Research

Books

Forthcoming (2024). Knowing What it is Like. To appear with Cambridge University Press (for the Cambridge Elements series in Epistemology ed. by Stephen Hetherington)

Articles and Book Chapters

Social Epistemology and Knowing-How (forthcoming 2024). Jennifer Lackey & Aidan McGlynn (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Social Epistemology, Oxford University Press (forthcoming).

• Abstract: This chapter examines some key developments in discussions of the social dimensions of knowing-how, focusing on work on the social function of the concept of knowing-how, testimony, demonstrating one's knowledge to other people, and epistemic injustice. I show how a conception of knowing-how as a form of 'downstream knowledge' can help to unify various phenomena discussed within this literature, and I also consider how these ideas might connect with issues concerning wisdom, moral knowledge, and moral testimony. 

Knowing what it is like the three "Rs" (2024). Íngrid Vendrell-Ferran & Christiana Werner (eds.), Imagination and Experience: Philosophical Explorations, Routledge.

• Abstract: There is an intimate relationship between our experiences and our knowledge of what it is like to have those experiences. For having an experience of Φ-ing is clearly an important way of coming to know what it is Φ, and some philosophers have even suggested that it is the only way of coming to possess such knowledge. But despite this intimate connection, we often possess WIL-knowledge after any generating experience has ended. How is this possible? One popular suggestion, roughly following David Lewis, is that one retains knowledge of what it is like to Φ in virtue of retaining abilities to imagine, remember, and recognise experiences of Φ-ing. In this chapter, my aim is to clarify and update this retention hypothesis, by showing how it is independent from Lewis’ ability hypothesis (according to which WIL-knowledge is identified with these abilities), and by identifying and resolving certain ambiguities involved in interpreting Lewis’ three ability conditions, especially the ability to imagine condition. I also explore issues concerning the relative priority of these three conditions, and I argue that there is a good sense in which the ability to imagine condition is the most important of these conditions with respect to how we conceptualise and ascribe WIL-knowledge.

Expanding the Client's Perspective (2023). The Philosophical Quarterly (Advance and open access: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqad032)

• Abstract: Hawley introduced the idea of the client's perspective on knowledge, which she used to illuminate knowing-how and cases of epistemic injustice involving knowing-how. In this paper, I explore how Hawley's idea might be used to illuminate not only knowing-how, but other forms of knowledge that, like knowing-how, are often claimed to be distinct from mere knowing-that, focusing on the case studies of moral understanding and ‘what it is like’-knowledge.

Transformative Experiences and the Equivocation Objection (2022). Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (Online first: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0020174X.2022.2107063) 

• Abstract: Paul (2014, 2015a) argues that one cannot rationally decide whether to have a transformative experience by trying to form judgments, in advance, about (i) what it would feel like to have that experience, and (ii) the subjective value of having such an experience. The problem is if you haven’t had the experience then you cannot know what it is like, and you need to know what it is like to assess its value. However, in earlier work I argued that ‘what it is like’-knowledge comes in degrees, and I briefly suggested that, consequently, some instances of Paul’s argument schema might commit a fallacy of equivocation. The aim of this paper is to further explore and strengthen this objection by, first, offering a new argument—the modelling argument—in support of it, and then by evaluating a range of replies that might be given to this objection on Paul’s behalf. I conclude that each reply either fails or, at best, only partially succeeds in defending some but not all instances of Paul’s argument schema. In closing, I consider how we might revise Paul’s concepts of transformative experiences and choices in response to this conclusion. 

Know-How and Skill: The Puzzles of Priority and Equivalence (2020). E. Fridland and C. Pavese (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Skill and Expertise. Routledge.

• Abstract: This chapter explores the relationship between knowing-how and skill, as well as other success-in-action notions like dispositions and abilities. I offer a new view of knowledge-how on which knowing how to perform an action is both a kind of knowing-that (in accord with intellectualist views of knowing-how) and a complex multi-track dispositional state (in accord with Ryle’s view of knowing-how). I argue that this new view—which I call practical attitude intellectualism—offers an attractive set of solutions to various puzzles concerning the connections between knowing-how and abilities and skills to perform intentional actions.    

Seumas Miller on Knowing-How and Joint Abilities (2020). Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 9 (12): 14–21

• Abstract: A critical discussion of Seumas Miller's views on knowing-how and joint abilities.

Knowing How.  Analysis  1–17 (2019) [Online first: DOI: 10.1093/analys/anz027 ] 

• Abstract: An overview of the knowing-how debates over the last ten years.

Knowing What It Is Like and Testimony.  Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1–16 (2018) [Online first: DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2018.1433697]

• Abstract: It is often said that ‘what it is like’-knowledge cannot be acquired by consulting testimony or reading books [Lewis 1998; Paul 2014; 2015a]. However, people also routinely consult books like What It Is Like to Go to War [Marlantes 2014], and countless ‘what it is like’ articles and youtube videos, in the apparent hope of gaining knowledge about what it is like to have experiences they have not had themselves. This article examines this puzzle and tries to solve it by appealing to recent work on knowing-wh ascriptions. In closing I indicate the wider significance of these ideas by showing how they can help us to evaluate prominent arguments by Paul [2014; 2015a] concerning transformative experiences.

Intellectualism and Testimony. Analysis 77 (2): 259–266 (2017) 

• Abstract: Knowledge-how often appears to be more difficult to transmit by testimony than knowledge-that and knowledge-wh. Some philosophers have argued that this difference provides us with an important objection to intellectualism—the view that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that. This article defends intellectualism against these testimony-based objections.

Reflective Equilibrium. H. Cappelen and T. Gendler (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, Oxford University Press (2016).

• Abstract: This article examines the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) and its role in philosophical inquiry. It begins with an overview of RE before discussing some of the subtleties involved in its interpretation, including challenges to the standard assumption that RE is a form of coherentism. It then evaluates some of the main objections to RE, in particular, the criticism that this method generates unreasonable beliefs. It concludes by considering how RE relates to recent debates about the role of intuitions in philosophy.

Revisionary Intellectualism and Gettier. Philosophical Studies (2015) 172 (1): 7–27 

• • Abstract: How should intellectualists respond to apparent Gettier-style counterexamples? Stanley (2011a, Ch. 8) offers an orthodox response which rejects the claim that the subjects in such scenarios possess knowledge-how. I argue that intellectualists should embrace a revisionary response according to which knowledge-how is a distinctively practical species of knowledge-that that is compatible with Gettier-style luck.

Knowing How and 'Knowing How'. C. Daly (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods, Palgrave Macmillan (2015).

• Abstract: What is the relationship between the linguistic properties of knowledge-how ascriptions and the nature of knowledge-how itself? In this chapter I address this question by examining the linguistic methodology of Stanley and Williamson (2011) and Stanley (2011a, 2011b) who defend the intellectualist view that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. My evaluation of this methodology is mixed. On the one hand, I defend Stanley and Williamson (2011) against critics who argue that the linguistic premises they appeal to—about the syntax and semantics of knowledge-how and knowledge-wh ascriptions—do not establish their desired conclusions about the nature of knowledge-how itself. But, on the other hand, I also criticize the role that linguistic considerations play in Stanley’s (2011a) response to apparent Gettier-style counterexamples to intellectualism. 

Regarding a Regress. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (3): 358–388 (2013)

• Abstract: Intellectualism is the view that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. The most famous objection to this view is Gilbert Ryle’s objection that it must be false on pain of avoiding an infinite and vicious regress. However, despite its fame, the status of this objection is highly contested. The aim of this paper is to clarify and advance the often rather confusing debates about whether there is a successful regress argument against intellectualism. Towards this end, I identify what I take to be the most basic and plausible form of a regress argument against intellectualism—the employment regress. I argue that the employment regress fails and then use this conclusion to help clarify and criticise other regress arguments in the literature.

Evidence and Intuition. Episteme 9(4): 311–328 (2012) 

• Abstract: Many philosophers accept a view—what I will call the intuition picture—according to which intuitions are crucial evidence in philosophy. Recently, Williamson (2004, 2007 Ch, 1) has argued that such views are best abandoned because they lead to apsychologistic conception of philosophical evidence that encourages scepticism about the armchair judgments relied upon in philosophy. In this paper I respond to this criticism by showing how the intuition picture can be formulated in such a way that it is: (I) consistent with a wide range of views about not only philosophical evidence but also the nature of evidence in general, including Williamson's famous view that E=K; (II) can maintain the central claims about the nature and role of intuitions in philosophy made by proponents of the intuition picture; (III) does not collapse into Williamson’s own deflationary view of the nature and role of intuitions in philosophy; and (IV) does not lead to scepticism.

Knowing How Without Knowing That. J. Bengson and M. Moffett (eds.), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action, Oxford University Press (2011).

• Abstract: In this paper I develop three different arguments against the thesis that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. Knowledge-that is widely thought to be subject to an anti-luck condition, a justified or warranted belief condition, and a belief condition, respectively. The arguments I give suggest that if either of these standard assumptions is correct then knowledge-how is not a kind of knowledge-that. In closing I identify a possible alternative to the standard Rylean and Intellectualist accounts of knowledge-how. This alternative shows how even if the arguments given here succeed it might still be reasonable to hold that knowing how to do something is a matter of standing in an intentional relation to a proposition other than the knowledge-that relation.

The Ability Hypothesis and the New Knowledge-how. Noûs Volume 43 (1): 137–56 (2009).

• Abstract: What follows for the ability hypothesis reply to the knowledge argument if knowledge-how is just a form of knowledge-that? The obvious answer is that the ability hypothesis is false. For the ability hypothesis says that, when Mary sees red for the first time, Frank Jackson’s super-scientist gains only knowledge-how and not knowledge-that. In this paper I argue that this obvious answer is wrong: a version of the ability hypothesis might be true even if knowledge-how is a form of knowledge-that. To establish this conclusion I utilize Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson’s well-known account of knowledge-how as “simply a species of propositional knowledge” (Stanley & Williamson 2001: 1). I demonstrate that we can restate the core claims of the ability hypothesis – that Mary only gains new knowledge-how and not knowledge-that – within their account of knowledge-how as a species of knowledge-that. I examine the implications of this result for both critics and proponents of the ability hypothesis.

Other Work

Review of ‘Know-how as Competence: A Rylean Responsibilist Account, by David Löwenstein. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: 1-1. (2019)  [Online first. DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2018.1554688]

Review of Edouard Machery and Elizabeth O’Neil Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. (2015)

Metaphilosophy. in D. Pritchard (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online: Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press. (2011)

• Abstract: Often philosophers have reason to ask fundamental questions about the aims, methods, nature, or value of their own discipline. When philosophers systematically examine such questions, the resulting work is sometimes referred to as “metaphilosophy.” Metaphilosophy, it should be said, is not a well-established, or clearly demarcated, field of philosophical inquiry like epistemology or the philosophy of art. However, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries there has been a great deal of metaphilosophical work on issues concerning the methodology of philosophy in the analytic tradition. This article focuses on that work.