Abstract:What is knowledge? What should knowledge be like? Call an epistemological project that sets out to answer the first question 'descriptive' and a project that sets out to answer the second question 'normative'. If the answers to these two questions don't coincide -if what knowledge should be like differs from what knowledge is like -there is room for a third project we call 'revisionary'. A revisionary project starts by arguing that what knowledge should be differs from what knowledge is. It then proposes that … Show more
“…For instance, Scharp (2013) gives a book-length defense of the view that our concept of 'truth' is inconsistent in the way described above, thus giving rise to the famous liar paradox. Similarly, Fassio and McKenna (2015) argue that our concept of knowledge incorporates inconsistent platitudes, resulting in indeterminate application conditions. Griffiths et al (2009) provide empirical data indicating that people's concept of innateness disposes them to draw various invalid inferences between the universality, the plasticity, and the function of a trait.…”
Section: The Conceptual Engineer's Rationalementioning
Max Deutsch (in: Philosophical studies, online-first. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01416-z, 2020) has recently argued that conceptual engineering is stuck in a dilemma. If it is construed as the activity of revising the semantic meanings of existing terms, then it faces an unsurmountable implementation problem. If, on the other hand, it is construed as the activity of introducing new technical terms, then it becomes trivial. According to Deutsch, this conclusion need not worry us, however, for conceptual engineering is ill-motivated to begin with. This paper responds to Deutsch by arguing, first, that there is a third construal of conceptual engineering, neglected by him, which renders it both implementable and non-trivial, and second, that even the more ambitious project of changing semantic meanings is no less feasible than other normative projects we currently pursue. Lastly, the value of conceptual engineering is defended against Deutsch’s objections.
“…For instance, Scharp (2013) gives a book-length defense of the view that our concept of 'truth' is inconsistent in the way described above, thus giving rise to the famous liar paradox. Similarly, Fassio and McKenna (2015) argue that our concept of knowledge incorporates inconsistent platitudes, resulting in indeterminate application conditions. Griffiths et al (2009) provide empirical data indicating that people's concept of innateness disposes them to draw various invalid inferences between the universality, the plasticity, and the function of a trait.…”
Section: The Conceptual Engineer's Rationalementioning
Max Deutsch (in: Philosophical studies, online-first. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01416-z, 2020) has recently argued that conceptual engineering is stuck in a dilemma. If it is construed as the activity of revising the semantic meanings of existing terms, then it faces an unsurmountable implementation problem. If, on the other hand, it is construed as the activity of introducing new technical terms, then it becomes trivial. According to Deutsch, this conclusion need not worry us, however, for conceptual engineering is ill-motivated to begin with. This paper responds to Deutsch by arguing, first, that there is a third construal of conceptual engineering, neglected by him, which renders it both implementable and non-trivial, and second, that even the more ambitious project of changing semantic meanings is no less feasible than other normative projects we currently pursue. Lastly, the value of conceptual engineering is defended against Deutsch’s objections.
“…Spicer (2008) and Weiner (2009) take the concept of knowledge to be inconsistent, but neither recommend revision or replacement. Fassio and McKenna (2015), meanwhile, sponsor a mild kind of revisionism for the concept of knowledge. Scharp (2013), meanwhile, comes close to endorsing Happy-Face Conceptual Engineering, but he does not accept that mastery of a concept requires that a subject be (initially) disposed to accept the conceptual principles for that concept.…”
Conceptual engineers often invoke a distinction between happy-face and unhappy-face solutions to alethic paradoxes. Happy-face solutions are thoroughly specific: they isolate a single, basic principle (“the culprit”). Unhappy-face solutions, meanwhile, are thoroughly non-specific: they merely establish the collective guilt of a group of principles which together produce the paradox. According to this taxonomy, conceptual engineering can only take place via unhappy-face solutions. In this chapter, I: (1) give an expanded taxonomy which allows for both Happy-Face and two forms of Unhappy-Face Conceptual Engineering and show that (2) happy-face treatments represent a limit case. (3) Unhappy-face treatments also represent a kind of limit case. (4) Between these limit cases are treatments which are neither maximally specific nor maximally unspecific but nonetheless specific enough to treat a paradox. (5) Such treatments become thoroughly neutralist when they reject some principle at work in a paradox from a theory-neutral perspective. The upshot is Neutralism—the view that philosophical progress can take place when (and sometimes only when) a thoroughly neutral, non-specific theory is adopted.
“…There has been a recent surge of interest in philosophical accounts which appeal to the functions of concepts (Craig, , ; Dogramaci, ; Fassio & McKenna, ; Haslanger, , ; Henderson & Greco, ; Williams, ) . It is common to introduce functional theorising with a programmatic passage from Craig's Knowledge and the State of Nature : Instead of beginning with ordinary usage, we begin with an ordinary situation.…”
Why is it useful to talk and think about knowledge‐how? Using Edward Craig's discussion of the function of the concepts of knowledge as a jumping off point, this paper argues that considering this question can offer us new angles on the debate about knowledge‐how. We consider two candidate functions for the concept of knowledge‐how: pooling capacities and mutual reliance. Craig makes the case for pooling capacities, which connects knowledge‐how to our need to pool practical capacities. I argue that the evidence is much more equivocal and in fact supports both functions. I propose that the concept of knowledge‐how plays both functions, meaning that it is inconsistent and that the debate about knowledge‐how is at least partly a metalinguistic negotiation. In closing, I suggest a way to revise the philosophical concept of knowledge how.
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