Do you know more when it matters less?

Abstract

According to intellectualism, what a person knows is solely a function of the evidential features of the person's situation. Anti-intellectualism is the view that what a person knows is more than simply a function of the evidential features of the person's situation. Jason Stanley (2005) argues that, in addition to “traditional factors,” our ordinary practice of knowledge ascription is sensitive to the practical facts of a subject's situation. In this paper, we investigate this question empirically. Our results indicate that Stanley's assumptions about knowledge ascriptions do not reflect our ordinary practices in some paradigmatic cases. If our data generalize, then arguments for anti-intellectualism that rely on ordinary knowledge ascriptions fail: the case for anti-intellectualism cannot depend on our ordinary practices of knowledge ascription.

Keywords:

• Epistemology
• Experimental Philosophy
• Intuitions
• Practical Facts

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Michael Bishop, Joshua Knobe, Michael McKenna, Al Mele, Jason Stanley, and Jonathan Weinberg and two anonymous referees for Philosophical Psychology for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

Adam Feltz is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies at Schreiner University.

Chris Zarpentine is a PhD candidate at Florida State University.

Notes

[1] For example, see Kauppinen (2007), Ludwig (2007), and Sosa (2007, 2009). Though it is beyond the scope of the present paper to respond to such criticisms, none appear to undermine the viability of this methodology. For replies to some of these criticisms, see Knobe and Nichols (2008) as well as Nadelhoffer and Nahmias (2007). We discuss one related worry in section 7.

[2] Jackson continues: “ … it is hard to see how one could reasonably take very seriously what we might call the standard responses to the cases Kripke, Putnam and Gettier describe … while thinking that it is a mistake for philosophers to make surveys of responses to possible cases” (2008, p. 2). Jackson's view accords well with Jaakko Hintikka's (1999, p. 127) claim that intuitions begin to play a larger role in analytic philosophy starting in the mid-1960s as a result of the popularity of Chomsky's linguistics.

[3] Stanley might deny that he is making predictions about ordinary knowledge ascriptions. He writes, “the role of these intuitions is not akin to the role of observational data for a scientific theory” (Stanley, 2005, p. 12). We discuss this worry in section 7.

[4] We reversed scored this scenario because the prompt asks the participants to indicate if it is true that Hannah does not know. We did not change this case because we wanted to reproduce Stanley's scenarios exactly as he presents them. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we assume that this does not affect the content of the responses. We assume that most of our subjects are sufficiently competent that, if they agree that not P, they will also disagree that P.

[5] We followed Swain et al.'s (2008) use of a Likert scale in measuring knowledge ascriptions. According to Swain et al., a Likert scale is “a standard measure of attitude toward a proposition” (2008, p. 142).

[6] All analyses, unless otherwise noted, used independent samples t-tests. High Stakes (M = 4.26, SD = 2.14) and Low Stakes (M = 3.68, SD = 1.91), t(71) = 1.213, p = 0.23.

[7] Ignorant High Stakes (M = 3.59, SD = 1.90), t(71) = 0.19, p = 0.85.

[8] Low Attributer-High Subject Stakes (M = 4.75, SD = 1.89), t(72) = 2.42, p = 0.02.

[9] t(77) = 2.72, p = 0.01.

[10] Minimal High Stakes (M = 3.23, SD = 1.58) and Minimal Low Stakes (M = 3.29, SD = 1.76), t(78) = 0.17, p = 0.87.

[11] There was a statistically significant difference between Minimal High Stakes and Attributer (M = 3.87, SD = 1.13), t(76) = 2.06, p = 0.04. There was a near significant difference between Minimal Low Stakes and Attributer, t(78) = 1.74, p = 0.09. And, when we combine the results of Minimal High Stakes and Minimal Low Stakes, we found a statistically significant result between the Attributer and the minimal non-attributer cases, t(117) = 2.06, p = 0.04.

[12] One might think that in the attributer cases one may be in a privileged epistemic position as one may know roughly what types of bridges hold one's weight whereas one may not be in a privileged position to know what time banks open (we thank a reviewer for suggesting this alternative interpretation). While this is certainly possible, we feel that given that in Low Attributer High-Subject stakes we find lower agreement with the knowledge attribution and we find evidence that in at least some cases people are hesitant to agree that third-party knowledge attributions are true, we have at least shifted the burden to those who think that the results of Low Attributer High Subject stakes are due to the practical facts of the situation and not merely due to the attributer effect. Indeed, we suspect that the attributer effect is a general phenomenon—people will rate third-person knowledge attributions as less true than first-person knowledge attributions. This may be because in third party knowledge attributions one cannot be certain that the person to whom knowledge is attributed believes anything. If believing that p is a necessary condition for knowing that p, and we are certain that S at least believes that p in first-person cases and not in third-person cases, then we should expect that third party knowledge attributions will be judged as less true than first-person knowledge attributions (we thank Al Mele for bringing this possibility to our attention). Future research will likely shed light on the nature of the attributer effect.

[13] We would like to thank Jason Stanley (personal communication) for bringing this worry to our attention.

[14] Simplified High Stakes (M = 3.83, SD = 1.92) and Simplified Low Stakes (M = 3.85, SD = 1.73), t(80) = 0.04, p = 0.97. It should also be noted that there is neither a significant difference between Simplified High Stakes and Minimal High Stakes, t(79) = 1.53, p = 0.13, nor between Simplified Low Stakes and Minimal Low Stakes t(80) = 1.33, p = 0.19.

[15] Thanks again to Jason Stanley for pressing this worry about our third study and for suggesting the High Stakes Bridge and Low Stakes Bridge cases. Switching to the bridge cases does raise new worries about potentially confounding factors (e.g., see note 12). However, it is not clear that the existence of such confounds would help the anti-intellectualist. Thanks to a reviewer for raising this worry.

[16] High Stakes Bridge (M = 3.83, SD = 1.96) and Low Stakes Bridge (M = 3.4, SD = 1.74), t(138) = 1.37, p = 0.17. Of note, High Stakes Bridge does not significantly differ from either Minimal High Stakes, t(107) = 1.63, p = 0.11 or Simplified High Stakes, t(110) = 0.01, p = 0.99. Likewise, Low Stakes Bridge does not significantly differ from Minimal Low Stakes, t(109) = 0.31, p = 0.76 or Simplified Low Stakes, t(108) = 1.30, p = 0.19.

[17] It is possible that the practical stakes are still not made salient to participants. It could be that in order to obtain the effect of practical facts, something would need to be at stake for the participants. In our studies, nothing is at stake for the participants, and hence we may not find the effect given our experimental design. We agree this may be true, and we invite further research. However, it is worth noting that Stanley thinks that we have the responses he predicts to the cases as he presents them. If his arguments depend on those intuitions, then his view appears to be unsupported.

[18] We thank Joshua Knobe for suggesting this additional analysis.

[19] Theoretically, if the t value is greater than 1, that indicates that with a large enough sample a conventionally significant difference would be found. We find t values greater than 1 in several of the experiments above.

[20] A univariant ANOVA was used in this analysis. High stakes M = 3.91, SD = 1.94, Low stakes M = 3.52, SD = 1.78, F (1,452) = 4.2, p = 0.04, η_p ²= 0.01. Of course, this statistical difference must be taken with a grain of salt given that it appears that confounding factors and the attributer effect may contribute to people's knowledge ascriptions. Moreover, because this is a post-hoc test, a Bonferroni correction would result in significance level of 0.025.

[21] There is converging evidence that the practical facts do not play a role in knowledge ascriptions. In a different series of studies with a slightly different target and different stimulus materials, May, Sinnott-Armstrong, Hull, and Zimmerman (2009), did not find that practical facts influenced knowledge attributions.

[22] See also Nagel (2007) for a brief review of other potentially relevant work on ‘feeling of knowing’ and ‘feeling of another's knowing’ states.

[23] Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing us on some of the worries in this and the following paragraph. For a discussion of the problems involved in invoking the notion of competence in debates about experimental philosophy, see Machery (2008).

[24] For related arguments which rely less explicitly on intuitions, see Hawthorne and Stanley (2008).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam Feltz

Adam Feltz is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies at Schreiner University.

Chris Zarpentine

Chris Zarpentine is a PhD candidate at Florida State University.