Practical Reasoning and the Concept of Knowledge

Abstract

AbstractHawthorne has argued for subject-sensitive invariantism, on which whether a speaker knows that p depends on whether her practical environment makes it appropriate for her to use p in practical reasoning. It may seem that this view yields a straightforward account of why knowledge is epistemically valuable, based on the role of knowledge in practical reasoning. In this chapter it is argued that, on the contrary, practical reasoning does not motivate us to care about knowledge in itself. At best, practical reasoning motivates us to care about several other concepts in themselves, and ascriptions of knowledge provide economical summaries of these independently epistemically valuable desiderata.