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This paper critically examines Timothy Williamson’s claim that knowledge figures essentially in explanations of behavior. Since this claim implies that knowledge is causally efficacious in bringing about actions, it plays a key role in Williamson’s case for knowledge being a mental state. I first discuss a central example of Williamson, in which a burglar ransacks a house. I dispute Williamson’s claim that the best explanation of the burglar’s behavior invokes the burglar’s state of knowledge as he enters the house, by arguing that there is a better explanation that only mentions the burglar’s beliefs. Since the reasons that explain the superiority of my proposed explanation generalize, I conclude that one does not have to invoke a subject’s state of knowledge to explain behavior. Nevertheless, Williamson’s explanation is superior to belief-based explanations if one only considers facts that obtain before the action takes place. In the final part of the paper, I argue that this fact does not help Williamson’s case for considering knowledge as a mental state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is knowledge-how, or “practical” knowledge, a species of knowledge-that, or “theoretical” knowledge? There is no comfortable position to take in the debate around this question. On the one hand, there are counterexamples against the anti-intellectualist thesis that practical knowledge is best analysed as an ability. They show that having an ability to ϕ is not necessary for knowing how to ϕ. On the other hand, the intellectualist analysis of practical knowledge as a subspecies of theoretical knowledge is threatened by its own set of counterexamples, which convincingly establish that practical knowledge lacks many of the typical characteristics of theoretical knowledge. Most strikingly it does not even appear to require a belief. In this paper, I develop an account of practical knowledge that avoids these counterexamples. It also manages to preserve both the status of such knowledge as a cognitive achievement and its apparently close conceptual relation to abilities. I start with the counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge and show that they fail because they underestimate the cognitive demands of attempts. I then make use of the logic of dispositions to bridge the gap that counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge open. It is argued that, instead of the ability to ϕ, it is a specific disposition to have the ability to ϕ that constitutes practical knowledge about ϕ. The resulting theory is an anti-intellectualist position that preserves essential intellectualist motivations and thus should be satisfactory for proponents of both views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is considerable agreement among epistemologists that certain abilities are constitutive of understanding-why. These abilities include: constructing explanations, drawing conclusions, and answering questions. This agreement has led epistemologists to conclude that understanding is a kind of know-how. However, in this paper, I argue that the abilities constitutive of understanding are the same kind of cognitive abilities that we find in ordinary cases of knowledge-that and not the kind of practical abilities associated with know-how. I argue for this by disambiguating between different senses of abilities that are too often lumped together. As a consequence, non-reductionists about understanding-those that claim that understanding-why is not reducible to knowledge-that-need to find another way to motivate the view. In the end, the fact that abilities are constitutive of understanding-why does not give us reason to conclude that understanding is a kind of know-how. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a possible worlds theory of the content of pictures, with three complications: depictive content is centred, two-dimensional and structured. The paper argues that this theory supports a strong analogy between depictive and other kinds of representation and the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to cast some light on the circumstances in which one's finding something just obvious is an epistemically acceptable belief-state, perhaps a state of knowledge, even when the believer is unable to justify the belief. Using Peacocke's theory of concepts, I will argue that the relevant belief-state can result from the activation of reliable belief-forming dispositions which are due to the possession of certain concepts. The strategy is to concentrate on belief in a simple truth of Euclidean plane geometry and then to consider general implications. The layout of this paper between introduction and conclusion is as follows. Sections 2 and 3 set out the conceptual apparatus; section 4 uses the apparatus to explain the belief; section 5 concerns the epistemic appraisal of the belief; section 6 addresses the main Quinean objection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybrid accounts of folk psychology maintain that we sometimes theorize and sometimes simulate in order to understand others. An important question is why this is the case. In this paper, I present a view according to which simulation, but not theory, plays a central role in empathy. In contrast to others taking a similar approach to simulation, I do not focus on empathy’s cognitive aspect, but stress its affective-motivational one. Simulating others’ emotions usually engages our motivations altruistically. By vicariously feeling what others are feeling, we directly come to be motivated by their projects and concerns. Simulation contrasts with more theoretical approaches to psychological attribution that help us understand and explan others, but that do not move us altruistically. This helps us see why we would posit two different folk psychological approaches instead of merely one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will discuss Kim’s powerful explanatory exclusion argument against the causal efficacy of mental properties. Baker and Burge misconstrue Kim’s challenge if they understand it as being based on a purely metaphysical understanding of causation that has no grounding in an epistemological analysis of our successful scientific practices. As I will show, the emphasis on explanatory practices can only be effective in answering Kim if it is understood as being part of the dual-explanandum strategy. Furthermore, a fundamental problem of the contemporary debate about mental causation consists in the fact that all sides take very different examples to be paradigmatic for the relation between psychological and neurobiological explanations. Even if we should expect some alignment in the explanatory scope of neurobiology and psychology/folk-psychology, there is no reason to expect that all mental explanations are exempted by physical explanations, since they do not in general explain the same phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of Williamson's main contentions in his book is that knowing is a mental state. Knowing, however, is not a luminous condition, as many mental states seem to be, since one can know without being in a position to know that one knows. Williamson recognizes this fact but contends that it should not discourage one from accepting that knowing is a mental state, for, according to Williamson, even a mental state as seemingly luminous as feeling cold can be shown to be non-luminous. In this paper, we argue that a key premise in Williamson's anti-luminosity argument about feeling cold is problematic in virtue of the dubious epistemological ideas that underlie the premise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attractive admirer of George Bernard Shaw once wrote to him with a not-so modest proposal: ``You have the greatest brain in the world, and I have the most beautiful body; so we ought to produce the most perfect child.'' Shaw replied: ``What if the child inherits my body and your brains?'' What if, indeed? Shaw's retort is interesting not because it reveals a grasp of elementary genetics, but rather because it suggests his grasp of an interesting and important principle of axiology. Since the brainy but ugly Shaw and his beautiful but apparently dim admirer both fall short of the ideal, she suggests that the best thing would be to genetically recombine his intelligence with her beauty. But what then would be the value of another genetic possibility: that of recombining his ugliness with her stupidity? Underlining the prompted inference is a fundamental principle of the theory of value which, perhaps surprisingly, has so far gone largely unnoticed in the ethical literature. I will call it the principle of recombinant values. It is the purpose of this paper to formulate the principle in a way which makes its content obvious and accessible; to motivate the principle philosophically; to both disentangle it from, and exhibit its relations to, principles of evaluative reasoning; to show how this purely qualitative principle meshes with the infamous thesis of additivity of value; and finally, to use it to ground a rather simple but quite general theory of the intrinsic value of states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents pain as mental object. It explicitly defends the thesis that pain is a mental object, and it is a major goal of this paper to dispute this view, and argue that pain is more accurately described adverbially as the way that one perceive or sense something, rather than something we perceive or sense. Furthermore the author believe that the mental object view of pain is the source of other problems and disputes in this area. Perhaps to clearly establish the difference between the connate and the alien accusative it would help to consider some other similar cases.