•  3524
    Skill in epistemology I: Skill and knowledge
    Philosophy Compass 11 (11): 642-649. 2016.
    Knowledge and skill are intimately connected. In this essay, I discuss the question of their relationship and of which (if any) is prior to which in the order of explanation. I review some of the answers that have been given thus far in the literature, with a particular focus on the many foundational issues in epistemology that intersect with the philosophy of skill.
  •  2245
    Il Concetto di Verità' di Tarski
    In Guido Bonino, Carlo Gabbani & Paolo Tripodi (eds.), Biblioteca Analitica, . pp. 91-102. 2020.
    In questo capitolo racconto l'articolo classico sulla verità' di Tarski.
  •  1243
    Skill in epistemology II: Skill and know how
    Philosophy Compass 11 (11): 650-660. 2016.
    The prequel to this paper has discussed the relation between knowledge and skill and introduced the topic of the relationship between skill and know how. This sequel continues the discussion. First, I survey the recent debate on intellectualism about knowing how (§1-3). Then, I tackle the question as to whether intellectualism (and anti-intellectualism) about skill and intellectualism (and anti-intellectualism) about know how fall or stand together (§4-5).
  •  1009
    A Theory of Practical Meaning
    Philosophical Topics 45 (2): 65-96. 2017.
    This essay is divided into two parts. In the first part (§2), I introduce the idea of practical meaning by looking at a certain kind of procedural systems — the motor system — that play a central role in computational explanations of motor behavior. I argue that in order to give a satisfactory account of the content of the representations computed by motor systems (motor commands), we need to appeal to a distinctively practical kind of meaning. Defending the explanatory relevance of semantic pro…Read more
  •  903
    Lewis Carroll’s regress and the presuppositional structure of arguments
    Linguistics and Philosophy 45 (1): 1-38. 2021.
    This essay argues that the main lesson of Lewis Carroll's Regress is that arguments are constitutively presuppositional.
  •  862
    Modal Virtue Epistemology
    with Bob Beddor
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (1): 61-79. 2018.
    This essay defends a novel form of virtue epistemology: Modal Virtue Epistemology. It borrows from traditional virtue epistemology the idea that knowledge is a type of skillful performance. But it goes on to understand skillfulness in purely modal terms — that is, in terms of success across a range of counterfactual scenarios. We argue that this approach offers a promising way of synthesizing virtue epistemology with a modal account of knowledge, according to which knowledge is safe belief. In…Read more
  •  814
    Practical concepts and productive reasoning
    Synthese 199 (3-4): 7659-7688. 2021.
    Can we think of a task in a distinctively practical way? Can there be practical concepts? In recent years, epistemologists, philosophers of mind, as well as philosophers of psychology have appealed to practical concepts in characterizing the content of know-how or in explaining certain features of skilled action. However, reasons for positing practical concepts are rarely discussed in a systematic fashion. This paper advances a novel argument for the psychological reality of practical concepts t…Read more
  •  753
    Probabilistic Knowledge in Action
    Analysis 80 (2): 342-356. 2020.
    According to a standard assumption in epistemology, if one only partially believes that p , then one cannot thereby have knowledge that p. For example, if one only partially believes that that it is raining outside, one cannot know that it is raining outside; and if one only partially believes that it is likely that it will rain outside, one cannot know that it is likely that it will rain outside. Many epistemologists will agree that epistemic agents are capable of partial beliefs in additi…Read more
  •  748
    Practical Knowledge without Luminosity
    with Bob Beddor
    Mind 131 (523): 917-934. 2021.
    According to a rich tradition in philosophy of action, intentional action requires practical knowledge: someone who acts intentionally knows what they are doing while they are doing it. Piñeros Glasscock argues that an anti-luminosity argument, of the sort developed in Williamson, can be readily adapted to provide a reductio of an epistemic condition on intentional action. This paper undertakes a rescue mission on behalf of an epistemic condition on intentional action. We formulate and defend a …Read more
  •  718
    Know-how, action, and luck
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 7): 1595-1617. 2018.
    A good surgeon knows how to perform a surgery; a good architect knows how to design a house. We value their know-how. We ordinarily look for it. What makes it so valuable? A natural response is that know-how is valuable because it explains success. A surgeon’s know-how explains their success at performing a surgery. And an architect’s know-how explains their success at designing houses that stand up. We value know-how because of its special explanatory link to success. But in virtue of what is …Read more
  •  706
    The Dynamics of Argumentative Discourse
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 51 (2): 413-456. 2022.
    Arguments have always played a central role within logic and philosophy. But little attention has been paid to arguments as a distinctive kind of discourse, with its own semantics and pragmatics. The goal of this essay is to study the mechanisms by means of which we make arguments in discourse, starting from the semantics of argument connectives such as `therefore'. While some proposals have been made in the literature, they fail to account for the distinctive anaphoric behavior of `therefore', …Read more
  •  670
    Reasoning and Presuppositions
    Philosophical Topics 49 (2): 203-224. 2021.
    It is a platitude that when we reason, we often take things for granted, sometimes even justifiably so. The chemist might reason from the fact that a substance turns litmus paper red to that substance being an acid. In so doing, they take for granted, reasonably enough, that this test for acidity is valid. We ordinarily reason from things looking a certain way to their being that way. We take for granted, reasonably enough, that things are as they look Although it is a platitude that we often t…Read more
  •  640
    Practical Representation
    In Ellen Fridland & Carlotta Pavese (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise, Routledge. 2020.
    This chapter discusses recent attempts to clarify the notion of practical representation and its theoretical fruitfulness. The ultimate goal is not just to show that intellectualists are on good grounds when they appeal to practical representation in their theories of know-how. Rather, it is to argue that ​ any plausible theory of skill and know-how has to appeal to the notion of practical representation developed here. §1 explains the notion of a mode of presentation and introduces practical mo…Read more
  •  624
    Know-How and Gradability
    Philosophical Review 126 (3): 345-383. 2017.
    Orthodoxy has it that knowledge is absolute—that is, it cannot come in degrees. On the other hand, there seems to be strong evidence for the gradability of know-how. Ascriptions of know-how are gradable, as when we say that one knows in part how to do something, or that one knows how to do something better than somebody else. When coupled with absolutism, the gradability of ascriptions of know-how can be used to mount a powerful argument against intellectualism about know-how—the view that know-…Read more
  •  584
    Practical knowledge first
    Synthese 200 (5): 1-18. 2022.
    This idea that what is distinctive of intentional performances (or at least of those intentional performances that amount to skilled actions) is one’s practical knowledge in it —i.e., knowledge of what one is doing while doing it— famously traces back to Anscombe ([]1963] 2000). While many philosophers have theorized about Anscombe’s notion of practical knowledge (e.g., Setiya (2008), Thompson et al. (2011), Schwenkler (2019), O’Brien (2007)), there is a wide disagreement about how to understand…Read more
  •  583
    I demarcate skills from other kinds of cognitive and bodily abilities and I discuss old and novel issues that arise for the epistemology of skills.
  •  554
    On the Meaning of 'Therefore'
    Analysis 77 (1): 88-97. 2017.
    I argue for an analysis of ‘therefore’ as presupposition trigger against the more standard conventional implicature story originally put forward by Grice (1975). I propose that we model the relevant presupposition as “testing” the context in a way that is similar to how, according to some dynamic treatments of epistemic `must', ‘must’ tests the context. But whereas the presupposition analysis is plausible for ‘therefore’, ‘must’ is not plausibly a presupposition trigger. Moreover, whereas ‘must…Read more
  •  540
    Logical Inference and Its Dynamics
    In Olivier Roy, Allard Tamminga & Malte Willer (eds.), Deontic Logic and Normative Systems, College Publications. pp. 203-219. 2016.
    This essay advances and develops a dynamic conception of inference rules and uses it to reexamine a long-standing problem about logical inference raised by Lewis Carroll’s regress.
  •  503
    The diverse and breathtaking intelligence of the human animal is often embodied in skills. People, throughout their lifetimes, acquire and refine a vast number of skills. And there seems to be no upper limit to the creativity and beauty expressed by them. Think, for instance, of Olympic gymnastics: the amount of strength, flexibility, and control required to perform even a simple beam routine amazes, startles, and delights. In addition to the sheer beauty of skill, performances at the pinnacle o…Read more
  •  435
    Gricean theories analyse meaning in terms of certain complex intentions on the part of the speaker—the intention to produce an effect on the addressee, and the intention to have that intention recognized by the addressee. By drawing an analogy with cases widely discussed in action theory, we propose a novel counterexample where the speaker lacks these intentions, but nonetheless means something, and successfully performs a speech act.
  •  418
    Skills as Knowledge
    with Beddor Bob
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (3): 609-624. 2023.
    1. What is the relation between skilful action and knowledge? According to most philosophers, the two have little in common: practical intelligence and theoretical intelligence are largely separate...
  •  363
    Epistemic Luck, Knowledge-How, and Intentional Action
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10 (n/a). 2023.
    Epistemologists have long believed that epistemic luck undermines propositional knowledge. Action theorists have long believed that agentive luck undermines intentional action. But is there a relationship between agentive luck and epistemic luck? While agentive luck and epistemic luck have been widely thought to be independent phenomena, we argue that agentive luck has an epistemic dimension. We present several thought experiments where epistemic luck seems to undermine both knowledge-how and in…Read more
  •  354
    This paper overviews some recent work on the semantics and pragmatics of arguments.
  •  322
    Knowledge, Action, Defeasibility
    In Jessica Brown & Mona Simion (eds.), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat, Oxford University Press. 2021.
    One can intentionally do something only if one knows what one is doing while they are doing it. For example, one can intentionally kill one’s neighbor by opening their gas stove overnight only if one knows that the gas is likely to kill the neighbor in their sleep. One can intentionally sabotage the victory of one’s rival by putting sleeping drugs in their drink only if one knows that sleeping drugs will harm the rival’s performance. And so on. In a slogan: Intentional action is action guided by…Read more
  •  302
    Shape of Agency, by Joshua Shepherd (review)
    Mind 132 (526): 586-594. 2021.
    What makes an event an action rather than a mere happening? What makes us agents rather than non-agents? What does being in control amount to? And in virtue of
  •  296
    This is the introduction to my forthcoming book and the table of contents.
  •  290
    The Know-How Solution to Kraemer's Puzzle
    with Henne Paul
    Cognition 238 (C): 105490. 2023.
    In certain cases, people judge that agents bring about ends intentionally but also that they do not bring about the means that brought about those ends intentionally—even though bringing about the ends and means is just as likely. We call this difference in judgments the Kraemer effect. We offer a novel explanation for this effect: a perceived difference in the extent to which agents know how to bring about the means and the ends explains the Kraemer effect. In several experiments, we replicate …Read more
  •  273
    Practical Senses
    Philosophers' Imprint 15. 2015.
    In their theories of know how, proponents of Intellectualism routinely appeal to ‘practical modes of presentation’. But what are practical modes of presentation? And what makes them distinctively practical? In this essay, I develop a Fregean account of practical modes of presentation: I argue that there are such things as practical senses and I give a theory of what they are. One of the challenges facing the proponent of a distinctively Fregean construal of practical modes of presentation is to …Read more
  •  264
    Is the ability to speak a language an acquired skill? Leading proponents of the generative approach to human language—notably Chomsky (2000) and Pinker (2003)—have argued that the thesis that language capacities are skills is hopelessly confused and at odds with a range of empirical evidence, which suggests that human language capacities are grounded in a biologically inherited set of language instincts or a Universal Grammar (UG). In this paper, we argue that resistance to the claim that human …Read more