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Stanley. Knowledge and Action
Knowledge is the norm of action. (c. Jason Stanley. See http://www.rci.ru...
From Kenya Imagine
Timothy WILLIAMSKnowledge and Its Limits
Oxford University Press2002
Preface
If I had to summarize this book in two words, they would be: knowledge first. It takes the simple distinction between knowledge and ignorance as a starting point from which to explain other things, not as something itself to beexplained. In that sense the book reverses the direction of explanation predominant in the history of epistemology.Like many philosophers, I have long been impressed by the failure of attempts to find a correct analysis of thenotion of knowledge in terms of supposedly more basic notions, such as belief, truth, and justification. One naturalexplanation of the failure is that knowledge has no such analysis. If so, I wondered, what follows? At first, I wastempted to draw the conclusion that the notion of knowledge did not matter very much, because we could use thoseother notions instead. Around 1986, however, I began to notice points at which philosophers had gone wrong throughusing combinations of those other notions when the notion of knowledge was what their purposes really called for. Thatraised the question: why did they not use the notion of knowledge when it was just what they needed? The first threechapters of this book explain but do not justify this neglect of the distinction between knowledge and ignorance. Theydo so by applying the lessons of recent philosophy of mind to epistemology and then using the result to enrich the philosophy of mind. That provides a theoretical context for work I had already been doing on knowledge and its limits,work in which the notion of knowledge figures as one of the main instruments of understanding. That work forms muchof the basis for the final nine chapters. These chapters also sketch applications to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, and decision theory. The book suggests a way of doing epistemology in which the distinction between knowledge and ignorance is central and irreducible, and we can still aspire to systematicity and rigour.This book draws together work done in many places. There are traces of my time at Trinity College Dublin andmuch more from that at University College Oxford, particularly from some periods of leave and partial teaching relief.The majority of the material is far more recent, since my move to the University of Edinburgh, again with valuable
end p.
v periods of leave and partial teaching relief. The hospitality of other institutions was also important: I did someof the work as a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University and as avisiting fellow of the Australian National University and the University of Canterbury.Most of the ideas in the book have been tried out in discussion on many occasions, both informally and atgraduate classes at Oxford, Edinburgh, Princeton, and Helsinki; talks at the University of Aberdeen, the Australian National University, the University of Belgrade, the University of Bristol, the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club, theUniversity of Canterbury at Christchurch, Cornell University, the University of Delaware, the University of Edinburgh,the University of Glasgow, Keele University, La Trobe University, the University of Leeds, the Classical University of Lisbon, University College London, the Catholic University of Lublin, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,Melbourne University, the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,Monash University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of New Mexico, New York University,the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ohio State University, the University of Oslo, the University of Oxford, the University of St Andrews, the University of Sheffield, the University of Stirling, the University of Sussex,Waikato University, the University of Wollongong, and Yale University; workshops on epistemology at theUniversities of London and Stirling; a conference in Glasgow on Achilles and the Tortoise; a conference on empiricismand a meeting of the Scots Philosophical Club, both at Edinburgh; the 1999 Rutgers conference on epistemology; acongress on analytic philosophy at the turn of the millennium at Santiago de Compostela. To anyone familiar withanalytic philosophy, it hardly needs to be emphasized how much there is to be learned from such occasions. The reader must judge whether I have learned enough. Certainly some sections of the book emerged as answers to questions posed by members of one or more of those audiences. I thank those audiences collectively. In addition, individual thanks aredue to many people: they include Michael Ayers, Michael Bacharach, Helen Beebee, Alexander Bird, SimonBlackburn, Bill Brewer, Justin Broackes, John Campbell, Peter Carruthers, Paul Castell, Bill Child, Tim Cleveland, EarlConee, Jack Copeland, Neil Cooper, Paolo Crivelli, Jonathan Dancy, Keith DeRose, Harry Deutsch, DorothyEdgington, Jim Edwards, Matti Eklund, Kit Fine, Graeme Forbes, Elizabeth Fricker, Richard Fumerton, Manuel GarciaCarpintero, Olav Gjelsvik, John Gibbons, Gilbert Harman, Pedro Hecht, James Higginbotham,
end p.
viMatthias Hild, Richard Holton, Lloyd Humberstone, Frank Jackson, Mark Johnston, Peter Klein, Jon Kvanvig,Igal Kvart, Rae Langton, Keith Lehrer, David Lewis, Peter Lipton, Michael Martin, Hugh Mellor, Peter Milne, ChadMohler, Adam Morton, Peter Mott, Nicholas Nathan, John O'Leary-Hawthorne, Philip Percival, Philip Pettit, StathisPsillos, Gideon Rosen, Mark Sainsbury, Nathan Salmon, Hyun Song Shin, Sydney Shoemaker, John Skorupski, RoySorensen, Ernest Sosa, Jason Stanley, Helen Steward, Scott Sturgeon, Richard Swinburne, Charles Travis, Peter Unger,Alan Weir, Ralph Wedgwood, Crispin Wright, and various anonymous referees. The lists are certainly both invidiousand incomplete; I apologize to those whom I have undeservedly omitted, and hope that they will take some satisfaction
from the improvements which they correctly guess themselves to have caused. Peter Momtchiloff has been helpful andsupportive as my editor at Oxford University Press, and Angela Blackburn meticulous as my copy editor. ElisabettaWilliamson enabled me to spend an excessive proportion of my days writing the book. Alice and Conrad were Aliceand Conrad.At one stage I envisaged a collection of previously published papers, cluttered with additional footnotes and postscripts. Subsequently dissatisfied with that prospect, I reworked, expanded, and integrated the material. Somerepetitions have been eliminated, terminology has been made uniform, and interconnections signalled. The originalsources are listed below; the bibliography contains full details of the papers mentioned. I should have made few of theseimprovements had it not been for Mima Andjelković, who refused to believe that I had already done my best; she wasright. She also caught many errors at proof stage.The introduction is new.Chapter 1is based on parts of 'Is knowing a state of mind?',
Mind
104 (1995), with extensive rewriting. Thereis significant new material in sections1.1,1.2,1.3, and1.5.
Most of Chapter 2is based on parts of 'Is knowing a state of mind?', with some material in sections2.1and2.2
from 'The broadness of the mental: some logical considerations',
Philosophical Perspectives
12 (1998). There isextensive new material in section2.3and some in each of the other sections.The majority of Chapter 3is based on 'The broadness of the mental'. Section3.2contains significant new
material, section3.3is largely new, and section3.8is wholly new.
Most of Chapter 4is based on 'Cognitive homelessness',
The Journal of Philosophy
93 (1996), with rewriting.Section4.4is new.Of Chapter 5, sections5.1and5.2are based on parts of 'Inexact
end p.
viiknowledge',
Mind
101 (1992), with extensive reworking. The reworking differentiates those sections fromsections8.2and8.3of my
Vagueness
, which were also based on 'Inexact knowledge'. Sections5.4and5.5are based on
'Margins for error: a reply',
Philosophical Quarterly
50 (2000). Section5.3is new.Chapter 6is based on parts of 'Inexact knowledge'.Most of Chapter 7is new. Sections7.4and7.5overlap 'Skepticism, semantic externalism, and Keith's mom',
Southern Journal of Philosophy
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
60(2000), with some additional material expanded from 'Is knowing a state of mind?' in section8.2.Chapter 9is a revised version of 'Knowledge as evidence',
Mind
106 (1997). There is significant new materialin sections9.2,9.7, and9.8.
Chapter 10is based on 'Conditionalizing on knowledge',
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
49(1998), except for section10.5, which is based on part of 'Inexact knowledge'.Chapter 11is a revised version of 'Knowing and asserting',
Philosophical Review
105 (1996), with some brief new passages.Of Chapter 12, sections12.1and12.2draw on 'Verificationism and non-distributive knowledge',
Australasian Journal of Philosophy
71 (1993), with amplifications and some reference to results in 'Two incomplete anti-realistmodal epistemic logics',
Journal of Symbolic Logic
Mind
96 (1987), and 'On knowledge of the unknowable',
Analysis
47 (1987). Sections12.3and12.4are new.
Appendix 1 reprints the appendix to 'The broadness of the mental: some logical considerations'. Appendix 2 isa revised version of the appendix to 'Inexact knowledge'. Appendix 3 is new. Appendices 4 and 5 reprint the appendicesto 'Conditionalizing on knowledge'. Appendix 6 is a revised version of the appendix to 'Verificationism and non-distributive knowledge'.I thank the editors concerned (and Cornell University in the case of
Philosophical Review
) for permission touse this material.For the paperback edition, a few words or symbols have been corrected on pages 53, 90, 95, 97, 136, 141, 147,150, 151, and 305; thanks go to Alexander Bird, Owen Greenhall, Richard Holton, and Philip Pegan.T. W.
end p.
viii
Contents
Introduction
1 1 Knowing and acting1 2 Unanalysable knowledge2 3 Factive mental states5 4 Knowledge as the justification of belief and assertion8 5 The myth of epistemic transparency11 6 Unknowable truths18 1
A State of Mind
1.3 Knowledge and analysis27 1.4 Knowing as the most general factive mental state33 1.5 Knowing and believing41 2
Broadness
49 2.1 Internalism and externalism49 2.2 Broad and narrow conditions51 2.3 Mental differences between knowing and believing54 2.4 The causal efficacy of knowledge60 3
Primeness
65 3.1 Prime and composite conditions65 3.2 Arguments for primeness66 3.3 Free recombination73 3.4 The explanatory value of prime conditions75 3.5 The value of generality80 3.6 Explanation and correlation coefficients83 3.7 Primeness and the causal order 88 3.8 Non-conjunctive decompositions89
end p.
ix4
Anti-Luminosity
93 4.1 Cognitive homes93 4.2 Luminosity94 4.3 An argument against luminosity96 4.4 Reliability98 4.5 Sorites arguments102 4.6 Generalizations106 4.7 Scientific tests109 4.8 Assertibility conditions110 5
Margins and Iterations
114 5.1 Knowing that one knows114 5.2 Further iterations120 5.3 Close possibilities123 5.4 Point estimates130 5.5 Iterated interpersonal knowledge131 6
An Application
Sensitivity
147 7.1 Preview147 7.2 Counterfactual sensitivity148 7.3 Counterfactuals and scepticism150 7.4 Methods152 7.5 Contextualist sensitivity156 7.6 Sensitivity and broad content161 8
Scepticism
164 8.1 Plan164 8.2 Scepticism and the non-symmetry of epistemic accessibility164 8.3 Difference of evidence in good and bad cases169 8.4 An argument for sameness of evidence170 8.5 The phenomenal conception of evidence173 8.6 Sameness of evidence and the sorites174 8.7 The non-transparency of rationality178 8.8 Scepticism without sameness of evidence181 9
Evidence
of 00
Knowledge and Its Limits
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