Anscombe thought that practical knowledge – a person’s knowledge of what she is intentionally doing – displays formal differences to ordinary empirical, or ‘speculative’, knowledge. I suggest these differences rest on the fact that practical knowledge involves 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 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.

Purpose This paper aims to explore traditional FM research and potential trends. Design/methodology/approach This was an exploratory review of literature. Findings The main thrust of the argument in this paper is that FM research develops a more communicable and proven understanding of how to apply a wide spectrum of externally developed methods in unique FM settings as well as developing new methods. Second, a more robust FM knowledge base can inform designers, engineers and architects given that FMs are experts of design in use. Research limitations/implications This research focused on the UK, Europe, America and Australia. It does not represent a comprehensive/systematic review of the research activities occurring in FM globally. Practical implications Research traditionally focuses on hard FM; in contrast, FM outcomes are heavily dependent on the way end users interact with and use organisational services and equipment. This suggests that there is a gap between practice and research, and that intuitive and in-depth FM knowledge about end users has yet to be captured and formalised through research. Social implications Development of FM research requires uptake of contemporary research trends towards partnered research, working across disciplines. Originality/value Achieving a more robust FM knowledge base would help capture the wealth of knowledge that FMs have about buildings in use; this could then be used by FMs and also by designers to improve their products and services in disciplines like engineering and architecture.

A widespread view in the philosophy of mind and action holds that intentions are propositional attitudes. Call this view ‘Propositionalism about Intention’. The key alternative holds that intentions have acts, or do-ables, as their contents. Propositionalism is typically accepted by default, rather than argued for in any detail. By appealing to a key metaphysical constraint on any account of intention, I argue that on the contrary, it is the Do-ables View which deserves the status of the default position, and Propositionalism which bears the burden of proof. I go on to show that this burden has not been met in the literature.

Matthew Boyle (2011) has defended an account of doxastic self-knowledge he calls 'Reflectivism'. I distinguish two claims within Reflectivism, A) that believing that p and knowing oneself to believe that p are not two distinct cognitive states, but two aspects of the same cognitive state, and B) that this is because we are in some sense agents in relation to our beliefs. I find claim (A) compelling, but argue that its tenability depends on how we view the metaphysics of knowledge, something Boyle does not consider. I argue that in the context of the standard account of knowledge as a kind of true beliefwhat I call the Belief Account of knowledgethe claim faces serious problems, and that these simply disappear if we instead adopt an Ability Account of knowledge along the lines of that defended by John Hyman (1999, 2015). I find claim (B) less compelling, and a secondary aim of the paper is to suggest that once we reject the Belief Account of knowledge, and move over to an Ability Account, there is no explanatory role for (B) left to play.