On Intellectualism in the Theory of Action

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT AUDI
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Knowing How

ABSTRACT:This paper examines intellectualism in the theory of action. Philosophers use ‘intellectualism’ variously, but few question its application to views on which knowledge of facts—expressible in that-clauses—is basic for understanding other kinds of knowledge, reasons for action, and practical reasoning. More broadly, for intellectualists, theoretical knowledge is more basic than practical knowledge; action, at least if rational, is knowledge-guided, and just as beliefs based on reasoning constitute knowledge only if its essential premises constitute knowledge, actions based on practical reasoning are rational only if any essential premise in it is known. Two major intellectualist claims are that practical knowledge, as knowing how, is reducible to propositional knowledge, a kind of knowing that, and that reasons for action must be (propositionally) known by the agent. This paper critically explores both claims by offering a broad though partial conception of practical knowledge and a pluralistic view of reasons for action. The aim is to sketch conceptions of knowing how and knowing that, and of the relation between knowledge and action, that avoid intellectualism but also do justice to both the importance of the intellect for human action and the distinctive character of practical reason.

Seeing, Knowing, and Doing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Human Action ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Rational Action ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Discriminative Response ◽  
Rich Information ◽  
Priori Knowledge

This book provides an overall theory of perception and an account of knowledge and justification concerning the physical, the abstract, and the normative. It has the rigor appropriate for professionals but explains its main points using concrete examples. It accounts for two important aspects of perception on which philosophers have said too little: its relevance to a priori knowledge—traditionally conceived as independent of perception—and its role in human action. Overall, the book provides a full-scale account of perception, presents a theory of the a priori, and explains how perception guides action. It also clarifies the relation between action and practical reasoning; the notion of rational action; and the relation between propositional and practical knowledge. Part One develops a theory of perception as experiential, representational, and causally connected with its objects: as a discriminative response to those objects, embodying phenomenally distinctive elements; and as yielding rich information that underlies human knowledge. Part Two presents a theory of self-evidence and the a priori. The theory is perceptualist in explicating the apprehension of a priori truths by articulating its parallels to perception. The theory unifies empirical and a priori knowledge by clarifying their reliable connections with their objects—connections many have thought impossible for a priori knowledge as about the abstract. Part Three explores how perception guides action; the relation between knowing how and knowing that; the nature of reasons for action; the role of inference in determining action; and the overall conditions for rational action.

Knowing, Reasoning, and Doing

2020 ◽  
pp. 180-193
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Rational Action ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Intentional Actions

This chapter draws on earlier ones in developing a critique of intellectualism, especially as applied to the philosophy of action. For intellectualism, theoretical knowledge is more basic than practical knowledge, and action, at least if performed for a good reason, must be knowledge-guided and not just guided by otherwise appropriate beliefs. Intellectualism is shown too strong on at least three counts. Knowing how is not reducible to knowing that; knowledge is not required for premises of practical reasoning; and (normative) reasons for action need not be factive, much less constituted by known propositions. These conclusions by no means imply that knowledge is not important for understanding action and practical reasoning, especially rational action and good practical reasoning. It is also true that intentional actions correspond to (possibly hypothetical) practical reasoning; but this point is shown to be very different from the intellectualist view that they are based on actual practical reasoning.

Practical Knowledge

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hunter
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Bodily Sensation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Philosophical Questions

A person typically knows what she is doing when she does something intentionally, and she usually knows this without having to observe herself. This so-called practical knowledge raises many philosophical questions. Does intentional action require practical knowledge and, if so, what is the strength of this requirement? What is it about intentional action that requires it, since a person can be doing something unintentionally without knowing about it? What is the source or ground of this knowledge? How is it related to observation, bodily sensation, and proprioception? How is a person’s practical knowledge connected to the reasons she has for acting and to practical reasoning more generally? In what sense, if any, is a person’s practical knowledge the “cause” of what it understands, as Anscombe famously claimed? While the notion of practical knowledge was central to the theory of action in the middle decades of the 20th century, it lost this place in the 1960s. But the last ten years has seen a renewed interest in the notion. This article aims to chart both the early debates and the recent discussions of practical knowledge. While it organizes the literature according to certain questions and topics, other ways to organize the literature are possible and nearly all of the texts would fit equally well under several headings.

scholarly journals Knowing How One Knows

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-205
Author(s):  
Giovanni Rolla ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Know How ◽  
First Order ◽  
Kk Principle

In this paper, I argue that knowledge is dimly luminous. That is: if a person knows that p, she knows how she knows that p. The argument depends on a safety-based account of propositional knowledge, which is salient in Williamson’s critique of the ‘KK’ principle. I combine that account with non-intellectualism about knowledge-how – according to which, if a person knows how to φ, then in nearly all (if not all) nearby possible worlds in which she φes in the same way as in the actual world, she only φes successfully. Thus, the possession of first-order propositional knowledge implies secondorder practical knowledge, and this can be iterated. Because of the assumed nonintellectualism about know-how, dim luminosity does not imply bright luminosity about knowledge, which is expressed by the traditional KK principle. I conclude by considering some potential counterexamples to the view that knowledge is dimly luminous.

Legal reasoning and interpretation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil MacCormick
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Deductive Reasoning ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
True State ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Special Case

Legal reasoning is the process of devising, reflecting on, or giving reasons for legal acts and decisions or justifications for speculative opinions about the meaning of law and its relevance to action. Many contemporary writers, such as Aulis Aarnio (1987), Robert Alexy (1988), Manuel Atienza (1991) and Aleksander Peczenik (1989), propound the view that legal reasoning is a particular instance of general practical reasoning. They suppose, that is to say, that reasoning can link up with action, guiding one what to do, or showing whether or not there are good reasons for a proposed course of action or for something already done. They suppose also that in law reason links up to legal decisions in this way. Both suppositions are well founded. Law regulates what to do and how to respond to what has been done, doing so within an institutional framework of legislatures, lawcourts, enforcement agencies and the like. It is a feature of legal institutions that they are expected to have, and usually do give, good reasons for what they do, and to do this in public. Legal reasoning is therefore not only a special case of practical reasoning, but a specially public one. Rationality in action has at least two requirements: first, attention to facts, to the true state of affairs in relation to which one acts; second, attention to reasons for action relevant to the facts ascertained. The former aspect concerns reasoning about evidence; the latter, reasoning about rules or norms as reasons for action. In law, such rules and other norms have an institutional character. But how are these applied – by some kind of deductive reasoning, or nondeductively? Behind the rules of the law, there presumably lie other reasons, reasons for having these rules. What kind of reasons are these, developed through what modes of discourse? A discourse of principles, perhaps – but then how do reasons of principle themselves differ from rules? Reasoning from either rules or principles must always involve some process of interpretation, so how does interpretive reasoning enter into the practical reason of law? Answering such questions is the business of a theory of legal reasoning. Legal reasoning is to be understood as a form of practical reasoning concerning these very issues.

Plato on Practical Reason and Practical Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. M. Olfert
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Normative Structure ◽  
The One

In Chapter 1, I argue that in a number of dialogues, Plato proposes that when we reason about what to do, we are equally and inseparably concerned with two sets of aims or concerns: grasping the truth and gaining knowledge on the one hand, and acting and acting well on the other. That is, from the perspective of practical reasoning, the goals of grasping the truth and gaining knowledge is inseparable from, and equally fundamental as, the goals of acting rationally and well. I argue that this Platonic idea is a plausible and worth examining both on its own terms, and because it has a legacy in Aristotle’s notion of practical truth. As I argue in the remainder of the Book, Aristotle uses his innovative conception of practical truth to formalize and make explicit the dual normative structure of practical reasoning suggested by Plato.

scholarly journals Acerca de la peculiaridad de los saberes liberales. On the Peculiarity of Liberal Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael María De Balbín Behrmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge

El conocimiento teórico se caracteriza por la búsqueda desinteresada de la verdad, sin una meta inmediata ulterior, a diferencia del conocimiento práctico, cuyo fin inmediato es orientar la acción humana. El desinterés en la búsqueda implica la libertad del cognoscente, que sólo está comprometido con la verdad. De ahí la caracterización de los saberes teóricos como saberes liberales. De forma mediata el aporte de los saberes liberales a la vida del hombre y de la sociedad es sumamente valioso, y se proyecta a través de la educación.Theoretical knowledge is characterized by the disinterested seeking of truth without an immediate ulterior purpose, contrary to practical knowledge, whose immediate aim is to guide human action. Disinterestedness in the seeking implies freedom in the knower, who is committed only to truth; thus, the characterization of theoretical knowledge as liberal knowledge. In a mediate way, the contribution of liberal knowledge is highly valuable for human and social life, and is projected through education.

scholarly journals KNOWING HOW TO PUT KNOWLEDGE FIRST IN THE THEORY OF JUSTIFICATION

Episteme ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Silva
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Know How

AbstractIn what follows I offer a novel knowledge-first account of justification that avoids the pitfalls of existing accounts while preserving the underlying insight of knowledge-first epistemologies: that knowledge comes first. The view is, roughly, this: justification is grounded in our practical knowledge (know-how) concerning the acquisition of propositional knowledge (knowledge-that). The upshot is a virtue-theoretic, knowledge-first view of justification that is internalist-friendly and able to explain more facts about justification than any other available view.

scholarly journals Anti-intellectualism, instructive representations, and the intentional action argument

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Ann Springle ◽  
Justin Humphreys
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Causal Theory Of Action ◽  
Theoretical Support ◽  
The Right

AbstractIntellectualists hold that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that, and consequently that the knowledge involved in skill is propositional. In support of this view, the intentional action argument holds that since skills manifest in intentional action and since intentional action necessarily depends on propositional knowledge, skills necessarily depend on propositional knowledge. We challenge this argument, and suggest that instructive representations, as opposed to propositional attitudes, can better account for an agent’s reasons for action. While a propositional-causal theory of action, according to which intentional action must be causally produced “in the right way” by an agent’s proposition-involving reasons, has long held sway, we draw on Elizabeth Anscombe’s insights offer a path toward an alternative theory of action. In so doing, we reject the implicitly Cartesian conception of knowledge at the core of the intentional action argument, while hanging on to the idea that mental states are representations of a certain kind. Our argument provides theoretical support for anti-intellectualism by equipping philosophers with an account of non-propositional, practical content.

Knowing how to

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Craig
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Crucial Question ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Epistemic Relation ◽  
New Space

It is sometimes said that when philosophers have thought about knowledge they have attended exclusively to knowing that p (or ‘propositional knowledge’, since p stands here for a proposition), scarcely at all to knowing how to A (or ‘practical knowledge’, since A stands here for a type of action, as in ‘knows how to play the violin’). Gilbert Ryle drew attention to this distinction, but his account of it remained imprecise, his thought about it overshadowed by his interest in other, related but different, questions. Whether the antithesis is as sharp as some, including Ryle, have apparently believed, might well be thought a crucial question for epistemology to answer. And if we think that ‘knows how to’ designates a relation between a subject and an action, whereas ‘knows that’ designates a relation between a subject and a proposition, this may well encourage the hope that there is a largely uninvestigated epistemic relation out there waiting to be explored – for since action-types and propositions are such very different objects, probably their epistemic relations with subjects are very different too. But this line of thought will look less promising if, as some maintain, knowing how to is a subspecies of knowing that, involving propositional knowledge about methods of doing things. Still, those who are hoping for a new space for epistemology need not give up; even if knowing how to is a form of knowing that, it might still have its own distinctive features. This possibility does not at the time of writing (2004) seem to have attracted much research.

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