Knowledge and Action (original) (raw)
2008, Journal of Philosophy
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Rational action without knowledge (and vice versa)
It has been argued recently that knowledge is the norm of practical reasoning. This norm can be formulated as a bi-conditional: it is appropriate to treat p as a reason for acting if and only if you know that p. Other proposals replace knowledge with warranted or justified belief. This paper gives counterexamples of both directions of any such bi-conditional. To the left-to-right direction: scientists can appropriately treat as reasons for action propositions of a theory they believe to be false but good approximations to the truth for present purposes. Cases based on a variant of Pascal's Wager and actions performed by a skeptic also illustrate the point. To the right-to-left direction: in certain circumstances, it can be unreasonable for a scientist to reason from propositions of a theory she knows to be true.
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Knowledge and Rational Desirability
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The pursuit of knowledge is something that philosophers are most notably associated with. But this concept of knowledge that is so sought after by philosophers is a difficult one to grasp. For instance, what is knowledge if it is more than a justified true belief? Are there necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge? The difficulty in finding a satisfactory theory for knowledge has led to the development of theories concerning knowledge that posit conditions on knowledge that are impossible to meet. I argue that given the strict criteria for knowledge, we are better off having strongly justified beliefs. Additionally, I argue that the desire for arriving at knowledge is highly irrational. Although desires are typically thought to be arational, I argue that desires, once broken down to their propositional content, can be evaluated on a true or false basis.
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