Group Inquiry

Group agents can act, they can have knowledge. How should we understand the species of collective action which aims at knowledge? In this paper, I present an account of group inquiry. This account faces two challenges: making sense of how large-scale distributed activities might be a kind of group action, and understanding the division of labour involved in group inquiry. In the first part of the paper, I argue that existing accounts of group action face problems dealing with large-scale group actions, and propose a minimal alternative account. In the second part of the paper, I draw on an analogy between inquiry and conversation, arguing that work by Robert Stalnaker and Craige Roberts helps us to think about the division of epistemic labour. In the final part of the paper I put the accounts of group action and inquiry together, and consider how to think about group knowledge, deep ignorance, and the different kinds of division of labour

Knowledge-how: Interrogatives and Free Relatives

It has been widely accepted since Stanley and Williamson (2001) that the only linguistically acceptable semantic treatments for sentences of the form ‘S knows how to V’ involve treating the wh-complement ‘how to V’ as an interrogative phrase, denoting a set of propositions. Recently a number of authors have suggested that the ‘how to V’ phrase denotes not a proposition, but an object. This view points toward a prima facie plausible non-propositional semantics for knowledge-how, which treats ‘how to V’ as a free relative noun phrase. In this paper I argue that the free relative semantics is implausible. I show that linguistic phenomena which seem to support a free relative semantics can be explained by the supporter of an interrogative semantics, and demonstrate that standard linguistic tests strongly suggest that ‘how to V’ has an interrogative reading, and no free relative reading

Group Knowledge, Questions, and the Division of Epistemic Labour

Discussions of group knowledge typically focus on whether a group’s knowledge that p reduces to group members’ knowledge that p. Drawing on the cumulative reading of collective knowledge ascriptions and considerations about the importance of the division of epistemic labour, I argue what I call the Fragmented Knowledge account, which allows for more complex relations between individual and collective knowledge. According to this account, a group can know an answer to a question in virtue of members of the group knowing parts of that answer, when the whole answer is available to group-level action. I argue that this account explains a swathe of central cases of group knowledge, as well as explaining some central features of group knowledge

Knowing How to φ and Philosophical Methodology

The question of the nature of knowledge-how is philosophically puzzling, because alongside the substantive disagreement about whether knowledge-how is a kind of propositional knowledge or not, there is methodological disagreement about how to answer this question. Since it would be undesirable for this debate to disintegrate into a methodological stand-off, in which opposing sides of the question could not agree on how to resolve the issue, it is important to take stock of the methodologies which are in play in the debate, and consider how to reconcile them. This is my project in this thesis. To achieve this aim I will consider the use of results from linguistics to argue that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that, and the use of counterexamples against the view that it is not. I will argue that neither source of evidence is philosophically decisive. The appeal to linguistics relies on various controversial philosophical theses, and ignores relevant philosophical issues. Using counterexamples to show that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that is problematic; firstly because there are several distinct positions which contend that knowledge-how is not a kind of knowledge-that, and secondly because counterexamples are not the final word, dialectically speaking, on any analysis. I will not attempt to argue that these sources of evidence are irrelevant, but that they are useful tools only when used alongside other considerations, especially from the philosophy of mind. In order to show how considerations from the philosophy of mind can be relevant to inquiry into the nature of knowledge-how, I will consider the connection of knowledge-how to intentional action, and argue that this offers a picture of knowing how which can be used to assess accounts of knowledge how

Knowing-how, showing, and epistemic norms

In this paper I consider the prospects for an epistemic norm which relates knowledge-how to showing in a way that parallels the knowledge norm of assertion. In the first part of the paper I show that this epistemic norm can be motivated by conversational evidence, and that it fits in with a plausible picture of the function of knowledge. In the second part of the paper I present a dilemma for this norm. If we understand showing in a broad sense as a general kind of skill teaching, then the norm faces counterexamples of teachers who know how to teach, but not to do. On the other hand, it we understand showing more narrowly as involving only teaching by doing the relevant activity, then the data which initially supported the norm can be explained away by more general connections between knowledge-how and intentional action.</p

What's the Point of Authors?

Who should be the author(s) of an academic paper? This question is becoming increasingly pressing, due to the increasing prevalence and scale of scientific collaboration, and the corresponding diversity of authorship practices in different disciplines and subdisciplines. This paper addresses the conceptual issues underlying authorship, with an eye to ameliorating authorship practices. The first part of the paper distinguishes five roles played by authorship attributions: allocating credit, constructing a speaker, enabling credibility judgements, supporting accountability, and creating an intellectual marketplace. The second part of the paper argues that distinguishing these functions helps us see that at least some of the confusions around authorship are due to tensions between these functions. The final part of the paper suggests a way to resolve these conceptual confusions, which we will call the CSWG proposal. This proposal suggests replacing authorship with a bundle of roles tailored to the functions of authorship—contributor, spokesperson, writer, and guarantor—which can be distributed in a number of different ways

Knowledge-how : linguistic and philosophical considerations

This thesis concerns the nature of knowledge-how, in particular the question of how we ought to combine philosophical and linguistic considerations to understand what it is to know how to do something. Part 1 concerns the significance of linguistic evidence. In chapter 1, I consider the range of linguistic arguments that have been used in favour of the Intellectualist claim that knowledge-how is a species of propositional knowledge. Chapter 2 considers the idea that sentences of the form ‘S knows how to V’ involve a free relative complement, and the relation between this claim and the Objectualist claim that knowledge-how is a kind of objectual knowledge. Chapter 3 argues that Intellectualism about knowledge-how faces a problem of generality in accounting for the kinds of propositions that are known in knowledge-how, which is analogous to the generality problem for Reliabilism. Part 2 turns to philosophical considerations, offering an extended inquiry into the point of thinking and talking about knowledge-how. Chapter 4 considers why we should want to work with a concept of knowledge, isolating two hypotheses: i) that thinking and talking about knowledge-how helps us to pool skills, and ii) that thinking and talking about knowledge-how helps us to engage in responsible practices of co-operation. Chapter 5 criticises the former hypothesis by arguing against the suggestion that there is a knowledge-how norm on teaching. Chapter 6 offers an indirect argument for the latter hypothesis, arguing for a knowledge-how norm on intending. Part 3, which consists of chapter 7, offers a positive account of knowledge-how which takes into account both philosophical and linguistic considerations. According to what I will call the Interrogative Capacity view, knowing how to do something consists in a certain kind of ability to answer the question of how to do it

Towards a Critical Social Epistemology for Social Media

What are the proper epistemic aims of social media sites? A great deal of social media critique is in the grips of an Epistemic Apocalypse narrative, which claims that the technologies associated with social media have catastrophically undermined our traditional knowledge-generating practices, and that the remedy is to recreate our pre-catastrophe practices as closely as possible. This narrative relies on a number of questionable assumptions, and problematically narrows the imaginative possibilities for redesigning social media. Our goal in this paper is to shake off the epistemic apocalypse narrative and offer a better account of the epistemic aims of social media. I will pursue a critical approach to social epistemology that appreciates the non-ideal features of epistemic systems, and the ways in which knowledge production can be a site of domination, and apply this framework to thinking about the epistemic design of social media sites. I will argue that social systems ought to pursue three distinct epistemic goals: promoting good epistemic outcomes for users, realising epistemically good institutional features, and achieving structural epistemic justice. Although these goals are often mutually supportive, I will consider a number of cases in which these values lead to dilemmas about how to design epistemic institutions, which can only be resolved by appealing to ethical considerations. I will close by considering some ways in which social media might realise these aims

Thinking Together: Advising as Collaborative Deliberation

We spend a good deal of time thinking about advising, but philosophical discussions of advising have been scattered and somewhat disconnected. The most focused discussion has come from philosophers of language interested in whether advising is a kind of assertive or directive speech act. This paper argues that the ordinary category of advising is much more heterogenous than has been appreciated: it is possible to advising by asserting relevant facts, by issuing directives, and by asking questions and other kinds of adviceless advising. The heterogeneity of advising makes speech act-theoretic accounts of advising look like accounts of special cases, and motivates us to look elsewhere for an account of what advising is. Instead, I suggest that we think about advising as a kind of joint practical thinking--collaborative deliberation--, which answers to our need to pool various kinds of deliberative resources