In these pages I resurrect a dispute that has, sadly I think, now gone by the wayside in current thinking about knowledge, among other things. I mean the dispute that we find Wittgenstein entertaining in certain sections of _On Certainty_ and the dispute that led John Searle to argue that there is such a thing as the assertion fallacy. The dispute turns on what lessons we can draw from the fact that in certain examples it would be fishy or odd (...) or puzzling to say that we know. One party in the dispute, I’ll call them "saying philosophers", has it that those examples in which it would be odd to say we know aren’t examples of knowledge or of knowing. The other party, I’ll call them "meaning philosophers", agrees about the oddity but insists that the examples are still obviously examples of knowledge or of knowing and that what we say in those examples, fishy or not, is still true. I investigate this disagreement and to try and make some headway in providing support for the saying philosophers. (shrink)

In response to Stephen Neale (2016), I argue that aphonic expressions, such as PRO, are intentionally uttered by normal speakers of natural language, either by acts of omitting to say something explicitly, or by acts of giving phonetic realization to aphonics. I argue, also, that Gricean intention-based semantics should seek divorce from Cartesian assumptions of transparent access to propositional attitudes and, consequently, that Stephen Schiffer's so-called meaning-intention problem is not powerful enough to banish alleged cases of over-intellectualization in contemporary philosophy (...) of language and mind. (shrink)

This article examines accounts of negation or the apophatic in Pseudo-Dionysius, Theodor Adorno and Jacques Derrida alongside a contemporary work of art by London Fieldworks, Null Object: Gustav Metzger Thinks about Nothing. By exploring models of negative knowledge offered in these works, it asks what happens to the work of art when it becomes preoccupied with negation and how a work of art might embody or manifest — without reproducing — philosophical discourses about negation.

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.

In ‘Other Minds’, J.L. Austin advances a parallel between saying ‘I know’ and saying ‘I promise’: much as you are ‘prohibited’, he says, from saying ‘I promise I will, but I may fail’, you are also ‘prohibited’ from saying ‘I know it is so, but I may be wrong’. This treatment of ‘I know’ has been derided for nearly sixty years: while saying ‘I promise’ amounts to performing the act of promising, Austin seems to miss (...) the fact that saying ‘I know’ fails to constitute a performance of the act of knowing. In this paper, I advance a defense of Austin’s position. I diagnose the principal objections to Austin’s account as stemming from detractors’ failure to acknowledge: (1) that Austin never characterizes ‘I know’ as a pure performative; (2) that saying ‘I know p’, unlike simply knowing p, occurs in specific interpersonal contexts in which others rely on our knowledge claims; (3) Austin’s considered account of the felicity conditions of performative utterance; (4) Austin’s ultimate repudiation of the performative/constative distinction. I conclude that Austin’s treatment of ‘I know’ rests on a more general commitment to the intrinsically normative nature of ordinary language. (shrink)

Doing of some sort, undeniably, may have a connection of some kind with knowing in some sense. Take the slogan, "learning by doing." It points to the fact that one can acquire knowledge of how to do something--in the sense, at any rate, of acquiring the ability to do it--in the course of the doing. But, if undeniable, this fact seems also trifling. Nor would it mean much more to say that one can acquire such knowledge or ability only (...) by the doing, though this is probably true if we grant that actions can be performed in the imagination. (shrink)

This essay defends a principle that promises to help illuminate the nature of reflective knowledge. The principle in question belongs to a broader category called knows-knows principles, or KK principles for short. Such principles say that if you know some proposition, then you're in a position to know that you know it.KK principles were prominent among various historical philosophers and can be fruitfully integrated with many views in contemporary epistemology and beyond—and yet almost every contemporary analytic epistemologist thinks that they (...) are false.Regarding their historical pedigree: they've been endorsed by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Averroes, Aquinas, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer, among others.1Regarding... (shrink)

Ryle’s distinction between knowing that and knowing how has recently been challenged. The paper first briefly defends the distinction and then proceeds to address the question of classifying moral knowledge. Moral knowledge is special in that it is practical, that is, it is essentially a motive. Hence the way we understand moral knowledge crucially depends on the way we understand motivation. The Humean theory of motivation is wrong in saying that reason cannot be a motive, but right (...) in saying that desire is essential for motivating us. The right response to the Humean theory of motivation is to see that moral knowledge is desire-related rationality or thought-related desire. Moral knowledge is neither knowing that nor knowing how but rather a third species of knowledge which we may call “knowing to do.” Knowing to do is to be rationally disposed to do the right thing. This understanding of moral knowledge is exactly what we can learn from Aristotle’s ethics. (shrink)

1. First person authority: the received explanation Over a wide range of psychological attributes, a mature speaker seems to enjoy a defeasible form of authority on how things are with him. The received explanation of this is epistemic, and rests upon a cognitive assumption. The speaker’s word is a authoritative because when things are thus-and-so with him, then normally he knows that they are. This is held to be because the speaker has direct and privileged access to the contents of (...) his consciousness by means of introspection, conceived as a faculty of inner sense. Like perceptual knowledge, introspective knowledge is held to be direct and non-evidential. Accordingly, the first-person utterances ‘I have a pain’, ‘I believe that p’, ‘I intend to V’ are taken to be descriptions of what is evident to inner sense. Many classical thinkers held such subjective knowledge to be not only immediate, but also infallible and indubitable. The challenge to the received conceptions came from Wittgenstein. He denied the cognitive assumption, arguing that it cannot be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know that I am in pain. For what is that supposed to mean — except perhaps that I am in pain?1 If it makes no sense to say that one knows that one is in pain, then the epistemic explanation is a non-starter, since it explains the special authoritative status of a person’s avowal of pain by reference to the putative fact that the subject of pain knows, normally knows, or cannot but know, that he is in pain when he is. It is important to note that Wittgenstein did not mechanically generalize the case of pain across the whole domain of firstperson utterances. The case of pain constitutes only one pole of a range of such utterances. Avowals and averrals of belief and intention approximate the other pole, and require independent analysis and grammatical description. (shrink)

Since the 1940s, Western epistemology has discussed Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how. Ryle argued that intelligent actions – manifestations of knowledge-how – are not constituted as intelligent by the guiding intervention of knowledge-that: knowledge-how is not a kind of knowledge-that; we must understand knowledge-how in independent terms. Yet which independent terms are needed? In this chapter, we consider whether an understanding of intelligent action must include talk of knowledge-to. This is the knowledge to do this or that now, (...) not then or in general. Our argument is refined and buttressed by consideration of a text in Chinese philosophy, the Lüshi Chunqiu. This 3rd century BCE text, a compendium on good government, focuses on different types of knowledge that an effective ruler or a capable official should possess. A significant number of those discussions concern examples of knowing-how being manifested in particular situations. The text is explicitly aware of the importance of timeliness and awareness of context in manifesting know-how. Some might say that these are merely manifestations of knowing-how. But we see these examples as revealing characteristics of know-how that Ryle did not anticipate. Might knowing-to be an essential and irreducible aspect of intelligent action? (shrink)

Most contemporary action theorists accept – or at least find plausible – a belief condition on intention and a knowledge condition on intentional action. The belief condition says that I can only intend to ɸ if I believe that I will ɸ or am ɸ-ing, and the knowledge condition says that I am only intentionally ɸ-ing if I know that I am ɸ-ing. The belief condition in intention and the knowledge condition in action go hand in hand. After all, if (...) intending implies belief, and if ɸ-ing intentionally implies intending to ɸ, then in ɸ-ing, I intend to be ɸ-ing, and, by the belief condition, I believe that I am ɸ-ing, and if this belief is justified, and we are not in a Gettier situation, etc., then, I will also satisfy the knowledge condition. Moreover, the claim that when intentions properly result in action, the corresponding belief constitutes knowledge is a relatively safe assumption, at least as an assumption about what it is generally the case. (shrink)

Austin tried to forstall skeptical conclusions from the alleged ever present possibility of error. He felt that knowledge did not preclude the possibility of error and that the appearance that it did was due to a pragmatic requirement of saying one knows. Moreover, he seemed to feel that we were often right to say we know even though it is always possible that we are mistaken. The present paper argues, contra Austin, that if it is always possible that we (...) are mistaken, then the skeptic is right that we never know and that it is never right to say we know. (shrink)

Linguistics of saying studies language in its birth. Language is the mental activity executed by speaking subjects. Linguistics of saying consists in analyzing speech acts as the result of an act of knowing. Speaking subjects, speak because they have something to say; they say something because they define themselves before the circumstance they are in; and this is possible because they are able to know. Speaking, then, is speaking, saying and knowing. In this sense there (...) is a progressive determination. Knowing makes possible saying, and saying determines speaking. The problem thus is to determine the linguistic intention of the individual speaker to say something in every speech act. (shrink)

'Knowledge' doesn't correctly describe our relation to linguistic rules. It is too thick a notion. On the other hand, 'cognize', without further elaboration, is too thin a notion, which is to say that it is too thin to play a role in a competence theory. One advantage of the term 'knowledge'-and presumably Chomsky's original motivation for using it-is that knowledge would play the right kind of role in a competence theory: Our competence would consist in a body of knowledge which (...) we have and which we may or may not act upon-our performance need not conform to the linguistic rules that we know. Is there a way out of the dilemma? I'm going to make the case that the best way to talk about grammatical rules is simply to say that we have them. That doesn't sound very deep, I know, but saying that we have individual rules leaves room for individual norm guidance in a way that 'cognize' does not. Saying we have a rule like subjacency is also thicker than merely saying we cognize it. Saying I have such a rule invites the interpretation that it is a rule for me-that I am normatively guided by it. The competence theory thus becomes a theory of the rules that we have. Whether we follow those rules is another matter entirely. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is new in one sense but old in another. The new tradition starts with figures such as Code, Greco, Montmarquet, and Zagzebski. The old tradition has its pedigree in Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and their modern interpreters such as Anscombe and MacIntyre. Virtue epistemology recognizes that knowledge is something we value and that propositional knowledge requires intellectual virtues, that is to say, virtues as applied to the intellect. Although much pioneering work in the new tradition has been done on (...) propositional knowledge, comparatively little in it has been done on know-how. This is surprising, because one might naturally think of know-how as something to be refined into a skill, and virtues may be thought of as skills. In the modern epistemological tradition that does not take its direction from virtue ethics, propositional knowledge, as opposed to know-how, has received by far the bulk of the discussion, although since Ryle first argued that knowhow is not always propositional knowledge, there has been a fairly recent resurgence of interest in know-how.We value intellectual virtues because they are skills that promote our flourishing, both as individuals and as members of a community. The intellectual virtues are truth- seeking virtues and stem from a love of the truth. Since love is itself a virtue - indeed it was what Tyndale called the greatest Christian virtue before the King James translation renamed it as charity—it may be seen as the virtue that motivates all other intellectual virtues. A commitment to the truth is presupposed by any intellectual virtue. For example, logic is important to a community, and in particular to the intellectual community, not only because there are rules governing the activity of logic but also because there are those within the community who are trustworthy in following the activity and because there are publically accepted standards of accountability in the way the activity of logic is practiced. Here is how we will proceed. In section 2 we sketch a metaphysics of natural purposes that supports the claim that there are objective goods that beings need qua the kinds of being they are in order to flourish. In section 3 we argue that flourishing includes the acquisition of virtues. We give a general account of virtue, roughly as a stable disposition to act upon a habit elevated to a skill of putting one’s know-how into practice that springs from one’s motivation to pursue what one perceives as good. In section 4 we give a general sketch of intellectual virtues as truth-seeking virtues that stem from a love of the truth that are the skills to flourish intellectually. In section 5 we discuss connaturality, namely those specific metaphysical accidents readily acquired by beings due to their first nature. We make an original distinction between ontological connaturality, namely the connaturality that belongs to animals qua beings of a certain kind, and habitual connaturality, namely our first natures suffused with virtues—or vices, although we will concentrate only on virtues. Habitual connaturality is acquired through the practice of virtue and involves perceptiveness awakened by the possession of the virtue in question. The knowledge arising from this form of connaturality may be a form of know-how. In section 6 we give an account of connatural apprehension and connatural propositional knowledge. In section 7 we discuss connatural know-how and argue that it makes certain virtues possible. At this point we will have shown that intellectual and moral virtues are informed by know-how. In sections 8 and 9 we give analyses of know-how and skill in terms of counterfactual success. We show how skill is a refined form of know-how and how both know-how and skill are informed by moral and intellectual virtues. We conclude in section 10 that know-how informs intellectual and moral virtues in the sense that virtue is to be elucidated in terms of skill, which is in turn to be elucidated in terms of know-how. Moreover, virtues inform know-how in the sense that know-how is to be elucidated in terms of intellectual and moral virtues. No circularity arises because different virtues and different forms of know-how are involved. (shrink)

This paper considers whether the saying, “It’s who you know, not what you know” can be used instead of jargon-laden studies of inequality. I argue that it is not a good replacement in some cases and present a challenge to standard Bourdieusian explanations of inequality in some fields. The paper is written as a pastiche of the distinguished political philosopher Joseph Raz.

Of course there's every difference in the world between my merely saying something and its being so. My claim that I have a toothache is a far cry from the toothache itself. Words are not things: I neither sit in the word ‘chair’ nor eat the word ‘food.’.

When I say “I know Sarah,” or “I know Berlin,” what sort of knowledge am I claiming? Such knowledge of a particular is, I claim, not reducible to either propositional knowledge-that or to traditional physical know-how. Mere, bare knowledge by acquaintance also does not capture the kind of knowledge being claimed here. Using knowledge of a place as my central example, I argue that this kind of knowledge-of, or “objectual knowledge” as it is sometimes called, is of a distinctive epistemological (...) sort. It is a genre of inherently first-personal aesthetic knowledge, but it also, like know-how, involves active skill. I end by exploring a couple of classic problems in aesthetic epistemology, applied to the case of knowledge-of as active aesthetic knowledge. (shrink)

When I say “I know Sarah,” or “I know Berlin,” what sort of knowledge am I claiming? Such knowledge of a particular is, I claim, not reducible to either propositional knowledge-that or to traditional physical know-how. Mere, bare knowledge by acquaintance also does not capture the kind of knowledge being claimed here. Using knowledge of a place as my central example, I argue that this kind of knowledge-of, or “objectual knowledge” as it is sometimes called, is of a distinctive epistemological (...) sort. It is a genre of inherently first-personal aesthetic knowledge, but it also, like know-how, involves active skill. I end by exploring a couple of classic problems in aesthetic epistemology, applied to the case of knowledge-of as active aesthetic knowledge. (shrink)

Language is nothing but human subjects in as much as they speak, say and know. Language is something coming from the inside of the speaking subject manifest in the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker. A language, on the contrary, is something coming from the outside, from the speech community, something offered to the speaking subject from the tradition in the technique of speaking. The speech act is nothing but the development of an intuition by the subject thus transforming (...) it in words of a language. It is both individual and social. Since human subjects are free and historical, the study of speech acts is hermeneutics, that is, interpreting speech acts with knowing and the human reality. (shrink)

The status of the laws of nature in Hobbes’s Leviathan has been a continual point of disagreement among scholars. Many agree that since Hobbes claims that civil philosophy is a science, the answer lies in an understanding of the nature of Hobbesian science more generally. In this paper, I argue that Hobbes’s view of the construction of geometrical figures sheds light upon the status of the laws of nature. In short, I claim that the laws play the same role as (...) the component parts – what Hobbes calls the “cause” – of geometrical figures. To make this argument, I show that in both geometry and civil philosophy, Hobbes proceeds by a method of synthetic demonstration as follows: 1) offering a thought experiment by privation; 2) providing definitions by explication of “simple conceptions” within the thought experiment; and 3) formulating generative definitions by making use of those definitions by explication. In just the same way that Hobbes says that the geometer should “put together” the parts of a square to learn its cause, I argue that the laws of nature are the cause of peace. (shrink)

How can we capture the intuitive distinction between lying and misleading? According to a traditional view, the difference boils down to whether the speaker is saying (as opposed to implying) something that they believe to be false. This view is subject to known objections; to overcome them, an alternative view has emerged. For the alternative view, what matters is whether the speaker can consistently deny that they are committed to knowing the relevant proposition. We point out serious flaws (...) for this alternative view, and sketch a simpler alternative that incorporates key insights of the traditional view. (shrink)

Linguistics of saying studies language in its birth. Language is the mental activity executed by speaking subjects. Linguistics of saying consists in analyzing speech acts as the result of an act of knowing. Speaking subjects speak because they have something to say. Tthey say because they define themselves before the circumstance they are in. And this is possible because they are able to know. Speaking, then, is speaking, saying and knowing. In this sense there is (...) a progressive determination. Knowing makes possible saying, and saying determines speaking, or, in other words: speaking involves saying and knowing, and saying involves knowing. The problem thus is to determine the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker to say something in every speech act. (shrink)

Orthodoxy has it that knowledge is absolute—that is, it cannot come in degrees. On the other hand, there seems to be strong evidence for the gradability of know-how. Ascriptions of know-how are gradable, as when we say that one knows in part how to do something, or that one knows how to do something better than somebody else. When coupled with absolutism, the gradability of ascriptions of know-how can be used to mount a powerful argument against intellectualism about know-how—the view (...) that know-how is a species of propositional knowledge. This essay defends intellectualism from the argument of gradability. It is argued that the gradability of ascriptions of know-how should be discounted as a rather superficial linguistic phenomenon, one that can be explained in a way compatible with the absoluteness of the state reported. (shrink)

Despite his commitment to freedom, Leibniz’ philosophy is also founded on pre-established harmony. Understanding the life of the individual as a spiritual automaton led Leibniz to refer to the puzzle of the way out of determinism as the Labyrinth of Freedom. Leibniz claimed that infinite complexity is the reason why it is impossible to prove a contingent truth. But by means of Leibniz’ calculus, it actually can be shown in a finite number of steps how to calculate a summation of (...) infinite parts. It appears that the analogy Leibniz drew between the mathematics of infinite series and the logic of contingent truths did more harm than good. A solution consistent with Leibniz’ perception of infinity is proposed. Alongside the existence of the aforementioned analogy, it is based on a disanalogy between the mathematics of infinite series and the logic of infinitely complex truths. This is a disanalogy that Leibniz had already used to solve the Labyrinth of Continuum which he declared more than once could, like the Labyrinth of Freedom, be solved by means of the nature of infinity. The solution of both labyrinths is based on the fictitiousness of the infinitesimal. (shrink)

As AI Systems become increasingly autonomous, they are expected to engage in decision-making processes that have moral implications. In this research we integrate theoretical and empirical lines of thought to address the matters of moral reasoning and moral uncertainty in AI Systems. We reconceptualize the metanormative framework for decision-making under moral uncertainty and we operationalize it through a latent class choice model. The core idea being that moral heterogeneity in society can be codified in terms of a small number of (...) classes with distinct moral preferences and that this codification can be used to express moral uncertainty of an AI. Choice analysis allows for the identification of classes and their moral preferences based on observed choice data. Our reformulation of the metanormative framework is theory-rooted and practical in the sense that it avoids runtime issues in real time applications. To illustrate our approach we conceptualize a society in which AI Systems are in charge of making policy choices. While one of the systems uses a baseline morally certain model, the other uses a morally uncertain model. We highlight cases in which the AI Systems disagree about the policy to be chosen, thus illustrating the need to capture moral uncertainty in AI systems. (shrink)

The goal of this thesis is to model some of the cognitive structures and processes involve d in how people decide what to say in purposeful conversation. The main concern is to show how a speaker's knowledge of his/her hearer influences what s/he says. Utterances in such dialogues, where speakers can be presumed to be speaking for reasons, can best be viewed as the performance of "speech acts" (e.g., requesting). By modeling the process of deciding what to say as one (...) of problem-solving, we show that the same mechanisms used to plan non-linguistic actions are applicable to planning of speech acts. The methodology of this research employs a computer program that integrates beliefs, goals, problem-solving, and reasoning, with the use of language. The program does this by planning speech acts when it determines that to achieve its situational goals, it needs to influence someone else's behavior. The system is able to plan request speech actrions to influence its user's goals, and inform speech acts to influence his/her beliefs. In addition, it is shown that speech acts can be used to achieve subgoals of other such acts. For instance, in addition to requesting that the user perform some action, the system can also decide to supply him/her with information necessary to performing that action -- information that it believes s/he does not already have. Our model is extendable to the more general problem of planning multiparty speech acts -- ones where actions requested by the speaker involve acts to be performed by parties other than the hearer. [MORE]. (shrink)

New methods to analyse social media data provide a powerful way to know publics and capture what they say and do. At the same time, access to these methods is uneven, with corporations and governments tending to have best access to relevant data and analytics tools. Critics raise a number of concerns about the implications dominant uses of data mining and analytics may have for the public: they result in less privacy, more surveillance and social discrimination, and they provide new (...) ways of controlling how publics come to be represented and so understood. In this paper, we consider if a different relationship between the public and data mining might be established, one in which publics might be said to have greater agency and reflexivity vis-à-vis data power. Drawing on growing calls for alternative data regimes and practices, we argue that to enable this different relationship, data mining and analytics need to be democratised in three ways: they should be subject to greater public supervision and regulation, available and accessible to all, and used to create not simply known but reflexive, active and knowing publics. We therefore imagine conditions in which data mining is not just used as a way to know publics, but can become a means for publics to know themselves. (shrink)

IntroductionThe assisted reproductive technology field deals with consistent and predictable gaps in knowledge. Expressing lack of knowledge with a sentence like “I don’t know” can be challenging for doctors. This study examined physicians’ negative epistemic disclaimer “non lo so” in Italian ART doctor-couple interactions. In particular, it aimed to reveal specific features of “non lo so”: function, topic, temporality, responsibility, and interactional aspects.MethodsThis was a video-based observational study. We used microanalysis of face-to-face dialogue to analyze 20 purposively selected triadic consultations (...) from a corpus of 85. This inductive analysis focused on the function, the content and some selected interactional aspects of the “non lo so”, quantifying and capturing the interaction between these qualitative features.ResultsWe found 82 doctors’ “non lo so” in the corpus. We discovered three main functions of this expression: propositional, relational, discursive. The most frequent topics raising doctors’ “non lo so” were costs, treatment-related aspects, and timing issues. In more than half of the cases, present issues emerged. The majority of “non lo so” was framed using the “I,” with doctors’ taking personal responsibility. Patients played a role in these expressions from doctors: Patients initiated more than one third of them, and in one fourth of the cases, patients followed up immediately.ConclusionOur findings may be related to characteristics of the specific field of ART. Doctors in this setting must frequently express a direct lack of knowledge to their patients, and when they do, they mean it literally. Patients contribute to such disclosures, and their responses suggest that they find them acceptable, showing that they may expect limitations in their potential to conceive. (shrink)

What do we mean when we say we "know" something? What is this knowledge and how do we come by it? What exactly counts as an object of knowledge? And on what basis do we defend our claims to know against thosethe skepticswho deny that knowledge is possible or that our criteria for knowing can ever be satisfied? These questions and many others are addressed in this fascinating collection of essays by leading philosophers, who discuss the nature, meaning, and (...) extent of human knowledge. Included are works by Robert Almeder, William P. Alston, Robert P. Amico, Roderick M. Chisholm, Edmund L. Gettier, Richard Feldman, Peter D. Klein, Keith Lehrer, Kenneth G. Lucey, John Pollock, and others. Several essays are original to this collection and break new ground on such issues as the Problem of the Criterion. (shrink)

Beginning the Phaedrus, Socrates greets Phaedrus saying, “Dear Phaedrus, whither and whence?” This essay will unfold the salutation, exposing its power to disclose the erotic phenomena portrayed in the dialogue. Moreover, the erotic soul’s incorporation of future and past, its implementation of memory and prophecy, its agency and passivity, and its relation to these ways of being reveals its ability to know itself. However, the temporality in which the soul reveals itself is neither chronological nor dialectical but ecstatic, characterized (...) as prophetic, for “the soul is somehow prophetic” and Socrates is “a kind of prophet.” The essay delves into the prophetic nature of the soul and its significance in understanding Socratic erotic self-knowledge in the Phaedrus. (shrink)

Independently of the discussions on the development of Fichte’s philosophy, there is something that does not seem to change throughout the more than a dozen presentations of his doctrine, namely, his constant concern with the meaning of philosophy. This concern is such a structuring one for Fichte that he even decides to replace the very name of “philosophy” by another one, less heavy in meaning and better suited to elucidate the nature of this particular activity that constitutes his own project. (...) He calls it the Wissenschaftslehre. In this term created by Fichte three verbs can be found: wissen (to know), schaffen (to create) and lehren (to teach) – we would like to propose that Fichte’s conception of philosophy can be brought out as the orchestrated action of those three activities: knowing, creating and teaching. The point here being not to say that Fichte had the idea in mind of composing these three verbs (wissen, schaffen, lehren) when he created the term Wissenschaftslehre, but only that those terms offer useful landmarks for the exploration of Fichte’s philosophical landscape. -/- . (shrink)

Anyone familiar with some of Dewey’s major works knows that they are highly critical of nearly all that has traditionally passed under the name of “epistemology” or “theory of knowledge”. Even a casual reading of a few chapters of Reconstruction in Philosophy, The Quest for Certainty or Experience and Nature reveals Dewey’s iconoclasm toward “that species of confirmed intellectual lock-jaw called epistemology”. The source of this attitude is Dewey’s belief that all theories of knowledge previous to his own are based (...) upon an unexamined and mistaken conception of knowing. This is that knowing is a relation between a knower and a thing known, in which the knower is essentially a viewer or passive spectator of the thing known. Knowing is conceived on the analogy of seeing an object; it is, as Dewey says, “modeled on what [is] supposed to take place in the act of vision”. For Dewey, it is not a matter of consequence how the two members of the knowledge-relation are described. Whether the knower is identified with the self and the thing known with a material thing, or the knower with the mind and the thing known with an idea or collection of sense-data, or the knower with the knowing “subject” and the thing known with the “object”, is not important. Dewey’s contention is that no matter how one characterizes the spectator and the thing known, this conception of knowing is fundamentally mistaken, mythological. He collectively dubs all theories which share it “The Spectator Theory of Knowledge”. This common label reflects the fact that for Dewey theories as different as direct realism and epistemological dualism, British empiricism and continental rationalism, are simply variations on the same unlikely theme. (shrink)

Empirical evidence suggests that people often confabulate when they are asked about their choices or reasons for action. The implications of these studies are the topic of intense debate in philosophy and the cognitive sciences. An important question in this debate is whether the confabulation studies pose a serious threat to the possibility of self-knowledge. In this paper we are not primarily interested in the consequences of confabulation for self-knowledge. Instead, we focus on a different issue: what confabulation implies for (...) the special status of self-attributions, i.e. first-person authority. In the first part of the paper, we propose that FPA is based on a capacity for self-regulation. Accordingly, FPA depends on the extent to which we are able to bridge the gap between our sayings and doings by aligning our actions with our avowed self-ascriptions and vice versa. FPA is withheld when we fail at such re-alignment. In the second part of the paper, we contrast our view with the accounts of Scaife and Bortolotti :227–249, 2018). We claim that the apparent fact that we cannot reliably distinguish, from a first-person perspective, when we are confabulating and when we are not, does not necessarily undermine FPA. We argue that a systematic failure to align our actions with our self-ascriptions and vice-versa is a genuine threat to FPA. In the last part of the paper, we introduce the concept of self-know-how—the know-how embodied in the way one is disposed to relate to oneself in making sense of oneself with or in the face of others—and briefly explored the importance of diminished or absent self-know-how in clinical cases. (shrink)

In saying ‘N knows that p’, where the supposed knowing is gained through rational reflection (the paradigm form of knowing, conceptually), I endorse N’s belief as rationally held, and hence correct (the ‘RhCB’ analysis). We understand this ‘hence’ not as ‘hence, infallibly’ but as ‘hence in fact’– a reliability reading, not implying infallibility (cf. the use of ‘hence’ to attribute non‐deterministic causation). The false appearance of inconsistency in our taking knowing to require an infallible guarantee of (...) correctness while regularly attributing knowledge where we lack an absolute guarantee arises from misreading of the ‘hence’ as implying infallibility, partly due to the mistaken assumption that ‘know’ functions purely descriptively. Though aware that rationality may occasionally fail to ensure correctness, we accept it as sufficing to yield knowledge wherever it does not fail – a consistent non‐infallibilist understanding of what knowing requires. (shrink)

Throughout the years, Sosa has taken different views on the safety condition on knowledge. In his early work, he endorsed the safety condition, but later retracted this view when first developing his much discussed virtue epistemology. Recently, Sosa has further developed his virtue theory with the notion of competence and has developed an accompanying, modified safety condition that he maintains is entailed by that theory: the SSS-safety condition. Sosa's view is that this condition holds on both knowledge and action, because (...) both knowledge and action are the manifestations of competence. The SSS-safety condition, roughly, says that if S were to make an attempt at φ-ing under certain specified shape-situation pairs, holding fixed their seat, then S would φ. The argument of this paper is that this new SSS-safety condition does not hold on either knowledge or action. We argue for this conclusion by providing a principled way to generate counter-examples to the condition for both knowledge and action. The reasoning is that there can exist a non-empty symmetric difference between the sets of shape-situation pairs under which distinct agents can manifest their epistemic and pragmatic competences, and if there can exist such a symmetric difference then the SSS-safety condition fails to hold. (shrink)

"My plan in this book," writes Father Danielou, the eminent French theologian, "is not to record what I say of God, but what God has said of Himselfà to place religions and philosophies, the Old Testament and the New, theology and mysticism, in their proper relationship with the knowledge of God." God and the Ways of Knowing is a classic work of theology and spirituality that presents a subtle and penetrating interpretation of the ways by which man comes to (...) the knowledge of Godùeach form of knowledge carrying him both higher and deeper. (shrink)

Pain and pleasure affect us all. Knowing this with empathy, and acting upon it, civilises us. Without such empathy, pain can become a means of domination and injustice. Moreover, pain is expressed and responded to in all social contexts, and the word “pain” has diverse meanings, depending on the associated activities. To observe various ways in which we say that it hurts, and the many meanings of pain, I follow ordinary-language philosophy, particularly Ludwig Wittgenstein and John L Austin, and (...) I consider a range of social and historical contexts, from the closest intimacy, everyday chatter, the clinic, and beyond, to the domain of public policy and human rights. This addresses our verbal expressions of pain, their lived contexts and effects, within relationships and among social groups, altering mutual obligations, eliciting actions and reactions, and thence creating moral, legal and political norms. My aim, then, is to consider the social and political implications of ordinary performative pain-talk, in particular regarding the relationship between pain and justice, public policy, human rights and law.Clinical Implications: Clinicians’ roles in disability assessment and pain management are often affected by extrinsic concerns such as financial incentives and the risks of substance abuse. This chapter addresses those complex issues, illustrating how they have arisen in particular historical circumstances, and with political and economic causes and consequences. While unable to provide ready-to-hand clinical solutions, a pragmatic ordinary-language approach to conversations and disagreements about pain helps to chart the grounds on which these matters are debated. (shrink)

The article discusses the relationship between the notion of a moral right to personal self‐determination, the notion of a moral right to know and the notion of a moral right not to know. In particular, the author asks under what conditions, if any, the right to self‐determination implies a right to have information or a right not to have information. The conclusions he defends are theoretical in character rather than concrete norms and directions, and they are intended to be relevant (...) in many contexts, not only in the context of information concerning, say, medical decisions. Yet the author restates the question concerning the right to have and especially the right not to have genetic knowledge about one's own genes on the basis of a right to self‐determination. He argues that a right (not) to have genetic information can be defended on the ground of a right to self‐determination, but that this kind of defense presupposes several normative, and controversial, arguments. (shrink)

The expertise of managers, as with other professionals, consists in what they know and their particular knowledge base is knowledge that is embedded in practice. In spite of what some practice assumes, management expertise is situated, experiential and cannot be codified. We lack, however, a clear philosophical model of what it means to say of knowledge that it is embedded in practice. This paper seeks to address this need, presents a theory of expertise and explores a key element of the (...) theory concerning the role of judgement in perception. The theory articulates a number of key concepts and gives explanatory power to talk of situated knowledge. It also provides sufficient theoretical structure to bear upon practical policy issues such as how to teach, develop and assess expertise and how to deploy knowledge in setting management goals. (shrink)

The article discusses the relationship between the notion of a moral right to personal self‐determination, the notion of a moral right to know and the notion of a moral right not to know. In particular, the author asks under what conditions, if any, the right to self‐determination implies a right to have information or a right not to have information. The conclusions he defends are theoretical in character rather than concrete norms and directions, and they are intended to be relevant (...) in many contexts, not only in the context of information concerning, say, medical decisions. Yet the author restates the question concerning the right to have and especially the right not to have genetic knowledge about one's own genes on the basis of a right to self‐determination. He argues that a right (not) to have genetic information can be defended on the ground of a right to self‐determination, but that this kind of defense presupposes several normative, and controversial, arguments. (shrink)

When we say “I know why he was late”, we know not only the fact that he was late, but also an explanation of this fact. We propose a logical framework of “knowing why” inspired by the existing formal studies on why-questions, scientific explanation, and justification logic. We introduce the Kyi\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\mathcal {K}}{}\textit{y}}_i$$\end{document} operator into the language of epistemic logic to express “agent i knows why φ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} (...) \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\varphi $$\end{document}” and propose a Kripke-style semantics of such expressions in terms of knowing an explanation of φ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\varphi $$\end{document}. We obtain two sound and complete axiomatizations w.r.t. two different model classes depending on different assumptions about introspection. Finally we connect our logic with justification logic technically by providing an alternative semantics and an in-depth comparison on various design choices. (shrink)

As is clear from the multiple references to knowledge in the proemium of fragment B1, Parmenides presented himself to his audiences as one who had achieved a profound insight into the nature of ‘what-is’. In support of this claim he conducted an elenchos or ‘testing’ of the ways of inquiry available for thinking, in the process revealing a set of sêmata or ‘signs’ indicating that what-is an eternal, indivisible, and unchanging plenum. In each of these respects, Parmenides was speaking the (...) language of discovery heard elsewhere in early Greek poetry. Similarly, his claim that we can neither learn nor know about what-is-not (hence must not say or think ‘it is not’) was justified by the ordinary meaning of the ancient Greek verbs for learning and knowing. Strikingly, Parmenides’ revisionary metaphysics rested in large measure on a widely shared view of what can be learned, known, and made known to others. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Scholars of Bonaventure's thought labor under the difficulty that the Seraphic Doctor is more widely admired than read. Yet there is one advantage they may claim: the immense popularity down through the centuries of his magnum opus: the Itinerarium mentis in Deum, "The Journey of the Mind to God." The text is poetic, concise, and dense. It summarizes many points in Bonaventure's philosophy, theology, and spirituality – indeed, it (...) has sometimes been called a summa of his spiritual theology.In the present essay, I offer a proposal for reading the Itinerarium. I do so with two types of readers in mind. One is the Bonaventure scholar, for whom I make certain arguments concerning the logic of the text and its relationship to other works of Bonaventure. The other is the non-specialist who wishes to teach the Itinerarium as a significant part of the Christian theological patrimony. To the latter, I offer a schematic to understand the different elements of the text in their relationship to each other. This guided reading will, I hope, help the teacher to present the scientific power of Bonaventure's theology.I. Preliminary NoteMy preliminary claim is that the Itinerarium is best understood as divided into two trajectories: one involves the three stages of seeing God through the visible world, the soul, and what is above the soul; the other involves the three stages of seeing God in the visible world, the soul, and what is above the soul. This claim might be criticized by readers of the text. Bonaventure gives several possibilities for understanding the structure of the text in the first part of chapter 1, and does not state that one should be privileged above the others. However, as he goes on to explain each stage, the division that keeps reappearing is that of seeing God through and in the visible world, the soul, and what is above the soul. I therefore regard that division as the most significant. In what follows, I first examine certain antecedents to the Itinerarium's structural argument in earlier works of Bonaventure. I then outline the first trajectory, highlighting its similarities and differences with those earlier works, and then the second trajectory, highlighting its uniqueness and proposing a key by which it may be understood. I close with a brief statement of the significance of my reading in light of some recent scholarship.For reference, one may use the following chart, delineating the trajectories.Knowing God through Knowing God inwhat is below the soul chap. 1: the consideration of God through his vestiges in the universe chap. 2: the consideration of God in his vestiges in this visible worldthe soul chap. 3: the consideration of God through his image imprinted on our natural powers chap. 4: the consideration of God in his image reformed through the gifts of gracewhat is above the soul chap. 5: the consideration of the divine unity through its primary name which is Being chap. 6: the consideration of the most blessed Trinity in its name which is the GoodII. Antecedents to This Kind of Consideration of GodA) Knowing God through and inThe distinction between seeing God through and in is not unique to the Itinerarium. It occurs earlier, in the Commentary on the Sentences, in two places. Though the contexts and the language are slightly different, the content of the distinction is the same. To know God through creatures is "to be raised from the knowledge of the creature to the knowledge of God as by way of a intermediate ladder." To know God in creatures is rather to know "his presence and influence in the creature." Bonaventure says further that knowing God through creatures is characteristic of wayfarers, and is a knowledge that is.. (shrink)