Assertion,knowledge, and action

We argue against the knowledge rule of assertion, and in favour of integrating the account of assertion more tightly with our best theories of evidence and action. We think that the knowledge rule has an incredible consequence when it comes to practical deliberation, that it can be right for a person to do something that she can’t properly assert she can do. We develop some vignettes that show how this is possible, and how odd this consequence is. We then argue that these vignettes point towards alternate rules that tie assertion to sufficient evidence-responsiveness or to proper action. These rules have many of the virtues that are commonly claimed for the knowledge rule, but lack the knowledge rule’s problematic consequences when it comes to assertions about what to do.     

Moral Worth and Moral Knowledge

To have moral worth an action not only needs to conform to the correct normative theory (whatever it is); it also needs to be motivated in the right way. I argue that morally worthy actions are motivated by the rightness of the action; they are motivated by an agent's concern for doing what's right and her knowledge that her action is morally right. Call this the Rightness Condition. On the Rightness Condition moral motivation involves both a conative and a cognitive element—in particular, it involves moral knowledge. I argue that the Rightness Condition is both necessary and sufficient for moral worth. I also argue that the Rightness Condition gives us an attractive account of actions performed under imperfect epistemic circumstances: by agents who rely on moral testimony or by those who, like Huckleberry Finn, have false moral convictions.     

Knowledge in Action

This paper argues that the role of knowledge in the explanation and production of intentional action is as indispensable as the roles of belief and desire. If we are interested in explaining intentional actions rather than intentions or attempts, we need to make reference to more than the agent's beliefs and desires. It is easy to see how the truth of your beliefs, or perhaps, facts about a setting will be involved in the explanation of an action. If you believe you can stop your car by pressing a pedal, then, if your belief is true, you will stop. If it is false, you will not. By considering cases of unintentional actions, actions involving luck and cases of deviant causal chains, I show why knowledge is required. By looking at the notion of causal relevance, I argue that the connection between knowledge and action is causal and not merely conceptual.
"What knowledge adds to belief is not psychologically relevant." ¹ —Stephen Stich     

Adults see vision to be more informative than it is

Humans gain a wide range of knowledge through interacting with the environment. Each aspect of our perceptual experiences offers a unique source of information about the world—colours are seen, sounds heard and textures felt. Understanding how perceptual input provides a basis for knowledge is thus central to understanding one's own and others' epistemic states. Developmental research suggests that 5-year-olds have an immature understanding of knowledge sources and that they overestimate the knowledge to be gained from looking. Without evidence from adults, it is not clear whether the mature reasoning system outgrows this overestimation. The current study is the first to investigate whether an overestimation of the knowledge to be gained from vision occurs in adults. Novel response time paradigms were adapted from developmental studies. In two experiments, participants judged whether an object or feature could be identified by performing a specific action. Adult participants found it disproportionately easy to accept looking as a proposed action when it was informative, and difficult to reject looking when it was not informative. This suggests that adults, like children, overestimate the informativeness of vision. The origin of this overestimation and the implications that the current findings bear on the interpretation of children's overestimation are discussed.     

Action Emulation between Canonical Models

In this paper we investigate Kripke models, used to model knowledge or belief in a static situation, and action models, used to model communicative actions that change this knowledge or belief. The appropriate notion for structural equivalence between modal structures such as Kripke models is bisimulation: Kripke models that are bisimilar are modally equivalent. We would like to find a structural relation that can play the same role for the action models that play a prominent role in information updating. Two action models are equivalent if they yield the same results when updating Kripke models. More precisely, two action models are equivalent if it holds for all Kripke models that the result of updating with one action model is bisimilar to the result of updating with the other action model. We propose a new notion of action emulation that characterizes the structural equivalence of the important class of canonical action models. Since every action model has an equivalent canonical action model, this gives a method to decide the equivalence of any pair of action models. We also give a partial result that holds for the class of all action models. Our results extend the work in van Eijck et al. (Synthese 185(1):131–151, 2012).     

Action identity: evidence from self-recognition, prediction, and coordination

Prior research suggests that the action system is responsible for creating an immediate sense of self by determining whether certain sensations and perceptions are the result of one's own actions. In addition, it is assumed that declarative, episodic, or autobiographical memories create a temporally extended sense of self or some form of identity. In the present article, we review recent evidence suggesting that action (procedural) knowledge also forms part of a person's identity, an action identity, so to speak. Experiments that addressed self-recognition of past actions, prediction, and coordination provide ample evidence for this assumption. The phenomena observed in these experiments can be explained by the assumption that observing an action results in the activation of action representations, the more so, when the action observed corresponds to the way in which the observer would produce it.     

Warrant and action

I develop an approach to action and practical deliberation according to which the degree of epistemic warrant required for practical rationality varies with practical context. In some contexts of practical deliberation, very strong warrant is called for. In others, less will do. I set forth a warrant account, (WA), that captures this idea. I develop and defend (WA) by arguing that it is more promising than a competing knowledge account of action due to John Hawthorne and Jason Stanley. I argue that cases of warranted false belief speak in favor of (WA) and against the knowledge account. Moreover, I note some problems with an “excuse maneuver” that proponents of the knowledge account frequently invoke in response to cases of warranted false belief. Finally, I argue that (WA) may provide a strict invariantist account of cases that have been thought to motivate interest-relative or subject-sensitive theories of knowledge and warrant.     

How to Make Sense of the Claim “True Knowledge is What Constitutes Action”: A New Interpretation of Wang Yangming’s Doctrine of Unity of Knowledge and Action

No one denies the importance of applying knowledge to actions. But claiming identity (unity) of knowledge and action is quite another thing. There seem to be two problems with the claim: (1) the identity claim implies that the sole cause for one to fail to act on what one judges to be right is ignorance, but it is obviously false that the sole cause of failure in moral actions is ignorance. (2) The identity statement implies non-separation of knowledge and action. But knowledge does not necessarily lead to action. However, the identity of knowledge and action is what a famous Ming Confucian scholar, Wang Yang-ming, proposed and the concept became the central doctrine of his teaching. Though there are several major interpretations of Wang’s doctrine in contemporary literature, it is not clear to me how they deal with the above mentioned difficulties. In this article, I will discuss these interpretations of the doctrine and propose a new interpretation. My purpose is to give an interpretation of Wang’s doctrine that has the capacity of dealing with these challenges to the doctrine and also captures the essence of his teaching.     

In support of anti-intellectualism

Intellectualist theories attempt to assimilate know how to propositional knowledge and, in so doing, fail to properly explain the close relation know how bears to action. I develop here an anti-intellectualist theory that is warranted, I argue, because it best accounts for the difference between know how and mere “armchair knowledge.” Know how is a mental state characterized by a certain world-to-mind direction of fit (though it is non-motivational) and attendant functional role. It is essential of know how, but not propositional knowledge, that it makes possible performance errors and has the functional role of guiding action. The theory is attractive, in part, because it allows for propositional, non-propositional and perhaps even non-representational varieties of know how.     

Intentional action first

The paper motivates a novel research programme in the philosophy of action parallel to the ‘Knowledge First’ programme in epistemology. It is argued that much of the grounds for abandoning the quest for a reductive analysis of knowledge in favour of the Knowledge First alternative is mirrored in the case of intentional action, inviting the hypothesis that intentional action is also, like knowledge, metaphysically basic. The paper goes on to demonstrate the sort of explanatory contribution that intentional action can make once it is no longer taken to be a target for reductive analysis, in explaining other, non-intentional kinds of action and voluntariness.     

FREE WILL AND LUCK

I present an account of how agents can know what they are doing when they intentionally execute object-oriented actions. When an agent executes an object-oriented intentional action, she uses perception in such a way that it can fulfil a justificatory role for her knowledge of her own action and it can fulfil this justificatory role without being inferentially linked to the cognitive states that it justifies. I argue for this proposal by meeting two challenges: in an agent's knowledge of her action perception can only play an enabling role (and no justificatory role) for the agent's knowledge and if perception has a justificatory role, then the agent's knowledge must be inferential.     

The Knowledge Rule and the Action Rule

In this paper I compare Timothy Williamson's knowledge rule of assertion with Ishani Maitra and Brian Weatherson's action rule. The paper is in two parts. In the first part I present and respond to Maitra and Weatherson's master argument against the knowledge rule. I argue that while its second premise, to the effect that an action X can be the thing to do though one is in no position to know that it is, is true, its first premise is not: the data do not support the claim that whenever X is the thing for one to do, one is in a position to assert that it is. In the second part I consider Maitra and Weatherson's alternative hypotheses, arguing that they do not provide a better explanation of the linguistic data. I conclude, in particular, that the knowledge rule is preferable to the action rule.     

Practical understanding

Well-functioning agents ordinarily have an excellent epistemic relationship to their intentional actions. This phenomenon is often characterized as knowledge of what one is doing and labeled “practical knowledge”. But when we examine it carefully, it seems to require a particular kind of understanding - understanding of the normative structure of one's action. Three lines of argument are offered to support this Necessity of Understanding thesis. The first appeals to the nature of intentional action and the second to our everyday reasons explanation of action. The final line of argument draws on a practical amnesia case in which an agent forgets her overall goal while acting. Implications of the Necessity of Understanding thesis for the widely endorsed non-observational view of practical knowledge are briefly discussed. It is argued that support for the non-observational view is weaker than has been appreciated.     

Consciousness in act and action

This paper develops an account of consciousness in action. Both consciousness and action are related to knowledge. A voluntary action is defined as a volition, or something intentionally effected by means of such volitions. Volitions are conscious mental acts whose proper function is to make their content true. A mental act is the exercise of a power of mind and a conscious mental act is identical with knowledge of its own phenomenal character. This set of definitions elucidates the relations between consciousness, action and knowledge.     

HAVING KNOW‐HOW: INTELLECT,ACTION, AND RECENT WORK ON RYLE'S DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE‐HOW AND KNOWLEDGE‐THAT

Stanley and Williamson reject Ryle's knowing‐how/knowing‐that distinction charging that it obstructs our understanding of human action. Incorrectly interpreting the distinction to imply that knowledge‐how is non‐propositional, they object that Ryle's argument for it is unsound and linguistic theory contradicts it. I show that they (and their interlocutors) misconstrue the distinction and Ryle's argument. Consequently, their objections fail. On my reading, Ryle's distinction pertains to, not knowledge, but an explanatory gap between explicit and implicit content, and his argument for it is sound. I defend the distinction's necessity in explaining human action and show that it propels a fruitful explanatory program.     

行动语义、客体背景和判断任务对客体动作承载性的影响

客体动作承载性指人们知觉客体时同时激活的针对客体的行动。当Gibson最初提出动作承载性概念时, 他认为客体的这种属性是可以自动激活的。然而近年来越来越多的证据显示, 在知觉和行动的关系中, 行动语义知识和客体所处背景对客体动作承载性具有调节作用, 表现在人们可以根据这些自上而下的信息选择针对客体的适当的行动。此外, 不同的判断任务在引发客体动作承载性效应上具有特异性, 表现在若判断任务仅需知觉客体表层属性时, 不能激活对客体的动作, 进而不能产生客体动作承载性; 若判断任务需要对客体进行深层加工时, 才会激活对客体的动作。未来研究还需要进一步探究行动语义知识和客体所处背景影响客体动作承载性发生的原因和机制, 以及不同判断任务中出现结果特异性的原因。     

Thomas Aquinas Holds Fast: Objections to Aquinas within Today's Debate on Divine Action

Various authors within the contemporary debate on divine action in nature and contemporary science argue both for and against a Thomistic account of divine action through the notions of primary and secondary causes. In this paper I argue that those who support a Thomistic account of divine action often fail to explain Aquinas' doctrine in full, while those who argue against it base their objections on an incomplete knowledge of this doctrine, or identify it with Austin Farrer's doctrine of double agency – again failing to do Aquinas justice. I analyse these objections, indicating how they do not address Aquinas' doctrine by offering a brief but full account of the latter.     

Ideal and Non‐ideal Theory and the Problem of Knowledge

This article analyses a hitherto neglected problem at the transition from ideal to non‐ideal theory: the problem of knowledge. Ideal theories often make idealising assumptions about the availability of knowledge, for example knowledge of social scientific facts. This can lead to problems when this knowledge turns out not to be available at the non‐ideal level. Knowledge can be unavailable in a number of ways: in principle, for practical reasons, or because there are normative reasons not to use it. This can make it necessary to revise ideal theories, because the principle of ‘ought implies can’ rules out certain theories, at least insofar as they are understood as action‐guiding. I discuss a number of examples and argue that there are two tendencies that will increase the relevance of this problem in the future: the availability of large amounts of sensitive data whose use is problematic from a normative point of view, and the increasing complexity of an interrelated world that makes it harder to predict the effects of institutional changes. To address these issues, philosophers need to cooperate with social scientists and philosophers of the social sciences. Normative theorising can then be understood as one step in a long process that includes thinkers from different disciplines. Ideal theory can respond to many of the charges raised against it if it is understood along these lines and if it takes the problem of knowledge and its implications seriously.