The question of practical knowledge

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Acknowledgements

The final draft of this paper has benefitted greatly from insightful comments by Thodoris Dimitrakos, Kim Frost and Megan Laverty. In writing this paper, I have also benefited from ongoing discussions with John McDowell, Robert Pippin, and Talbot Brewer, from whom I never seize to learn. I would like to thank Constantine Sandis for his trust and patience, but also for his wit and good humor.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Evgenia Mylonaki studied philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and was recently elected for the position of Contemporary Practical Philosophy at the University of Patras. Mylonaki works on practical reasoning and the metaphysics of action, moral epistemology and virtue ethics, human and animal life, and on the great works of Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot and Iris Murdoch. She is currently co-editing a Festschrift for John McDowell (with Matthew Boyle) and working a book on practical knowledge.

Notes

1 In what follows I refer to Dancy’s (2018) book as Practical Shape or simply PS.

2 All emphasis in 1–8 is my own.

3 The reader of Anscombe’s Intention will recognize here traces of her opposition to an incorrigibly contemplative conception of knowledge. See Anscombe (1963, § 32, p. 57.).

4 For more on this see Mylonaki (2016).

5 I believe that this is the right way to read Iris Murdoch’s famous example of M and D in Murdoch (1970). I also believe that the sketch of the account that follows is in accord with Murdoch’s view of the nature of moral activity in the Sovereignty but also with her view of consciousness in Murdoch (1992). But I won’t pursue the point here.

6 One may suggest here that the implicit judgment to the effect that the mother is careless is a judgment which can be reduced to a judgment concerning what one ought to do. But one can judge someone careless without thinking of them as negligent, and without thinking that carelessness ought to be avoided at all cost.

7 For more on this account see Mylonaki (2019).

8 This anxiety shows in McDowell (1985).

9 The fortunate phrase was suggested to me by Kim Frost; one can find it in Plutarch’s Moralia.