"I Do What Happens": The Productive Character of Practical Knowledge (original) (raw)

On Anscombe on Practical Knowledge and Practical Truth

R. Teichmann ed,. The Oxford Handbook of Elizabeth Anscombe, 2023

A central idea in Anscombe's philosophy of action is that of practical knowledge, the formally distinctive knowledge a person has of what she is intentionally doing. Anscombe also discusses 'practical truth', an idea she borrows from Aristotle, and which on her interpretation is a kind of truth whose bearer is not thought or language, but action. What is the relationship between practical knowledge and practical truth? What we might call the 'Simple View' of this relationship holds that practical knowledge is essentially knowledge of practical truth. But the Simple View isn't obviously available, since we have practical knowledge of all of our intentional actions, whereas an action manifests practical truth in Aristotle's sense only if it is a case of doing or living well. I suggest that we distinguish a thicker ethical version and a thinner action-theoretical version of each notion. This allows us to maintain a - complex - version of the Simple View, on which practical knowledge in the thick ethical sense is knowledge of practical truth in the thick ethical sense, and practical knowledge in the thin action-theoretical sense is knowledge of practical truth in the thin action-theoretical sense. Although Anscombe did not make these distinctions explicitly, I argue that she nevertheless commits herself to them in her discussion.

Anscombe on Practical Knowledge and the Good

Ergo , 2019

This paper addresses how Elizabeth Anscombe understands the link between action theory and ethics, by focusing on her theory of practical knowledge. I argue that, for Anscombe, a capacity for practical knowledge is best understood as a capacity to do things for reasons, where reasons are the ends pursued by the agent as practically intelligible goods; on this view, knowing what one is doing and knowing the intended good of doing it are two different aspects of one and the same practical knowledge. On my reading of Anscombe, the central task of action theory is to elucidate this capacity for practical knowledge, which is exercised anytime one acts in the characteristically human way (intentionally or voluntarily). The proper task of ethics, by contrast, is to elucidate the perfected exercise of this power in the practically wise or virtuous person—i.e., the one who is properly disposed to act for the right reasons and thus lives well.

An Epistemology for Practical Knowledge

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2018

Anscombe thought that practical knowledge – a person's knowledge of her own intentional action – displays formal differences to ordinary, or 'speculative' knowledge. I suggest these differences rest on thinking of practical knowledge as involving intention analogously to how speculative knowledge involves belief. But this claim conflicts with the standard conception of knowledge, according to which knowledge is an inherently belief-involving phenomenon. Building on John Hyman's (1999, 2015) account of knowledge as the ability to use a fact as a reason, I develop an alternative, two-tier, epistemology which allows that knowledge might really come in a belief-involving and an intention-involving form.

The Content of Practical Knowledge

Journal of Human Cognition, 2021

This paper aims to give a charitable and comprehensible interpretation of the concept of practical knowledge in Intention, G. E. M. Anscombe's famous monograph. In particular, it focuses on her claim that practical knowledge is present even if the agent fails to execute his intention. I argue that (1) a rejection of this claim is unacceptable, and that (2) the content of practical knowledge should be formulated as "I am X-ing", with which this concept can be coherently interpreted.

Is There Hope for a Disjunctive Conception of Practical Knowledge

John McDowell has recently suggested that a disjunctive theory is a natural solution to certain difficulties which arise for an Anscombean conception of practical knowledge, and which Anscombe herself only began to deal with. In this essay, I characterize the problem and consider the options for a disjunctivist solution. I argue that whatever its merits in the context of perceptual knowledge or elsewhere, disjunctivism is a bad fit for practical knowledge.

Practical Knowledge and Perception

"Theories of Action and Morality"

In this paper I examine the relation between intentional action and morality from the perspective of practical epistemology. In other words I study the relation between knowledge of one’s own intentional actions (knowledge in action) and knowledge of what is good to do or what one ought to do in particular circumstances (knowledge in the circumstances). If practical knowledge in the former sense (knowledge in action) and practical knowledge in the latter sense (knowledge in the circumstances) turn out to constitute exercises of one and the same capacity for knowledge, as I will argue they do, this will give us strong reason to believe that what is known in the two cases (i.e. intentional action and the moral fabric of the world) is in some sense the same. In examining the relation between practical knowledge of one’s own intentional actions and practical knowledge of what is good to do I draw from two traditions of thought on practical epistemology. The first is the tradition of Anscombe’s conception of knowledge in action and the second is the tradition of Murdoch’s conception of knowledge in the circumstances. What is striking about these traditions is that they tend to understand practical knowledge by reference to the possible involvement therein of perception. Thus Anscombe claims in her Intention[1] that knowledge in action is specified as knowledge without observation; a claim to the effect that the epistemological status of knowledge in action is determined by reference to the lack of a certain sort of involvement therein of perception. And Iris Murdoch in her Sovereignty of the Good[2] proposes that what makes knowledge in the circumstances knowledge is a form of sensitivity to particular features or aspects of the circumstances in which the agent finds herself. Thus, for Murdoch, knowledge in the circumstances owes its status as knowledge to the capacity of the agent to perceive what she ought to do in particular circumstances. In this paper I will argue that both of these forms of knowledge are instances of the exercise of one and the same capacity for knowledge. But the question now arises. How can we both claim that the two forms of practical knowledge are instances of the exercise of one and the same capacity for knowledge and that perception plays such a diverse role in their epistemological grounding? In the main body of this paper I will show how to interpret the Murdochian and the Anscombean claims so as to provide the materials with which we can answer this question. If the argument of this paper works, it will transpire that both of these forms of knowledge are instances of the exercise of our capacity for self-knowledge. This account of practical knowledge opens the way for understanding intentional action and the moral fabric of the world as knowable as the self. And it is thus that what is known in the two forms of knowing (i.e. intentional action and the moral fabric of the world) is in some sense the same. [1] Anscombe, 1957. [2] Murdoch, 1970.

Practical Knowledge and the Structural Challenge

Mind, 2024

Philosophers of action increasingly take seriously the idea, associated most prominently with Elizabeth Anscombe, that a person's 'practical knowledge' is a distinctive form of knowledge, and that its distinctiveness is connected to the fact that a person's practical knowledge is somehow embodied in her intention. Accepting this suggestion requires rejecting the orthodox conception of knowledge as having one’s propositional thinking match how the world is. But even once this is done, there remains a challenge for an intention-based account of practical knowledge. For while practical knowledge is a kind of propositional knowledge, there are good reasons to think that intentions are non-propositional attitudes. I call this the 'Structural Challenge' for an intention-based account of practical knowledge. This paper introduces the Structural Challenge, and offers a solution. I develop an account on which in practical knowledge, one is mentally related to the fact that one is φ-ing, by constituting the fact that one is φ-ing through a successful practical exercise of one's conceptual capacities. Practical knowledge is 'propositional' in virtue of being a relation to a fact. This relation is embodied in having and carrying out one's intentions, which are themselves understood as non-propositional attitudes. I argue that responding in this way to the Structural Challenge affords important insight into what is distinctive about practical knowledge. I close by arguing that this approach to understanding practical knowledge's distinctiveness improves on an alternative approach defended by Kim Frost.

The Epistemology of Practical Knowledge

The Structures of Practical Knowledge, ed. by M. Valleriani, 2017

The relation between practical and theoretical knowledge, which is usually perceived as one of the motors of scientific development in the early modern period, is redefined here as the relation between different structures of knowledge, where the qualitative difference between the different structures is specified according to the degree of abstraction and the range of connections between the different fields of knowledge. The investigation begins by identifying practical knowledge and the continuous process of its reorganization into new structures. In this way, the research aims to understand how the transfer of practical activities transitioned to a circulation of practical literature and, finally, how codified practical knowledge became part of the theoretical and conceptual structures that were being established during the early modern period. As an introduction to the entire volume, a heuristic diversification of knowledge production mechanisms is defined on three levels: (1) the knowledge structure of practical activities; (2) the social structuring of practical knowledge; and (3) the conceptual structures of knowledge. The subsequent chapters are discussed and introduced according to these definitions.