” axiom, which is fairly standard in deontic logics: \(\Box ({{\varvec{O}}}p \supset {{\varvec{P}}}p)\).

  26. See Kieran (2014) for an argument that using p as a premise in practical reasoning is the same as having p as a reason.

  27. Ross and Schroeder (2014) defend in detail the view that this disposition is essential to belief. I follow them in appealing to this disposition in attempting to derive a knowledge-action principle. However, they end up deriving a universal principle (not a ceteris paribus generalization). In addition, they use different methods and deploy different premises. A central element of my approach, which is not in theirs, is appealing to the tools of deontic logic and their interactions with the counterfactual rendering of dispositional properties. See Lutz (2013) for a criticism of their derivation.

  28. Lewis (1997).

  29. For finks, see Martin (1994). For maskers, see Johnston (1992) and Bird (1998).

  30. Choi (2008), Malzkorn (2000), Mellor (2000), Mumford (1998) and Prior (1985).

  31. Mumford (1998) appeals to ‘ideal’ conditions, Malzkorn (2000) and Bird (1998) appeal to ‘normal’ conditions.

  32. Lewis (1973) and Stalnaker (1968).

  33. Note that we are now dealing with two orderings. The deontic operator is interpreted with respect to a ranking of the worlds in terms of epistemic goodness while the counterfactual connective involves a ranking of worlds in terms of similarity.

  34. Fantl and McGrath (2009) propose principles that invoke a relevancy clause and principles that are not so restricted. Later in the book they claim to be neutral about whether the correct principle should be restricted by a relevancy constraint (p. 207). See Brown (2014) for an argument that their goal of setting a justification threshold for what counts as knowledge based on practical interests is untenable without a relevancy clause.

  35. The argument doesn’t turn on assuming that equivalent propositions can be distinct. The decision about the trip also depends on the proposition expressed by ‘it takes longer than five hours to make trip and (there is more than 1 grain of sand on earth and more than 2 grain of sand on earth and ... and there is more than 5000 grains of sand on earth)’. But this latter proposition is not equivalent to the original one.

  36. Kvanvig (2005).

  37. Kvanvig may not agree with me in thinking that avoiding profligacy is a requirement of successful cognition (in the intended sense) since this may seem like practical factor (Kavnvig still wishes to divorce the pragmatic from the epistemic). It is unclear to me, however, that the value of avoiding profligacy is wholly a practical matter.

  38. Stanley (2005) and other pragmatic encroachers, along with rejecting the narrow notion, have also pressed for a broader conception of epistemology. But their broad conception does not seem to aligns with Kvanvig’s if the latter as understood as non-pragmatic.

  39. Sperber and Wilson (1996). See also Sperber and Wilson (1986).

  40. A referee suggests that the cases discussed may count as ordinary after all. He or she points out that they are not very different from the classic high stakes cases (“bank” and “airport” cases) in the epistemology literature which may plausibly count as ordinary. In response, I note that the cases may not be similar at all. One reason to think that they are not similar is that in the alleged counter-examples, the pertinent proposition is known (according to those authors who proposed the counter-examples) whereas in the classic cases they are not known (at least according to what is reported in the literature). This suggests that the differences between the cases are significant. Note, however that some of the authors mentioned in footnote 7 have suggested interpretations of the alleged counter-examples as cases in which there is no knowledge after all. If these theorists are correct, then the response to this footnote would not be available.

  41. There is a subtle assumption we make here which allows us to instantiate in the scope of the operator: that our arbitrary choice situation s* exists in every accessible world. This assumption is innocuous. It does not, for example, say that our agent is in that situation in every accessible world.

  42. Forster and Davis (1984). And Stanovich and West (1983).

  43. A referee raises an illuminating challenge to my claim that every realistic world must be ordinary. The challenge can be brought out in the following way: Consider a choice situation which by hypothesis is ordinary. Now change the costs of being wrong so that they are extreme. The situation is now no longer ordinary, but the situation is still realistic since we may suppose the agent’s psychology hasn’t changed much or at all. In response, I suppose that the situation where the stakes have gone up is no longer the same situation as the original. Choice situations are fine grained so that they are essentially related to the factors affecting rational decisions. But I do not want my claim to rely on the metaphysics of situations. We may adopt a coarse grained conception of situations but be sure to restrict the modal base to choice situations in which the parameters relevant to rational choice (like the costs of being wrong) are held fixed. Either of these strategies are available to meet this objection.

  44. Since we are following Kratzer’s treatment of ‘permissibility’, ‘P’ (epistemic permissibility) in (KA) is a context sensitive term. It follows that (KA) above cannot be interpreted until we have supplied a conversational context. But what is the pertinent conversational context? Crucially, the pertinent conversational context is not one of an ordinary agent attributing knowledge in an everyday situation. Relative to those contexts, (KA) may not express a true proposition since the modal base may include non-realistic possibilities (if the agent wished to take them into account, for example). The pertinent context is the one of this paper where we limit the modal base in the way indicated. And to further clarify: ‘P’ in (KA) above does not correspond to a unique modal base. Rather, there will be one for each (S, p, t, s) (and world w) (what counts as psychologically realistic possibilities will vary according to these parameters as discussed in the text). I would like to thank an anonymous referee for raising this issue.

  45. Following Ross and Schroeder (2014), I assume that if it is permissible to use p as a premise in reasoning, then it is permissible to act as if p. They argue that the converse is not true.

  46. The fact that ‘permissible’ is context sensitive in KA-slogan (or ‘P’ in KA) does not entail that ‘know’ (or ‘K’) is also context sensitive. The following sentence is true in a context in which one is in front of Donald Trump: ‘It is necessary that If Donald Trump is the president of the US in 2017, then he (pointing at Trump) is the president of the US in 2017’. Certainly ‘he’ is context sensitive, but it doesn’t follow that anything in the antecedent (‘Donald Trump is the president of the US in 2017’) is also context sensitive.

References

  • Alston, W. (1985). Concepts of epistemic justification. The Monist, 68(1), 57–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bird, A. (1998). Dispositions and antidotes. The Philosophical Quarterly, 48, 227–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, J. (2008). Subject-sensitive invariantism and the knowledge norm for practical reasoning. Noûs, 42(2), 167–189.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, J. (2014). Impurism, practical reasoning and the threshold problem. Nous, 48(1), 179–192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buckwalter, W., & Schaffer, J. (2015). Knowledge, stakes, and mistakes. Noûs, 49(2), 201–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Choi, S. (2008). Dispositional properties and counterfactual conditionals. Mind, 117, 795–841.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dennett, D. C. (1984). Cognitive wheels: The frame problem of AI. In C. Hookway (Ed.), Minds, machines and evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fantl, J., & McGrath, M. (2002). Evidence pragmatics, justification. The Philosophical Review, 111, 67–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fantl, J., & McGrath, M. (2009). Knowledge in an uncertain world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, R. (2007). Reasonable religious disagreements. In L. Antony (Ed.), Philosophers without gods (pp. 194–214). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forster, K. I., & Davis, C. (1984). Repetition priming and frequency attenuation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 10(4), 680–698.

  • Ganson, D. (2008). Evidentialism and pragmatic constraints on outright belief. Philosophical Studies, 139(3), 441–458.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hawthorne, J., & Stanley, J. (2008). Knowledge and action. Journal of Philosophy, 105(10), 571–90.

  • Harman, G. (1986). Change in view: Principles of reasoning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, W. (1979). The will to believe. In The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

  • Johnston, Mark. (1992). How to speak of the colors. Philosophical Studies, 68, 221–263.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kasaki, M. (2014). Subject sensitive invariantism and isolated second hand knowledge. Acta Analytica, 21(1), 83–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kratzer, A. (1977). What must and can must and can mean. Linguistics & Philosophy, 1, 337–355.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kratzer, A. (1981). The notional category of modality. In H. J. Eikmeyer & H. Rieser (Eds.), Words, worlds, and contexts. New approaches in word semantics (pp. 38–74). Berlin: de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kratzer, A. (1991). Modality. In A. von Stechow & D. Wunderlich (Eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of contemporary research (pp. 639–650). Berlin: de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kvanvig, J. L. (2005). Truth and the epistemic goal. In M. Steup & E. Sosa (Eds.), Contemporary debates in epistemology (pp. 285–295). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lackey, J. (2010). Acting on knowledge. Philosophical Perspectives, 24, 361–382.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. (1973). Counterfactuals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. (1997). Finkish dispositions. The Philosophical Quarterly, 47, 143–158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lutz, Matt. (2013). The pragmatics of pragmatic encroachment. Synthese, 191(8), 1–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mellor, D. H. (2000). The semantics and ontology of dispositions. Mind, 109, 757–780.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malzkorn, W. (2000). Realism functionalism and the conditional analysis of dispositions. The Philosophical Quarterly, 50, 452–469.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martin, C. B. (1994). Dispositions and conditionals. The Philosophical Quarterly, 44, 1–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mumford, S. (1998). Dispositions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinillos, Á. (2012). Knowledge, experiments and practical interests. In J. Brown & M. Gerken (Eds.), Knowledge ascriptions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Portner, P. (2009). Modality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prior, E. (1985). Dispositions. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reed, B. (2010). A defense of stable invariantism. Noûs, 44(2), 224–244.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ross, J., & Schroeder, M. (2014). Belief, credence, and pragmatic encroachment. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 88(2), 259–288.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1996). Fodor’s frame problem and relevance theory (reply to Chiappe & Kukla). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 19(3), 530–532.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stalnaker, R. C. (1968). A theory of conditionals. In N. Rescher (Ed.), Studies in logical theory (pp. 98–112). Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (1983). On priming by a sentence context. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 112(1), 1–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Setiya, K. (2014). What is a reason to act? Philosophical Studies, 167(2), 221–235.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sripada, C. S., & Stanley, J. (2012). Empirical tests of interest-relative invariantism. Episteme, 9(1), 3–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stanley, J. (2005). Knowledge and practical interests. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Weatherson, B. (2005). Can we do without pragmatic encroachment? Philosophical Perspectives, 19(1), 417–443.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weatherson, B. (2012). Knowledge, bets, interests. In J. Brown & M. Gerken (Eds.), Knowledge ascriptions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wedgwood, R. (2012). Justified inference. Synthese, 189(2), 1–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, R. (2005). Epistemic permissiveness. Philosophical Perspectives, 19(1), 445–459.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and its limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Bob Beddor and Shyam Nair for helpful feedback.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    N. Ángel Pinillos

Authors
  1. N. Ángel Pinillos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to N. Ángel Pinillos.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Pinillos, N.Á. Knowledge and the permissibility of action. Synthese 196, 2021–2043 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1567-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1567-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation