Jeremy Fantl

You know that George W. Bush is the U.S. president, but you know how to ride a bicycle. What's the difference? According to intellectualists, not much: either knowing how to do something is a matter of knowing that something is the case or, at the very least, know-how requires a prior bit of theoretical knowledge. Anti-intellectualists deny this order of priority: either knowing-how and knowing-that are independent or, at the very least, knowing that something is the case requires a prior bit of know-how. Much of the dispute centers on the relationship between knowing how to do something and having an ability to do it. If having an ability is necessary and sufficient for knowing-how, this is thought to provide comfort for anti-intellectualists. This paper traces the place of ability in the know-how/know-that debate from Ryle's seminal statement of anti-intellectualism through Stanley and Williamson's more recent defense of intellectualism.

This paper offers a new argument that your reasons for believing or acting need not be true. It proceeds indirectly through an account of what it takes to be happy that p. To be happy that p is for p to be among your reasons for being happy. That’s because questions about why you’re happy and what you’re happy is the case are interchangeable. But, I argue, it is possible to be happy that p even when p is false. In cases in which you believe falsely that p and sincerely assert that you are happy that p, you are still expressing happiness about something. To be happy about something is to be happy that some proposition is the case. In the cases in question, it is implausible that the proposition you are happy is the case is a proposition about the evidence or how things seem or what you believe. The only other option is that the proposition you are happy is the case is p itself. Along the way, I discuss linguistic data that seems to counter the view that you can be happy that falsehoods are true. Though initially suggesting a more principled argument that you can only be happy about truths, both the linguistic data and the principled argument can ultimately be defused. A similar principled argument for the factivity of ‘knows,’ however, remains happily untouched.

While it is often undesirable and difficult to introduce highly complex arguments in large introductory philosophy classes, it is important to do so at least once in the semester as it challenges students, shows how philosophical debates often go beyond one’s initial intuitions, and illustrates how meaningful answers often turn on close attention to logical minutiae. This paper provides an example of an advanced debate on the free-will response to the problem of evil that can be used in introductory courses in the philosophy of religion. The paper provides a skeleton of two lectures that the author has used (suitable for two fifty-minute lectures and one fifty-minute discussion section) and discusses two common difficulties students face when learning this material.

Dogmatism is the view that it is often legitimate to flatly dismiss counterarguments to a belief: your belief can count as knowledge even if you can’t figure out what’s wrong with the counterargument. Hume defended a version of dogmatism restricted to testimony in favor of miracles. Moore defended a dogmatism restricted to arguments for skepticism. In this paper it is argued that Hume’s and Moore’s dogmatisms should be generalized to all controversial matters. Dogmatism about controversial matters is true if you can have knowledge about controversial matters. That’s because, when it comes to a belief about a controversial matter, there could easily be an apparently sound argument that the belief is false. But, often, if your knowledge can withstand this fact (which it can, the literature on disagreement notwithstanding), then it can withstand your discovering the apparently sound argument and finding it apparently sound.