Abstract
Philosophical work on practical knowledge typically focuses on its observation- and inference-independent nature, thereby ignoring or taking for granted the exact meaning of the additional Anscombean claim that practical knowledge is the cause of what it understands. In this paper, the author develops what she takes to be the most promising reading of that claim, answers the question of how its formal-causal nature combines with its observation- and inference-independent nature and defends the resulting conception of practical knowledge against one general criticism that is likely to arise but is nevertheless misguided. By doing all this, she hopes to motivate doubts about the claim that there is no need to enrich the debates concerning the immediate character of practical knowledge with discussion of its nature as formal cause that brings about what happens. In addition, she hopes to demonstrate to what extent such an enriched approach helps to solve puzzles that arise when we try to get a grip on practical knowledge without accommodating its formal-causal unifying function and, last but not least, she defends the claim that practical knowledge approaches to intentional action are able to capture the core sense of making a difference by acting intentionally, and are thereby entitled to consider the subjects of such knowledge agents in a genuine sense.
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Notes
- 1.
The list of authors that take practical knowledge to be the formal cause of what it understands also includes John Schwenkler, Sarah K. Paul, Sebastian Rödl, Eric Marcus and Thomas Liske. Compare: Moran 2004, p. 47; Hursthouse 2000, p. 103; Schwenkler 2015; Paul 2011; Rödl 2011; Marcus 2012; Liske 1999, pp. 103, 107; McDowell 2013, p. 398.
- 2.
Of course, both these suppositions are contentious: there are philosophers who extend practical knowledge to prior and past intentions and there are philosophers who take the awareness in question to be belief or confidence rather than knowledge. For the former claim, see Small 2012; Hampshire and Hart 1958 as well as Setiya 2007, p. 49. For the latter claim, see Bratman 1999; Setiya 2007; Velleman 2007.
- 3.
There is a further sense of being practical here: practical knowledge is practical as well in expressing answers to the practical question: what am I to do? That is to say, practical knowledge is practical insofar as it is concerned with reasons for action and action as such. It is important to keep in mind that the practicality of practical knowledge is not exhausted by that aspect; there are other kinds of knowledge dealing with practical subject matters that are not practical in the sense introduced above.
- 4.
The authors cited above of course disagree with regard to a lot of questions not explicitly mentioned nor discussed here; they disagree as well with regard to the question whether they take practical knowledge accounts of intentional action that involve a formal causal reading of the Cause-of-what-it-understands-formula to be correct or promising: unlike Liske and Rödl, Paul does not. Paul favours an inferential account of agency knowledge; nevertheless, Paul takes the formal causal reading of the Cause-of-what-it-understands-formula to express the most promising way to spell out non-reductive and non-inferential approaches to practical knowledge, therein sharing a widely held assumption that allows for the discussion of her claims within the current section despite the fact that Paul is, unlike Liske, Rödl, Thompson and Marcus, sceptical of its success.
- 5.
My translation; original passage: Man kann die Frage, ‘wodurch’, durch die wir von der komplexen Handlung zu der ihr zugrundeliegenden Körperbewegung gelangt sind, durchaus noch weitertreiben: Wodurch krümmte er den Finger? – Indem er Sehnen und Muskeln zusammenzog. Nun richtet sich die geistige Aufmerksamkeit, die eine Vorbedingung der Absichtlichkeit ist, nur auf das Fingerkrümmen, nicht aber die physiologischen Vorgänge, die es möglich Machen. Diese können daher nicht als Handlung, sondern nur als Materie der Handlung gelten. … jedenfalls gestattet diese Sicht, einen Dualismus zu überwinden. Denn sie besagt: Diese Körperbewegungen (oder physiologischen Vorgänge) können zwar für sich als rein physische Ereignisse auftreten. Innerhalb einer Handlung bilden sie jedoch, von der Absicht geformt und bestimmt, mit dieser eine ursprüngliche und unlösbare Einheit, die eine zugleich physische wie mentale Wirklichkeit ist.
- 6.
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Mürbe, U. (2018). Practical Knowledge, Formal Causation and Difference-Making in Acting Intentionally. In: Grgić, F., Pećnjak, D. (eds) Free Will & Action. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99295-2_1
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