Comparison to Other Accounts

By downplaying the historical elements of Craig’s discussion, it becomes clear that his project is related to various other projects that appeal to the functions of concepts. I want to focus on two theories: Haslanger’s Ameliorative Project, and Bratman’s planning theory of intention.

In a series of papers, Haslanger develops what she calls the Ameliorative project. Her application of this project to KNOWS sounds strikingly similar to Craig’s project:

121 _{Although one might think of Objectivisation as a historical stage, Craig is clear that}

On an [Ameliorative] approach the task is not simply to explicate our ordinary concept of X; nor is it to discover what those things we normally take to fall under the concept have in common; instead we ask what our purpose is in having the concept of X, whether this purpose is well-conceived, and what concept (or

concepts) would serve our well-conceived purpose(s) assuming there to be at least one best. (Haslanger, 1999, p. 467)

One important difference between Craig’s project and Haslanger’s implementation of the Ameliorative project is that Haslanger is more pessimistic about whether the

concepts we employ currently in fact answer to our legitimate purposes, meaning that she is much happier to endorse deeply revisionary accounts of various concepts, as her account of Race and Gender concepts make clear (Haslanger, 2000). Haslanger appeals to

conceptual functions as part of a project to improve our concepts, making her approach a kind of conceptual engineering, or conceptual ethics.

Craig mentions this kind of revisionary approach, but puts it to one side: Some may also wish to ask a very different normative question: where, if the concept of knowledge is to be developed or rendered more precise this ought to be done in one way rather than another; clearly, there are parallels in political theory. Again I shall not offer an opinion; in any case, unless we are told the purpose of such development, we do well to have no opinion to offer. (Craig, 1990, p. 9) Craig seems to think that our default position should be that KNOWS addresses our legitimate purposes. There are good reasons to be sceptical about this claim

(Haslanger, 1999, pp. 462–66). One way to understand the literature on testimonial injustice demonstrates how patterns of credibility attributions that track social identities rather than purely epistemic features can undermine the role of KNOWS in helping us to pool information (M. Fricker, 2007; McKinnon, 2016). There are good reasons for

thinking that our knowledge-how attributions are similarly perverted (Hawley 2011).122

122 _{See also (Stanley, 2016, Chapter 7) on the way that the distinction between knowledge-how and}

knowledge-that might further social divisions between manual and intelligent tasks. For criticism of Stanley, see (Kremer, 2016b).

Another reason for thinking that KNOWS might need amelioration is if it plays different functions which are in tension (Fassio & McKenna, 2015). Consider some alternatives to Craig’s proposed: that KNOWS functions as an inquiry-stopper (Kappel, 2010; Kelp, 2011), or that KNOWS functions to regulate patterns of blame (Beebe, 2012). If it turns out that we use KNOWS to play several of these roles, we may need to employ it to pick out different extensions, leading to inconsistencies, and opening the door to amelioration.

Another illuminating comparison is with Bratman’s planning theory of intention (Bratman, 1987). Bratman talks primarily of the function of having intentions, rather than the function of the concept INTENDS. I don’t want to get caught up in whether Bratman intends these claims as referring to semantic or metasemantic functions. All that I want to point out is that there is a natural interpretation of the planning theory as an account of the function of INTENDS which meshes nicely with Craig’s account of the function of

KNOWS.

Here’s a version of Bratman’s theory translated into an account of the metasemantic function of INTENDS. Start with our practical needs. We are cognitively limited agents: we have relatively little knowledge about how the future will be, we have a limited

capacity to make branching plans for contingencies, and a limited capacity for

deliberation. We are also temporally and socially extended agents: we need to be able to co-ordinate across time with ourselves, and we need to be able to co-ordinate with other agents. How are we to deal with our need for interpersonal and interpersonal co-

ordination, whilst taking full account of our cognitive limitations? The planning theory claims that INTENDS addresses these practical needs by picking out a state which is the upshot of practical deliberation, and has a distinctive functional profile: roughly, the role of being stable across time, relatively resistant to reconsideration, and being a constraint on our planning. Having a concept that picks out this state allows us to plan on the basis of what other agents will do — and for that matter what we will do — by attributing a state that is relatively stable in the face of reconsideration. Working with this concept also allows us to shape our planning, by making sure that we avoid inconsistent plans, and fill out our plans when the time comes. This claim can be dressed up in a state of nature narrative. Perhaps the central situation for the supporter of the planning theory is a

ordinate when each uses the shower in the morning to ensure that neither has to wait. The concept INTENDS helps these agents to address their co-ordination problem by allowing each agent to form and communicate a plan about when they will use the bathroom.

There are a couple of striking similarities between Craig’s story about the function of KNOWS, and the Bratmanesque story about INTENDS. Both accounts appeal to our needs for co-ordination: Craig argues that KNOWS functions to address our need for epistemic co-ordination by helping us to pool information, and Bratman claims INTENDS to address our need for practical co-ordination by helping us to plan together. Both

accounts claim that the concepts help us to plan: KNOWS helps us to tap other peoples’ stores of information about questions relevant to our plans, and INTENDS by allowing us to plan on the basis of what other agents will do by allowing us to predict what they will do. Finally, both concepts aim to play a certain kind of inquiry-stopper role: KNOWS aims to end uncertainty about a factual question by delivering its answer via testimony, and INTENDS aims to end uncertainty about what someone (including oneself) will do via the expression, attribution, or formation of intention.