Knowledge and action

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 105, Issue 10, 2008, Pages 571-590

  Hawthorne, John ^a   Stanley, Jason ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^b RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61249371569     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/jphil20081051022     Document Type: Article

References (6)

1. Fantl and McGrath, "Evidence, Pragmatics, and Justification," The Philosophical Review, CXI, 1 (2002): 67-94.
2. The qualification 'primary sense' is important. After all, there is a good deal of predicational shiftiness possible in 'His reason'. Consider: (1) Jason was his reason for leaving the party. (2) His reason for leaving the party was that it was boring. (3) His reason for leaving the party was that he thought that it was boring. (1) involves a use of 'His reason' that identifies reasons with objects. (2) involves a use for which it is plausible to apply the Reason-Knowledge Principle. (3) involves a use for which that principle seems less applicable (the truth of (3) does not obviously require that the subject knew that he thought that it was boring). The claim that something is a reason for acting only if it is known has been defended by John Hyman ("How Knowledge Works," The Philosophical Quarterly, XLIX, 197 (1999): 433-51)
3. and Peter Unger (Ignorance: A Case for Skepticism (New York: Oxford, 1975)). As Hyman writes, "...the fact that p cannot be A's reason for doing something if A does not know that p" (p. 444).
4. This objection is forcefully made in Stephen Schiffer's "Interest Relative Invariantism," Philosophical and Phenomenological Research L., 1 (2007): 188-95.
5. Jason Stanley, Knowledge and Practical Interests (New York: Oxford, 2005), p. 10.
6. For a reply to this sort of objection against knowledge norms, see also p. 80 of Jonathan Sutton, Without Justification (Cambridge: MIT, 2007).