Irreducibility of Understanding-Why to Knowledge of Cause

Reductive intellectualists about knowledge-how (e.g., Stanley & Williamson Journal of Philosophy 98, 411–44, 2001; Stanley Noûs 45, 207–38, 2011a, 2011b; Brogaard Philosophy Compass 3, 93–118, 2008a, Grazer Philosophische Studien 77, 147–90 2008b, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78, 439–67 2009, 2011) hold, contra Ryle (1946, 1949), that knowing how to do something is just a kind of propositional knowledge. In a similar vein, traditional reductivists about understanding-why (e.g., Salmon 1984; Lipton 2004; Woodward 2003; Grimm The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57, 515–35, 2006; Greco 2009; Kelp 2014) insist, in accordance with a tradition beginning with Aristotle, that the epistemic standing one attains when one understands why something is so is itself just a kind of propositional knowledge—viz., propositional knowledge of causes. A point that has been granted on both sides of these debates is that if these reductive proposals are right, then knowledge-how and understanding-why should be susceptible to the same extent as knowledge-that is to being undermined by epistemic luck. This paper reports experimental results that test these luck-based predictions. Interestingly, these results suggest a striking (albeit, imperfect) positive correlation between self-reported philosophical expertise and attributions of knowledge-how, understanding-why and knowledge-that which run contrary to reductive proposals. We contextualize these results by showing how they align very well with a particular kind of overarching non-reductive proposal, one that two of the authors have defended elsewhere (e.g., Carter and Pritchard Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91, 181–99, 2015a, Noûs 49, 440–53, 2015b, Australasian Philosophical Quarterly 93, 799–816, 2015c) according to which knowledge-how and understanding-why, but not knowledge-that, essentially involve cognitive achievement (i.e., cognitive success that is primarily creditable to cognitive ability). We conclude by situating the interpretive narrative advanced within contemporary discussions about the role of expertise in philosophical judgment.

According to reductive intellectualism, knowledge‐how just is a kind of propositional knowledge (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011a, 2011b; Brogaard, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2011, 2009, 2011). This proposal has proved controversial because knowledge‐how and propositional knowledge do not seem to share the same epistemic properties, particularly with regard to epistemic luck. Here we aim to move the argument forward by offering a positive account of knowledge‐how. In particular, we propose a new kind of anti‐intellectualism. Unlike neo‐Rylean anti‐intellectualist views, according to which the possession of knowledge‐how is just a matter of possessing certain abilities, we submit that knowledge‐how is a particular kind of cognitive achievement attained just when cognitive ability is connected in the right way with successful performance.

J.L., then a 25-year-old physiotherapist, became densely amnesic following herpes simplex encephalitis. She displayed severe retrograde amnesia, category-specific semantic memory loss, and a profound anterograde amnesia affecting both verbal and visual memory. Her working memory systems were relatively spared as were most of her cognitive problem-solving abilities, but her social functioning was grossly impaired. She was able to demonstrate several previously learned physiotherapy skills, but was unable to modify her application of these procedures in accordance with patient response. She showed no memory of theoretical or propositional knowledge, and could neither plan treatment or reason clinically. Three years later, J.L. had profound impairment of anterograde and retrograde declarative memory, with relative sparing of working memory for problem solving and long-term memory of procedural skills. The theoretical and practical implications of her amnesic syndrome are discussed.

JL, a 25-year-old physiotherapist, became densely amnesic following herpes simplex viral encephalitis (HSVE), causing bilateral damage to medial and ventral areas of her frontal and temporal lobes and their associated circuitry. Three years post-onset, her WAIS-R full scale IQ (Verbal 74, Performance 102) showed an estimated loss of ± 50 points. She displayed severe global amnesia and markedly impaired social cognition. However, her immediate memory, perceptual priming, and cognitive problem-solving abilities were relatively spared. Her retention of professional skills was assessed using simulated physiotherapy scenarios. JL was able to demonstrate some procedural skills spontaneously, but was unable to apply them precisely and flexibly to individual patient needs. She showed no memory of theoretical or propositional physiotherapy knowledge, and could neither plan treatment nor reason clinically. Her performance was well below that of four other physiotherapists who had also not practised for 4 years. Thus, despite the relative sparing of her implicit memory, JL's performance lacked the co-ordinated operation of declarative and implicit long-term memory and the links to working memory that are necessary for the flexible performance of complex professional procedures.

Recently, the psychological point of view that grants the body a more significant role in cognition has also gained attention in artificial intelligence. Proponents of this approach would claim that instead of a ‘mind that works on abstract problems’ we have to deal with and understand ‘a body that needs a mind to make it function’ (Wilson, 2002). These ideas differ quite radically from the traditional approach that describes a cognitive process as an abstract information processing task where the real physical connections to the outside world are of only sub-critical importance, sometimes discarded as mere ‘informational encapsulated plug-ins’ (Fodor, 1983). Thus most theories in cognitive psychology have tried to describe the process of human thinking in terms of propositional knowledge. At the same time, artificial intelligence research has been dominated by methods of abstract symbolic processing, even if researchers often used robotic systems to implement them (Nilsson, 1984). Ignoring sensor-motor influences on cognitive ability is in sharp contrast to research by William James (James, 1890) and others (see (Prinz, 1987) for a review) that describe theories of cognition based on motor acts, or a theory of cognitive function emerging from seminal research on sensor-motor abilities by Jean Piaget (Wilson, 2002) and the theory of affordances by (Gibson, 1977). In the 1980s the linguist Lakoff and the philosopher Johnson (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) put forward the idea of abstract concepts based on metaphors for bodily, physical concepts; around the same time, Brooks (Brooks, 1986) made a major impact on artificial intelligence research by his concepts of behavior based robotics and interaction with the environment without internal representation instead of the sensereason-act cycle. This approach has gained wide attention ever since and there appears to be a growing sense of commitment to the idea that cognitive ability in a system (natural or artificial) has to be studied in the context of its relation to a ‘kinematically competent’ physical body. Among the most competent (in a multi functional sense) physical bodies around are certainly humans, so the study of humanoid robots appears to be a promising field for

What must be the case for an autonomous belief condition on knowledge (motivated in Chapter 1) to be satisfied by a knower? Chapter 2 takes up this question by investigating whether or not the knowledge-relevant (viz., epistemic) autonomy of a belief is determined entirely by the subject’s present mental structure. What I’ll call ‘internalists’ about epistemically autonomous belief say ‘yes’, and externalists say ‘no.’ Internalism about epistemic autonomous belief turns out to be problematic for reasons entirely independent from those we might have for rejecting internalist approaches to epistemically justified belief. What is shown to fare much better is a kind of ‘history-sensitive’ externalist approach to epistemically autonomous belief. On the particular account I go in for, which draws from externalist thinking about attitudinal autonomy more generally (as well as from virtue epistemology), a belief lacks the kind of epistemic autonomy that’s needed for propositional knowledge if the subject comes to possess the belief in a way that (put simply) bypasses or pre-empts the subject’s cognitive abilities and is such that the subject lacks easy (enough) opportunities to competently shed that belief.