Practical knowledge

Ethics

Volumn 118, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 388-409

  Setiya, Kieran ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH   (United States)

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EID: 48749097747     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/528781     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (80)

1. See G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963)
2. and Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959). I set aside the normative interpretation of "practical knowledge" as knowledge of what one should do.
3. J. David Velleman, Practical Reflection (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
4. See Gilbert Ryle, "Knowing How and Knowing That,"Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 46 (1946): 1-16,
5. and The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949), chap. 2.
6. Anscombe, Intention, 9.
7. The converse is less clear, but the dispute about acting intentionally "for no particular reason" will not be relevant here.
8. Hampshire, Thought and Action, 95.
9. Ibid., 102. The idea of unconscious knowledge of intentional action may seem odd, but not when we recall the "broadness" of the progressive: even as I sleep, it would be true to say of me, "He is writing a paper on practical knowledge"; I need not be active at the time. This point is emphasized in Kevin Falvey's "Knowledge in Intention," Philosophical Studies 99 (2000): 21-44,
10. and in Michael Thompson's "Naïve Action Theory," forthcoming in his Life and Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
11. For related concessions, see Velleman, Practical Reflection, 20;
12. and Falvey, "Knowledge in Intention," 24.
13. Donald Davidson, "Agency," reprinted in his Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 43-61, 50.
14. Kieran Setiya, Reasons without Rationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 24-25. As Davidson ("Agency," 50) concedes, when an agent acts intentionally, what he is doing "is known to him under some description."
15. This is perhaps too quick. After all, I believe that I am trying to clench my fist, and there are strong arguments for the view that trying to φ is a matter of doing something intentionally for the sake of doing φ. (See Hugh McCann, "Trying, Paralysis and Volition," reprinted in The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will, and Freedom [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998], 94-109.
16. For a similar view, qualified precisely to omit the attempts of paralyzed agents, see O. R. Jones, "Trying," Mind 92 [1983]: 368-85.) If this is right, the case in the text may be one in which I clench my fist by doing something else intentionally, in which I do believe - if only the performance of a mental act. The case would then fall under the reply to Davidson already described.
17. The counterfactual in this principle must be handled carefully. Couldn't there be an action that is normally automatic but which can be done intentionally with a lower chance of success? If one is aware of all this, one will be, on balance, less confident that one is performing that action when one is doing it intentionally - but still more confident than if one were not doing it intentionally and one's automatic system were shut down.
18. Compare the modest claim that intending to φ requires the belief that it is possible to φ even if it does not require the belief that what one intends will come to pass (R. J. Wallace, "Normativity, Commitment and Instrumental Reason," Philosophers' Imprint 1 [2001]: 1-26, 20).
19. That intending to φ conflicts with being certain of the opposite might account for Kavka's well-known "toxin puzzle." (See Gregory Kavka, "The Toxin Puzzle," Analysis 42 [1983]: 33-36.) One cannot intend to drink the toxin, however much one would benefit from having that intention, because one knows for sure that one will not act on it when the time to do so comes.
20. Anscombe, Intention, 13-15.
21. Ibid., 49-50.
22. G. E. M. Anscombe, "On Sensations of Position," reprinted in her Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 71-74, 72.
23. Ibid., 73.
24. Hampshire, Thought and Action, 70.
25. Anscombe, Intention, 53.
26. Ibid., 54.
27. Paul Grice, "Intention and Uncertainty," Proceedings of the British Academy 57 (1971): 263-79, 278-79.
28. Anscombe, Intention, 52.
29. For a detailed theory of intention that might be thought to play this role, see Michael Bratman, Intention, Plans and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
30. The strategy of argument here is shared by Setiya, Reasons without Rationalism, pt. 1, though the focus on epistemology is new.
31. The same is true of accounts, like those proposed by George Wilson ("Proximal Practical Foresight," Philosophical Studies 99 [2000]: 3-19, 12-16)
32. and Richard Moran (Authority and Estrangement [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001], 124-28), on which knowledge of what one is doing derives from practical judgment, a verdict about the reasons that bear on what to do. The most we can explain in this way is how an agent is "in a position to know" what she is doing, if she takes her action to be determined by the balance of reasons, not why she must believe that she is doing it. Accounts of this kind in any case struggle to accommodate knowledge of intentional action against one's evaluative beliefs, or when one has sufficient reason for doing more than one thing.
33. For the claim that intention involves beliefs of this kind, see Stuart Hampshire and H. L. A. Hart, "Decision, Intention and Uncertainty," Mind 67 (1958): 1-12;
34. Gilbert Harman, "Practical Reasoning," reprinted in The Philosophy of Action, ed. Alfred Mele (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 149-77;
35. Velleman, Practical Reflection, chap. 4;
36. and Setiya, Reasons without Rationalism, pt. 1.
37. Critics of the doctrine include Donald Davidson, "Intending," reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 83-102, 91-94;
38. Michael Bratman, "Intention and Means-End Reasoning," Philosophical Review 90 (1981): 252-65, 254-56;
39. and Alfred Mele, Springs of Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), chap. 8.
40. Anscombe, Intention, 1.
41. Anscombe would resist this way of putting her point: as I understand her view, it is not that intention involves belief but that they are contrasting states of mind. Thus, when "a man is simply not doing what he [intends to be doing]" - as in a failure to execute a basic action - "the mistake is not one of judgement but of performance" (Anscombe, Intention, 57).
42. On the more natural view, his mistake is one of judgment and performance. When I intend to be clenching my fist and I fail to do so, there is a mistake in what I do - but also a mistake in what I believe about myself. For a similar response to Anscombe, see Richard Moran, "Anscombe on 'Practical Knowledge,'" in Agency and Action, ed. John Hyman and Helen Steward (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 43-68, 60-61.
43. I am not claiming that prediction on the basis of evidence is incompatible with decision (cf. Hampshire and Hart, "Decision, Intention and Uncertainty," 2), only that it is not required. For related discussion of "epistemic freedom," see Velleman, Practical Reflection, chap. 5.
44. See Hampshire, Thought and Action, 70, 128. I reject a final version of the inferential model in Sec. V.
45. Grice, "Intention and Uncertainty," 268.
46. Velleman, Practical Reflection, 26.
47. Gilbert Harman, "Practical Reasoning," 164 n. 8.
48. Velleman, Practical Reflection, 56-57.
49. Ibid., 62-64.
50. Ibid., 88-90, 94-97, 140-41.
51. See also Harman, "Practical Reasoning," sec. 2;
52. John Searle, Intentionality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 83-90;
53. and Setiya, Reasons without Rationalism, pt. 1. It is a further question why, and when, this awareness should count as knowledge - but I won't address that here.
54. Velleman, Practical Reflection, 51-53.
55. In her revision of Velleman, Hanna Pickard ("Knowledge of Action without Observation," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104 [2004]: 203-28) attempts to rehabilitate the appeal to perception, or awareness of action from the inside, at least in explaining how we keep track of what we are doing over time.
56. Part of her argument is that the content of "body awareness" goes beyond such things as movements to include whatever we can do as a basic action (Pickard, "Knowledge of Action," 216-20). Thus, Anscombe's objection does not apply. I am willing to grant the possibility of such awareness and to accept that it plays a role in monitoring the effectiveness of our intentions as we act. But I doubt that knowledge of what I am doing intentionally can originally depend upon it. For, like the inference from prior evidence, the transition from appearance to belief is a contingent fact - and, as I have stressed, the knowledge of what we are doing in basic action is not.
57. A variation on this approach would claim that knowledge in intention is self-verifying in much the same way as Descartes's cogito: if I intend to be doing φ, it follows that I am. No doubt this proposal is too simple - it is criticized by Anscombe (Intention, 52)
58. and by Keith Donnellan ("Knowing What I Am Doing," Journal of Philosophy 60 [1963]: 401-49, 403) - but there is something to it. The distinction between intending and doing is not a sharp one, and it is tempting to appeal to this in explaining why there is no problem about our knowledge of what we intentionally do. This strategy seems to be invoked by Falvey ("Knowledge in Intention").
59. He observes that it is normally sufficient to count as doing something that one has started and one intends to go on, regardless of what one is up to right now (Falvey, "Knowledge in Intention," 25-26).
60. And even quite dramatic mistakes in performance need not undermine my judgment of what I am doing, e.g., I still count as walking home when I am going in the opposite direction after taking a wrong turn (Falvey, "Knowledge in Intention," 28-29).
61. If the line between intending and doing is blurred, knowledge of action may not be much more problematic than knowledge of intention itself. (A more detailed picture of the close relation between intending and doing is found in Michael Thompson's "Naïve Action Theory," which Falvey cites.) Even if we grant this point, however, it cannot amount to a general theory of knowledge in intention. Whatever force there is in the claim that, when I intend to be doing φ, I already count as doing it in some incipient way, it does not follow from the fact that I intend to do something tomorrow that I am actually going to do it. The equation of intending and doing - or blurring of the distinction between them - cannot account for knowledge in prospective intention, which does not verify itself. In this respect, at least, Velleman's theory is more promising than the present approach.
62. William James, "The Will to Believe," in his The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longman, 1897), 1-31, 25.
63. For this way of putting things, see Rae Langton, "Intention as Faith," in Agency and Action, ed. John Hyman and Helen Steward (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 243-58. I am in broad agreement with her critique of Velleman, which deploys examples like the one that appears in the following paragraph. Two points of dissent: first, I don't find it helpful to frame the objection by asking whether it is possible to form the relevant beliefs; my focus is narrowly epistemic (cf. Langton, "Intention as Faith," 255-56); second, I don't think that the problems for Velleman are problems for the very idea that intention involves belief (cf. Langton, "Intention as Faith," 252-54).
64. Cian Dorr, "Non-cognitivism and Wishful Thinking," Noûs 36 (2002): 97-103, 99-100.
65. It is essential to stress here that the benevolent spirit will arrange for Malabar to win only when I believe that he will win. Merely picking him as my favorite, or wishing for a victory, is not enough. We should also acknowledge the possibility of "bootstrapping." Suppose I know that, whether doing so is reasonable or not, I am very likely to end up with the belief that Malabar will win. I can then conclude, from the spirit's promise, that this belief is true. In doing so, I form the belief that Malabar will win on the basis of prior evidence. While this is possible, it is not a good model for knowledge in intention: we do not predict our intentions and form them on the basis of those predictions.
66. For a similar claim, though without much development, see Anscombe, Intention, 88-89.
67. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, chap. 2, sec. 3.
68. There is still the possibility of an infinite series of intelligent actions, with no beginning; if each member of the series is more rapid than its successor, the infinity might even occupy a finite time. But this is presumably irrelevant to the exercise of intelligence by creatures like us.
69. Ibid.
70. Compare the version of Ryle's argument discussed by Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson ("Knowing How," Journal of Philosophy 98 [2001]: 411-44, 412-16).
71. They rely on a nontemporal analogue of premise 2, which removes the threat of regress. Instead, they assume that distinct actions correspond to distinct propositions and that "it is [not] necessary to contemplate an infinite number of distinct propositions [in order to engage in action]" (Stanley and Williamson, "Knowing How," 414). In my view, the reading in the text comes closer to Ryle's intentions.
72. For this objection, see Stanley and Williamson, "Knowing How," 414-15.
73. That the exercise of knowing how involved in intentional action need not itself be intentional can be seen from the fact that, in, say, clenching my fist intentionally, I may not realize that I am exercising knowledge how. Thus the belief condition, from Sec. I, may not be met.
74. As Edward Craig (Knowledge and the State of Nature [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990], 150-53) points out, use of the same verb for knowing how and knowing that is not peculiar to English: it is not an accident that we characterize knowing how in epistemic terms. (I should stress, however, that I do mean to place much weight on linguistic evidence.
75. That the concept of knowledge how is epistemic is something we can tell directly in grasping that concept, just as we can tell that the concepts of warrant and justified inference belong with knowledge, as epistemic, even though we express them with different words.) Craig's own account of knowing how is not persuasive. He argues that the capacity to φ intentionally counts as knowledge because those who possess it tend to be good instructors, in much the way that those who possess propositional knowledge tend to be good informants (Craig, Knowledge and the State of Nature, 156). The analogy is defective in that, for basic action in particular, knowing how has little pedagogical significance.
76. It is worth noting that the distinction goes both ways. The case in the previous paragraph illustrates the possibility of knowing how to φ without having knowledge of ability. One could also have knowledge of ability, in the simple conditional sense, without knowing how. Suppose that, although I don't know how to twitch my nose, I am watched over by a guardian angel who would provide me with that knowledge instantaneously, were I to form the appropriate intention. I might then know that I am able to twitch my nose, in that I would be doing so if I intended to be, before I know how to do it. If we shift to knowledge of ability in the prospective sense - knowing that, if I intend to f, I will do so in the future - the examples are more mundane. I may know that I will execute my intention by learning how to do something that I do not yet know how to do. As I argue below, however, forming an intention to φ when one does not yet know how to φ is epistemically problematic.
77. This appears in the fact that these conditions permit us to form the beliefs in question only by forming an intention. They do not warrant those beliefs per se. And so they make an epistemic discrimination - between intention and mere belief - that propositional knowledge cannot make.
78. This argument applies even to sophisticated propositional views, like that of Stanley and Williamson ("Knowing How"). They identify knowing how to φ, roughly, with propositional knowledge of the means by which one could φ, under a "practical" mode of presentation. A further argument against this view is that it cannot account for the necessity of K: knowledge of means is not required for basic intentional action.
79. Ryle, "Knowing How and Knowing That," 6.
80. Something like the latter association is found in Richard Moran's Authority and Estrangement.