Persistent burglars and knocks on doors: Causal indispensability of knowing vindicated

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to accomplish two things.The first is to show that given some further plausible assumptions, existing challenges to the indispensability of knowledge in causal explanation of action fail. The second is to elaborate an overlooked and distinct argument in favor of the causal efficacy of knowledge. In short, even if knowledge were dispensable in causal explanation of action, it is still indispensable in causal explanation of other mental attitudes and, in particular, some reactive attitudes and factive emotions. Taking into account this sort of causal efficacy in determining which mental states are genuine mental states opens up new perspectives for defending the view that knowledge is the most general factive and genuine mental state. | INTRODUCTIONA well-known aspect of the so-called knowledge-first programme in recent epistemology is that it has two components. 1 The first is the doctrine that knowledge is first (in the relevant sense). This component contains both the claim that knowledge cannot be analyzed (defined) in terms of a combination of some further states and properties, and the claim that appeal to knowledge can define or substantially explain other states or epistemically interesting properties (e.g., epistemic justification, evidence, and so on). 2 The second component of the knowledge-first doctrine is that despite the fact that knowledge cannot be defined or analyzed, there is a positive theoretically insightful characterization of knowledge. Namely, we can characterize knowledge as the most general factive mental state (cf. Nagel, 2013; Williamson, 2000, p. 39;Williamson, 2011). While the first component of the knowledge-first approach has received sustained interest in recent debates, the second one has been relatively less discussed.