The Intellectual Powers

A Study of Human Nature

,

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781118651216, 9781444332476
• eBook ISBN: 9781118609064
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The Intellectual Powers is a philosophical investigation into the cognitive and cogitative powers of mankind. It develops a connective analysis of our powers of consciousness, intentionality, mastery of language, knowledge, belief, certainty, sensation, perception, memory, thought, and imagination, by one of Britain's leading philosophers. It is an essential guide and handbook for philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists.

• The culmination of 45 years of reflection on the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the nature of the human person
• No other book in epistemology or philosophy of psychology provides such extensive overviews of consciousness, self-consciousness, intentionality, mastery of a language, knowledge, belief, memory, sensation and perception, thought and imagination
• Illustrated with tables, tree-diagrams, and charts to provide overviews of the conceptual relationships disclosed by analysis
• Written by one of Britain's best philosophical minds
• A sequel to Hacker's Human Nature: The Categorial Framework
• An essential guide and handbook for all who are working in philosophy of mind, epistemology, psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience

PART I

The Cognitive and Doxastic Powers

4

Knowledge

1. The value of knowledge

We exercise our intellectual powers in judging things to be so or not to be so. The use of the power of judgement, Aristotle observed, is a characteristic activity of man.¹ It is an aspect of our rational nature. In judgement we aim at how things are. If things are as we judge them to be, then we judge truly. If we judge falsely, we miss our aim. True judgements may be expressions of opinion or belief, guesses or hunches, hypotheses or suppositions – or they may be manifestations of knowledge.

---

All higher forms of animal life can know things

---

All higher animals achieve various forms and degrees of knowledge. Non-human animals learn to recognize things and clues of things, learn where to find food or prey, learn to distinguish things of a kind and to discriminate between things of different kinds. They come to know what foods to eat and what to shun. They know their way to waterholes, and the way back to their lair or burrow. Generally, they know what to fear, when to freeze and where to hide. Their behaviour patterns are plastic, and sensitive to their knowledge of their environment. They learn and come to know how to do a variety of things – how to hunt and kill, to dig for roots, to crack shells and, in the case of some kinds of apes and Corvidae, how to make and use rudimentary tools. They also know to do various things, such as to take cover or to flee when apt. But the limits of animal knowledge are incomparably narrower than the broad horizon of human knowledge.

---

The limitations of non-human animal knowledge

---

Non-human animals can know things to be so, but cannot know things to be true. For it is sayables, such as propositions, statements, declarations, stories and rumours, that may be true. Such bearers of truth and falsehood can be understood only by language-users, and only language-users can know whether they are true or false. Both my dog and I may know that the cat it was chasing is in the tree, but only I can know that the proposition that the cat is in the tree is true. Animal knowledge goes but little beyond acquired cognitive skills, recognitional capacities and limited forms of knowing that, where, what, when, which and to that can be exhibited in non-linguistic behaviour. It makes no sense to ascribe to a non-language-user knowledge of generalities, temporalities or apriorities.

---

The value of knowledge

---

Being sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, we value knowledge. We compare knowledge with light and ignorance with darkness. Those who act in ignorance are benighted – and know not what they do. According to the book of Genesis, knowledge of good and evil (and what more important knowledge could there be?) was bought at a high price and against the will of God.² It is not absurd to cry:

Give me the storm and tempest of Thought and Action, rather than the dead calm of Ignorance and Faith. Banish me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.³

Of course, this does not mean that every item of knowledge is valuable. Nor does it mean that there may not be some things better left unknown. It does not mean that knowledge may not have fell consequences. Nor, alas, does it mean that we do not sometimes cleave to our prejudices and reject what is known. Nevertheless, we do in general value knowledge, and not merely because knowledge is power. We value it because we value truth and understanding. When we are ignorant of some matter of moment, we often seek information – not mere belief or opinion – from others. Does it not suffice that they have true belief? Only if we know that their belief is true – but if we know that, we know what is the case. If we possess knowledge, we can conform our lives, our thoughts, our passions and purposes to how things are, and not merely to how they seem to be. Some human beings crave to understand why things are as they are – to make sense of the world we live in and of our place within it. To achieve such understanding, one rests on what one knows (or thinks one knows) of how things are, and tries to advance to explanations of why things are so. Some human beings, sometimes, crave to understand both themselves and others. Knowledge of our fellow human beings is a prerequisite for mutual understanding. Self-knowledge is a prerequisite for self-understanding.

2. The grammatical groundwork

---

Philosophical problems about knowledge

---

Many problems and unclarities surround the concept of knowledge. Some are categorial: is knowing something to be so a mental act or activity, a disposition, a mental state or a rational ability? Is knowing that something is so a propositional attitude, as Russell supposed? Other problems concern the analysis of knowledge. Is knowing something to be so analysable? Does it amount to belief that is both true and certain? Or to belief that is both true and justified? Or to some other conjunction of conditions? Other problems cluster around the relationship between knowing something to be so, knowing someone or something by acquaintance and from experience, knowing how to do something and knowing to do something. We distinguish between empirical knowledge of many logically different kinds (observational, psychological, scientific-theoretic, historical, etc.), mathematical knowledge, moral and aesthetic knowledge. Are these simply knowledge of different things, or are they different kinds of knowledge? These latter questions will be deferred for discussion in The Moral Powers: a Study of Human Nature. Finally, there are numerous questions concerning the relation of knowledge to adjacent concepts, such as belief, understanding, certainty, indubitability, justification, memory, sources of knowledge, modes of knowledge acquisition. Is knowing something to be so compatible with doubting whether it is so? If one knows whether things are so, does one also opine that they are, think that they are or believe that they are? These are philosophical questions we shall be occupied with in this chapter and the next two.

---

Objects of knowledge

---

Philosophical concern with knowledge aims to achieve an overview of its nature. To do this, we must clarify the concept of knowledge. The only way to do so is to examine the uses of the verb ‘to know’ and its cognates (or equivalents in other languages). We shall start by looking at some straightforward grammatical and syntactical features, which will be useful in the subsequent connective analysis.⁴ ‘A knows …’ is a sentence-forming operator on a variety of linguistic forms. Examining them will shed light upon the objects of knowledge (see table 4.1).

Table 4.1 Bases for the sentence-forming operator ‘A knows’

Bases	Examples
Declarative sentences	‘A knows Jack is in town’
That-nominalizations	‘A knows that Jack is in town’
Wh-nominalizations involving a Wh-interrogative
These may be followed either by:
• a verb in the indicative	‘A knows whether Jack is at home’, ‘A knows where Jill is and when Jack will be home’, ‘A knows who is in the room’
• a verb in the infinitive	‘A knows whether to take the car’, ‘A knows when and where to plant the roses’, ‘A knows what to do’, ‘A knows which book to take’, ‘A knows whom to ask’
Wh-nominalizations involving a relative Wh-clause	‘A already knew what you said’
How-nominalizations, followed by a verb in the infinitive	‘A knows how to V’
Noun-phrases that are variants on an interrogative	‘A knows the colour (weight, height) of …’ (to know the colour and weight of the chair is to know what colour the chair is and what its weight is)
Nouns signifying something that has been learnt or learnt by heart, and can be used, spoken, recited or rehearsed	‘A knows Latin (physics, the alphabet, ‘Ozymandias’)’
Verbs in the infinitive	‘A knows to V’, ‘A knows better than to V’
Nouns indicating an object of acquaintance or experience	‘Tom knows Jill’, ‘Dick knows Paris’, ‘Harry has known sorrow’

It is important not to confuse the fact that what is known, when it is known that things are so, is expressed by a proposition, with the non-fact that what is known when it is known that things are so is a proposition. Whereas to believe the proposition that so-and-so advanced is to believe that what he said is true, to know the proposition that he advanced is not to know that it is true – but rather, to be familiar with it, to have heard it before. One may know many propositions without knowing whether they are true or false, and one may know many propositions that are false (schoolteachers often collect the plums from their pupils' essays).⁵

---

Wh-nominalizations

---

Wh-nominalizations (knowing where, who, when, etc.) and hence too noun-phrases that are variants on an interrogative (‘knowing the colour, length, weight of’) are systematically related to knowing-that. Roughly speaking, the Wh-nominalization states what it is to which one knows the answer, and the that-nominalization states the answer one knows.⁶ To know who did such-and-such is to know that so-and-so did it; to know where he did it is to know that he did it there; to know where to go is to know that one should go there; and so forth. To know the colour of the cloth is to know what colour the cloth is, that is, to know that it is such-and-such colour. To know the length of the carpet is to know how long the carpet is, that is, to know that it is thus long. That one knows is shown by what one says and does.

---

Is practical knowledge autonomous?

---

Whether knowing how to do something is reducible to knowing-that is disputed. Ryle argued that these are two different kinds of knowledge – th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Epigraph
• Introduction: The Project
• Prolegomena
• PART I: The Cognitive and Doxastic Powers
• PART II: The Cogitative Powers
• Appendix: Philosophical Analysis and the Way of Words
• Index