Perception and practical knowledge

According to G.E.M. Anscombe, an agent's knowledge of his own intentional actions differs from his knowledge of his unintended behaviors as well as the knowledge others can have of what he intentionally does, in being known “without observation”. I begin by posing a problem for any conception of this theory according to which non-observational knowledge must be independent of sense perception, and criticize several recent attempts to get around the problem. Having done this, I develop an alternative account of non-observational knowledge according to which it consists in the particular causal role of an agent's self-awareness in bringing his intentional actions about.     

An epistemology for practical knowledge

Anscombe thought that practical knowledge – a person’s knowledge of what she is intentionally doing – displays formal differences to ordinary empirical, or ‘speculative’, knowledge. I suggest these differences rest on the fact that practical knowledge involves intention analogously to how speculative knowledge involves belief. But this claim conflicts with the standard conception of knowledge, according to which knowledge is an inherently belief-involving phenomenon. Building on John Hyman’s account of knowledge as the ability to use a fact as a reason, I develop an alternative, two-tier, epistemology which allows that knowledge might really come in a belief-involving and an intention-involving form.     

A metaphysics for practical knowledge

Is Anscombean practical knowledge independent of what the agent actually does on an occasion? Failure to understand Anscombe’s answer to this question is a major obstacle to appreciating the subtlety and plausibility of her view. I argue that Anscombe’s answer is negative, and turns on the nature of mistakes in performance, and reveals a distinctive implicit metaphysics of mind and knowledge, structured by related capacities and exercises of capacities. If my interpretation is correct, then practical knowledge shares features with knowledge-how and knowledge-that, but deserves its own epistemic category.     

Practical reasoning and practical knowledge

The judgement that provides the content of intention and coincides with the conclusion of practical reasoning is a normative judgement about what to do, and not, as Anscombe and McDowell argue, a factual judgement about what one is doing. Treating the conclusion of practical reasoning as expressing a recommendation rather than a verdict undermines McDowell’s argument; the special nature of practical reasoning does not preclude its conclusions being normative. Anscombe’s and McDowell’s claim that practical self-knowledge is productive of action may be accommodated by identifying the content of practical knowledge not with the conclusion but with a premise of practical reasoning – a kind of practical reasoning that occurs within rather than before action.     

A dispositional account of practical knowledge

Is knowledge-how, or “practical” knowledge, a species of knowledge-that, or “theoretical” knowledge? There is no comfortable position to take in the debate around this question. On the one hand, there are counterexamples against the anti-intellectualist thesis that practical knowledge is best analysed as an ability. They show that having an ability to ? is not necessary for knowing how to ?. On the other hand, the intellectualist analysis of practical knowledge as a subspecies of theoretical knowledge is threatened by its own set of counterexamples, which convincingly establish that practical knowledge lacks many of the typical characteristics of theoretical knowledge. Most strikingly it does not even appear to require a belief. In this paper, I develop an account of practical knowledge that avoids these counterexamples. It also manages to preserve both the status of such knowledge as a cognitive achievement and its apparently close conceptual relation to abilities. I start with the counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge and show that they fail because they underestimate the cognitive demands of attempts. I then make use of the logic of dispositions to bridge the gap that counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge open. It is argued that, instead of the ability to ?, it is a specific disposition to have the ability to ? that constitutes practical knowledge about ?. The resulting theory is an anti-intellectualist position that preserves essential intellectualist motivations and thus should be satisfactory for proponents of both views.     

Separating cognitive capacity from knowledge: a new hypothesis

We propose that working memory and reasoning share related capacity limits. These limits are quantified in terms of the number of items that can be kept active in working memory, and the number of interrelationships between elements that can be kept active in reasoning. The latter defines the complexity of reasoning problems and the processing loads they impose. Principled procedures for measuring, controlling or limiting recoding and other strategies for reducing memory and processing loads have opened up new research opportunities, and yielded orderly quantification of capacity limits in both memory and reasoning. We argue that both types of limit might be based on the limited ability to form and preserve bindings between elements in memory.     

社会主义者是实践的无神论者

马克思、恩格斯对宗教的批判,与历史唯物主义的创立同步,两者相辅相成,密不可分。科学无神论是历史唯物主义宗教观的哲学基础,与共产主义事业紧密相连。社会主义者是实践的无神论者。     

科学要求的是求真——访李启虎院士

2007年4月26日,本刊记者采访了中国科学院院士李启虎研究员。李院士是水声信号处理和声     

Justification is potential knowledge

This paper will articulate and defend a novel theory of epistemic justification; I characterize my view as the thesis that justification is potential knowledge (JPK). My project is an instance of the ‘knowledge-first’ programme, championed especially by Timothy Williamson. So I begin with a brief recapitulation of that programme.     

Collective self-esteem consequences of outgroup derogation when a valued social identity is on trial

A structural equation model tested the role of degree of identification with a group (Americans) and level of collective self-esteem as determinants of outgroup derogation under identity-threatening and non-threatening conditions. High identification and reductions in collective self-esteem following a threat to that identity lead to outgroup derogation, but level of collective self-esteem did not predict outgroup derogation in the no-threat condition. The consequences of derogating both threat-relevant (Russians) and threat-irrelevant nationalities for subsequent self-esteem were assessed. As predicted by social identity theory, higher amounts of derogation of the threat-relevant outgroup in the identity-threatened condition elevated subsequent collective self-esteem. Derogation of threat-irrelevant outgroups did not have this positive esteem consequence; in fact, increased derogation of irrelevant outgroups reduced subsequent self-esteem. In the no-threat condition, amount of derogation directed towards either type of outgroup did not significantly influence subsequent self-esteem, with the overall pattern being opposite to what was observed in the threat condition. Implications for theories concerning self-processes as instigators of outgroup derogation and the consequences of intergroup comparisons for collective self-esteem are discussed.     

Phoneme isolation ability is not simply a consequence of letter-sound knowledge

Two studies investigated whether knowledge of specific letter-sound correspondences is a necessary precursor of children's ability to isolate phonemes in speech. In both studies, Czech and English children reliably isolated phonemes for which they did not know the corresponding letter. These data refute the idea that phoneme manipulation ability can only develop as a consequence of orthographic (letter-sound correspondence) knowledge.     

The Politicization of Migrants: Further Evidence that Politicized Collective Identity is a Dual Identity

The article examines the role of collective identification processes in the politicization of Russian migrants in Germany. Building on the assumption that politicized collective identity (PCI) is a dual identity, the authors predicted and found that dual identification as both Russian and German was positively related to politicization among members of the Russian minority in Germany. This relationship held up even when the influences of several sociodemographic variables, past political activity, and other forms of collective identification were statistically controlled. In addition, perceived maltreatment of Russian migrants in Germany moderated the relationship between dual identification and politicization in keeping with the theoretical assumption that the development of PCI presupposes high awareness of shared grievances. Finally, dual identification was unrelated to acceptance of political violence, but positively related to self‐restriction to peaceful political means. The constructive role of politicization driven by dual identification in social integration is discussed.     

Stories as indicators of practical knowledge: Analysing project workers' talk from a study of participation in a youth inclusion programme

The paper deals with the issue of practical knowledge for enabling participation. Participation as a strategy for change is widespread in community, health and human service contexts. Research to date has focused on the mechanisms of beneficiaries' participation (e.g. identity, empowerment, activity, gender, space). However, participation as an engagement strategy is action oriented and requires high levels of interaction between those creating the conditions for participation and those participating. These conditions need to be continuously adjusted and outcomes are often unpredictable. This process of ‘working with’ is often dealt with as a technical issue and captured in metaphorical language. Less emphasis has been given to the type of knowledge modalities that might be necessary in order to enable participation. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of participation in a youth inclusion programme the paper explores the role of stories as potential indicators of practical knowledge. The paper argues that enabling young people's participation requires intuition and imagination, patience and perseverance, and judgement for acting under uncertainty. It concludes that stories only partially fulfil their potential as indicators of such knowledge modalities. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reading aloud is not automatic: processing capacity is required to generate a phonological code from print

The present experiments tested the claim that phonological recoding occurs "automatically" by assessing whether it uses central attention in the context of the psychological refractory period paradigm. Task 1 was a tone discrimination task and Task 2 was reading aloud. The joint effects of long-lag word repetition priming and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) were underadditive in Experiment 1, suggesting that an early component of lexical processing does not use central attention. In contrast, nonword letter length and grapheme-phoneme complexity yielded additive effects with SOA in Experiments 2, 3, and 4, suggesting that assembled phonology uses central attention. Further, orthographic neighborhood density also yielded additive effects with SOA in Experiments 5, 6, and 7, suggesting that lexical contributions to phonological recoding use central attention. Taken together, the results of these experiments are inconsistent with the widespread claim that phonological codes are assembled and/or addressed automatically. It is suggested that "automaticity" should be replaced by accounts that make more specific claims about how processing unfolds.