Abstract
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.
Highlights
Background and OverviewTwo epistemic standings that are the topic of increasing interest in contemporary epistemology are knowledge-how and understanding-why.1 There is an important point of connection between these two debates: each debate is marked by a divide between what we can call reductivism and non-reductivism, where the former camp insists that the epistemic standing in question is just a kind of propositional knowledge, and the latter camp denies this claim.2In the case of knowledge-how, the central contemporary dividing line is between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism
Knowledge-how in a way that runs contrary to what should be expected if either of the reductive proposals is correct. In summary, that those with selfreported philosophical training regarded propositional knowledge to be more susceptible to being undermined by the presence of epistemic luck than did those without such selfreported training,17 whereas, by contrast, those with self-reported philosophical training regarded knowledge-how and understanding-why to be less susceptible to being undermined by the presence of epistemic luck than those without self-reported philosophical training
The second kind of ‘outlier’ case with respect to the more general trend of results we found concerned a subset of those with self-reported philosophical training—those with self-reported high degrees of epistemological training—who regarded knowledge-that to be incompatible with epistemic luck and took understanding-why to be incompatible with epistemic luck
Summary
Two epistemic standings that are the topic of increasing interest in contemporary epistemology are knowledge-how and understanding-why. There is an important point of connection between these two debates: each debate is marked by a divide between what we can call reductivism and non-reductivism, where the former camp insists that the epistemic standing in question is just a kind of propositional knowledge, and the latter camp denies this claim.. In the main, an interesting disparity in judgments between those with self-reported philosophical training as opposed to those without Those with no self-reported philosophical training don’t respond to the presence of epistemic luck (in comparison with control cases with no luck present) in a way that suggest that they hold that it undermines knowledge-how, understanding-why, or even knowledge-that.. Those with no self-reported philosophical training don’t respond to the presence of epistemic luck (in comparison with control cases with no luck present) in a way that suggest that they hold that it undermines knowledge-how, understanding-why, or even knowledge-that.15 Those with no self-reported philosophical training attribute knowledge, understanding-why and knowledge-how in a way that is broadly consistent with the hypotheses which both of the two reductivist accounts under consideration would predict, respectively.. Of the 448 remaining participants, 293 were male, and the average age was 35.3
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