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Ways of Knowing
Abstract
On an explanatory conception of ways of knowing, Φ-ing that P is a way of knowing that P just if it is possible satisfactorily to explain how S knows that P by pointing out that SΦs that P. This account of ways of knowing is shown to be preferable to various rival conceptions, including Williamson's conception in Knowledge and Its Limits. The explanatory approach casts light on the link between perceiving and knowing and on the nature of knowing.
... (By contrast, semantic memory involves recalling, in a third personal way, that some proposition is true or that some event happened.) Episodic memory on this understanding is factive: if one remembers having an experience E, then it is true that one had E. Some take this to be a conceptual point about memory: all memories are ways of knowing, or ways of truly representing past events (Williamson, 2000;Cassam, 2007). A weaker commitment suffices here: one kind of memory-episodic memory-is factive in this way. ...
This paper purports to disprove an orthodox view in contemporary epistemology that I call ‘the epistemic conception of memory’, which sees remembering as a kind of epistemic success, in particular, a kind of knowing. This conception is embodied in a cluster of platitudes in epistemology, including ‘remembering entails knowing’, ‘remembering is a way of knowing’, and ‘remembering is sufficiently analogous to knowing’. I will argue that this epistemic conception of memory, as a whole, should be rejected insofar as we take into account some putative necessary conditions for knowledge. It will be illustrated that while many maintain that knowing must be (1) anti-luck and (2) an achievement, the two conditions do not apply to remembering. I will provide cases where the subject successfully remembers that p but lacks knowledge that p for failing to meet the two putative conditions for knowledge. Therefore, remembering is not a kind of knowing but a sui generis cognitive activity.
On an ‘internalist’ picture, knowledge isn’t necessary for understanding the nature of perception and perceptual experience. This contrasts with the ‘knowledge first’ picture, according to which it’s essential to the nature of successful perceiving as a mental state that it’s a way of knowing. It’s often thought that naturalistic theorizing about the mind should adopt the internalist picture. However, I argue that a powerful, recently prominent framework for scientific study of the mind, ‘predictive processing,’ instead supports the knowledge first picture. Under predictive processing, it’s intrinsic to successful perceiving that it’s a state with the kind of modal robustness that’s distinctive of knowledge, which gives us reason to think of successful perceiving along knowledge first lines. Furthermore, I argue that the predictive processing framework encourages us to conceptualize experiences which don’t amount to knowledge along knowledge first lines, as states which by their nature fall short of knowledge.
When a subject has perceptually grounded knowledge, she typically knows how she knows what she knows, and is able to appeal to perceived items and her own experiences in reason-giving practices. What explains this ability? In this paper I focus on vision, and I submit that paradigmatic cases of visual perceptual knowledge are such that, when a subject acquires knowledge that p by seeing that p, she also acquires tacit knowledge that she sees that p; I also argue that the truth of this thesis is grounded in phenomenological facts concerning awareness and self-awareness.
How should we understand the epistemic role of perception? According to epistemological disjunctivism (ED), a subject's perceptual knowledge that p is to be explained in terms of the subject believing that p for a factive and reflectively accessible reason. I argue that ED raises far‐reaching questions for rationality and deliberation; I illustrate those questions by setting up a puzzle about belief‐suspension, and I argue that ED does not have the resources to make sense of the rationality of belief‐suspension in cases in which suspending is clearly rational. The conclusion that I draw from the puzzle is mainly negative: the epistemic contribution of perception cannot be explained in terms of a warrant‐conferring relation between perception and belief. However, toward the end, I sketch a positive picture of the epistemic role of perception in terms of a direct explanatory relation between perception and knowledge.
According to Duncan Pritchard’s Philosophical Issues, 21(1), 434–455, (2011, 2012, 2015)version of epistemological disjunctivism, in paradigm cases of perceptual knowledge, one’s knowledge that p is grounded in one’s seeing that p, and one can, by reflection alone, come to know that they see that p. In this paper, I argue that the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability is incompatible with epistemological disjunctivism, so understood. This has the consequence that theories of the nature of sensory experience which accept the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability—such as phenomenal character disjunctivism and certain forms of naïve realism—are inconsistent with epistemological disjunctivism, so understood. I then argue that proponents of epistemological disjunctivism face a formidable challenge explaining in what sense, if any, one can have purely reflective knowledge of their factive rational support.
Plausibly, an inference is an act of coming to believe something on the basis of something else you already believe. But what is it to come to believe something on the basis of something else? I propose a disjunctive answer: it is either for some beliefs to rationally cause another—where rational causation is understood as causation that is either actually or potentially productive of knowledge—or for some beliefs to “deviantly” cause another, but for the believer mistakenly to come thereby to believe that the former have rationally caused the latter. The result, I argue, is both a theoretically satisfying account of the act of inferring and a demonstration of the power of a knowledge-first approach to the philosophy of mind.
Epistemological disjunctivism says that one can know that p on the rational basis of one’s seeing that p. The basis problem for disjunctivism says that that can’t be since seeing that p entails knowing that p on account of simply being the way in which one knows that p. In defense of their view disjunctivists have rejected the idea that seeing that p is just a way of knowing that p (the \(\hbox {S}_{\mathrm{w}}\hbox {K}\) thesis). That manoeuvre is familiar. In this paper I explore the prospects for rejecting instead the thought that if the \(\hbox {S}_{\mathrm{w}}\hbox {K}\) thesis is true then seeing that p can’t be one’s rational basis for perceptual knowledge. I explore two strategies. The first situates disjunctivism within the context of a ‘knowledge-first’ approach that seeks to reverse the traditional understanding of the relationship between perceptual knowledge and justification (or rational support). But I argue that a more interesting strategy situates disjunctivism within a context that accepts a more nuanced understanding of perceptual beliefs. The proposal that I introduce reimagines disjunctivism in light of a bifurcated conception of perceptual knowledge that would see it cleaved along two dimensions. On the picture that results perceptual knowledge at the judgemental level is rationally supported by perceptual knowledge at the merely functional or ‘animal’ level. This supports a form of disjunctivism that I think is currently off the radar: one that’s consistent both with the \(\hbox {S}_{\mathrm{w}}\hbox {K}\) thesis and a commitment to a traditional reductive account of perceptual knowledge.
I will claim that the distinction Craig French describes between “specific realizations of knowledge” and “means of knowing”, after respective theorisations by Timothy Williamson and Quassim Cassam, can be seen as a faultline between epistemology on the one hand, and (merely) the analysis of ordinary language use on the other. The possibility of this disjunction, I believe, raises the question as to whether the latter kind of analysis has anything to contribute to epistemology at all. Cassam’s “explanatory” conception of ways of knowing is shown to be inconsistent as an epistemology, and prone to use of unfair examples even considered as (merely) the analysis of ordinary discourse for expressions of knowledge. Nonetheless, in order to argue that this is the case, the “explanatory” conception helps us to consider the better mode of analysis for explanations of knowledge in philosophy.
Contemporary memory sciences describe processes that are dynamic and constructive. This has led some philosophers to weaken the relationship between memory and epistemology; though remembering can give rise to epistemic success, it is not itself an epistemic success state. I argue that non-epistemic (causal) theories will not do; they provide neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for remembering that p. I also argue that the shortcomings of the causal theory are epistemic in nature. Consequently, a theory of remembering must account for both its fundamentally epistemic nature and for its constructive and dynamic processes. © 2016 University of Southern California and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
According to P.F. Strawson, a causal requirement on perception is implicit in everyday explanations of what someone knows in terms of what they perceive. In this paper I argue that this putative 'rationale' for the causal theory of perception is premised on a questionable assumption, that making perceptual knowledge intelligible in terms of perception requires explaining our possession of reliably true perceptual beliefs. I present and defend an alternative interpretation of the commonsense psychology of perceptual knowledge, on which object perception is a causal enabling condition of epistemic perception. I also consider the bearing of this account on the relational view of perceptual experience.
Philosophers have long been concerned about what we know and how we know it. Increasingly, however, a related question has gained prominence in philosophical discussion: what should we believe and why? This volume brings together twelve new essays that address different aspects of this question. The essays examine foundational questions about reasons for belief, and use new research on reasons for belief to address traditional epistemological concerns such as knowledge, justification and perceptually acquired beliefs. This book will be of interest to philosophers working on epistemology, theoretical reason, rationality, perception and ethics. It will also be of interest to cognitive scientists and psychologists who wish to gain deeper insight into normative questions about belief and knowledge.
The three parts of the book comprise three distinct investigations under a common theme: enquiry into inter-relationships between issues about the nature of knowledge and issues about the value of knowledge. The first investigation provides an analysis of problems concerning the value of knowledge and a critical examination of responses to these by virtue epistemologists. The book finds virtue-theoretic accounts wanting and argues that there is a cognitive state - understanding - which is similar to, but different from knowledge, and which has final value. In the second investigation the book presents accounts of perceptual knowledge, knowledge from indicator phenomena, and knowledge from testimony, in each of which recognitional abilities feature prominently. Consideration of these abilities, the book claims, enables us to reach a better understanding of knowledge and its value. The third investigation focuses on the relationship between perceptual knowledge and knowledge of our own intentional actions. The book argues for an account of knowledge and justification to which a certain kind of second-order knowledge is central and applies this both to perceptual knowledge, and knowledge of our own intentional actions, with a view to explaining ways in which knowledge is of value. © Duncan Pritchard, Alan Millar, and Adrian Haddock 2010. All rights reserved.
According to orthodoxy, perceptual beliefs are caused by perceptual experiences. The paper argues that this view makes it impossible to explain how experiences can be epistemically significant. A rival account, on which experiences in the “good case” are ways of knowing, is set out and defended.
Just as Dummett famously argued that there is no such thing as bare predicative knowledge, this paper argues that there is no such thing as bare prepositional knowledge: all such knowing is knowing in a specifc way. It is frst argued that seeing that so-and-so can be epis-temically understood to constitute a way of knowing that so-and-so. Three arguments are then advanced in support of the stronger claim that there is no such knowing unless there is a way of knowing. Finally, four objections to these two claims are addressed.
Quassim Cassam (2007a) offers a conception of ways of knowing which he argues is preferable to rival accounts such as the account we find in Williamson (2000). The correct way to think about ways of knowing matters for philosophers, such as Cassam and Williamson, who want to understand knowledge itself in terms of ways of knowing. So is Cassam right that his conception of ways of knowing is preferable to Williamson's? The discussion to follow is irenic in spirit: I will argue that in fact Cassam and Williamson don't offer competing accounts of the same phenomenon, but consistent accounts of subtly different phenomena. It is then open that ways of knowing in both senses are relevant to elucidating knowledge itself.
Looking out the window, I see that it’s raining outside. Do I know that it’s raining outside? According to proponents of the Entailment Thesis, I do. If I see that p, I know that p. In general, the Entailment Thesis is the thesis that if S perceives that p, S knows that p. But recently, some philosophers (McDowell, in Smith (ed.) Reading McDowell on mind and world, 2002; Turri, Theoria 76(3):197–206, 2010; Pritchard, Philos Issues (Supplement to Nous) 21:434–455, 2011; Pritchard, Epistemological disjunctivism, 2012) have argued that the Entailment Thesis is false. On their view, we can see p and not know that p. In this paper, I argue that their arguments are unsuccessful.
Many philosophers accept a view – what I will call the intuition picture – according to which intuitions are crucial evidence in philosophy. Recently, Williamson (2004, 2007: ch. 1) has argued that such views are best abandoned because they lead to a psychologistic conception of philosophical evidence that encourages scepticism about the armchair judgements relied upon in philosophy. In this paper I respond to this criticism by showing how the intuition picture can be formulated in such a way that: (i) it is consistent with a wide range of views about not only philosophical evidence but also the nature of evidence in general, including Williamson's famous view that E = K; (ii) it can maintain the central claims about the nature and role of intuitions in philosophy made by proponents of the intuition picture; (iii) it does not collapse into Williamson's own deflationary view of the nature and role of intuitions in philosophy; and (iv) it does not lead to scepticism.
Some propose that the question of how you know that James is angry can be adequately answered with the claim that you see that James is angry. Call this the Perceptual Hypothesis. Here, I examine that hypothesis.
I argue that there are two different ways in which the Perceptual Hypothesis could be made true. You might see that James is angry by seeing his bodily features. Alternatively, you might see that James is angry by seeing his anger. If you see that James is angry in the first way, your knowledge is inferential. If you see that James is angry in the second way, your knowledge is not inferential. These are different ways of knowing that James is angry. So the Perceptual Hypothesis alone does not adequately answer the question of how you know that fact. To ascertain how you know it, we need to decide whether or not you saw his anger.
This is an epistemological argument. But it has consequences for a theory of perception. It implies that there is a determinate fact about which features of an object you see. This fact is made true independently of what you come to know by seeing.
In the final section of the paper, I seek to undermine various ways in which the claim that you see James' anger may be thought implausible.
Barry Stroud suggests that when we want to explain a certain kind of knowledge philosophically we feel we must explain it on the basis of another, prior kind of knowledge that does not imply or presuppose any of the knowledge we are trying to explain. If we accept this epistemic priority requirement (EPR) we find that we cannot explain our knowledge of the world in a way that satisfies it. If we reject EPR then we will be failing to make all of our knowledge of the world intelligible all at once. I respond to this dilemma by questioning EPR and arguing that it is, in any case, a requirement that is satisfied by explanations of our knowledge in terms of non-epistemic seeing. Since non-epistemic seeing is not a form of knowing, such explanations show how knowledge of the world can come to be out of something that is not knowledge of the world.
I discuss the claim what makes self-knowledge epistemologically distinctive is the fact that it is baseless or groundless.
I draw a distinction between evidential and explanatory baselessness and argue that self-knowledge is only baseless in the
first of these senses. Since evidential baselessness is a relatively widespread phenomenon the evidential baselessness of
self-knowledge does not make it epistemologically distinctive and does not call for any special explanation. I do not deny
that self-knowledge is epistemologically distinctive. My claim is only that talk of its evidential baselessness is insufficient
to account for its epistemological distinctiveness.
In Knowledge and its Limits Timothy Williamson (2000) argues for what is called the Unanalysability Hypothesis (UH), the hypothesis that 'the concept knows cannot be analysed into more basic concepts'. Williamson puts forward a range of arguments in support of UH. The first is the Distinct Concepts Argument (DCA), which assumes that every standard analysis of the concept knows equates it with some conjunctive concept like justified true belief. Another argument in support of UH is the Inductive Argument, according to which 'experience confirms inductively . . . that no analysis of the concept knows of the standard kind is correct'. A third argument is the False Expectations Argument, according to which one should not expect the concept knows to have a nontrivial analysis in more basic terms. This chapter is divided into three parts. The first part concentrates on DCA, showing that it does not work. The second part argues that Williamson's positive account of the concept of knowledge amounts to a kind of analysis. Finally, the chapter discusses the principle that, if one knows that A, then there is a specific way in which one knows. It distinguishes between different 'ways of knowing', and suggests that the sense in which seeing that A is a way of knowing that A is very different from the sense in which remembering that A is a way of knowing that A.
In this controversial volume (originally published in 1975) Peter Unger suggests that, not only can nothing ever be known, but no one can ever have a reason at all for anything. A consequence of this is that we cannot have any realistic emotional ties: it can never be conclusively said that someone is happy or sad about anything. Finally he argues that no one can ever say, let alone believe, that anything is the case. In order to get beyond this apparent bind - and this condition of ignorance - Unger proposes a radical departure from the linguistic and epistemological systems we have become accustomed to. Epistemologists, as well as philosophers of mind and language will undoubtedly find in this study of the limitations of language an invaluable philosophical perspective.
This text collects all Austin’s published articles plus a new one, ch. 13, hitherto unpublished. The analysis of the ordinary language to clarify philosophical questions is the common element of the 13 papers. Chapters 2 and 4 discuss the nature of knowledge, focusing on ‘performative utterances’. The doctrine of ‘speech acts’, i.e. a statement may be the pragmatic use of language, is discussed in Chs 6 and 10. Chapters 8, 9, and 12 reflect on the problems the language encounters in discussing actions and consider the cases of excuses, accusations, and freedom. The ‘correspondence theory’, i.e. a statement is truth when it corresponds to a fact, is presented in Chs 5 and 6. Finally, Chs 1 and 3 study how a word may have different but related senses considering Aristotle’s view. Chapters 11 and 13 illustrate the meaning of ‘pretending’ and a Plato’s text respectively.
A collection of seminal papers written by eminent epistemologist and metaphysician Barry Stroud, published over the past 35 years. The main task Stroud explores in the essays is, as the title suggests, the one of understanding human knowledge as it is pursued in philosophy. Stroud defends the distinctive thesis that scepticism has a unique central place in epistemology in that it is to be regarded as a criterion both for posing the right kind of questions philosophical theories of knowledge face and for the postulation of answers to these questions. The second main theme of the book, equally intrinsically related to its overall target, is the possibility of the ‘transcendental’, broadly Kantian, project of establishing the distinctive perceptual and conceptual relationship between persons on the one hand and the world on the other. Stroud emphasizes the special invulnerability of certain aspects of our conception of the world that accompanies the conglomerate of these relationships.
I focus on two questions: what is knowledge, and how is knowledge possible? The latter is an example of a how-possible question. I argue that how-possible questions are obstacle-dependent and that they need to be dealt with at three different levels, the level of means, of obstacle-removal, and of enabling conditions. At the first of these levels the possibility of knowledge is accounted for by identifying means of knowing, and I argue that the identification of such means also contributes to a proper understanding of what knowledge is.
A creature that is not aware of anything does not lead a genuinely intelligent life. Its activity is unintelligent because unguided by (conscious or unconscious) awareness. Although intelligent life does not consist solely of awareness, it is intelligent only where it is intimately related to awareness. Awareness of anything involves some awareness of how things are in some respect. Even awareness merely of how things appear to be is awareness of how they are in respect of appearance. Awareness of how things are is awareness, concerning some way, that they are that way. But awareness that they are that way is knowledge that they are that way. Thus all intelligent life involves an intimate relation to knowledge. The mental states of a creature are the states that make its life intelligent. Consequently, the state of knowing is a mental state; it is central to mentality.
Part 3 Is this answer acceptable? If not it needs to be explained why not
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©2007 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. CVII, Part 3 Is this answer acceptable? If not it needs to be explained why not. ©2007 The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. CVII, Part 3 REFERENCES Austin, J. L. 1979: 'Other Minds', in Philosophical Papers, 3rd edn. (Ox-ford: Oxford University Press).
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