Precis of Knowledge and PracticalInterests

jason stanley

Rutgers University

Our intuitions about whether someone knows that p vary even fixing

the intuitively epistemic features of that person’s situation. Sometimes

they vary with features of our own situation, and sometimes they vary

with features of the putative knower’s situation. If the putative knower

is in a risky situation and her belief that p is pivotal in achieving a

positive outcome of one of the actions available to her, or avoiding a

negative one, we often feel she must be in a particularly good epistemic

position to know that p. If however she is not in a risky situation, we

tend to be considerably more permissive in our attributions of

knowledge. Our intuitions about when someone knows that p and

when she doesn’t also fluctuate with what is salient, either to the puta-

tive knower or ourselves. If someone claims to know where their car is,

and I raise the possibility that it has been stolen, she may retract her

claim to know. Which of these tendencies, if any, reveal something

about the nature of our epistemic terms or concepts?

Call the practical facts of a person’s situation those facts that bear

on the costs and benefits of the actions at that person’s disposal. Does

knowing depend upon practical facts? Some of the intuitions we have

about the conditions under which someone knows suggest that know-

ing does depend upon practical facts. Given the role the concept of

knowledge has in our conceptual scheme, this should not be surprising.

It is standard to use the verb ‘‘know’’ in the appraisal of action; it is

an old wife’s adage that it is dangerous to act without knowing all the

facts. The value of knowledge lies in part in the fact that it is the men-

tal state that ought to guide us in our actions. If knowledge and action

are conceptually linked, then it would be no surprise that knowing

something is related to being rationally permitted to act upon a belief.

Since the latter is a function of practical facts, it would be no surprise

to discover that the former is as well. The connection between knowl-

edge and action therefore suggests that whether someone knows that p

Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVol. LXXV No. 1, July 2007� 2007 International Phenomenological Society

168 JASON STANLEY

at a time t depends at least in part upon practical facts. If so, then

knowing is what I call an interest-relative relation. The thesis of the

book is that knowing is an interest-relative relation.

Raising something to salience has the effect of making new interpre-

tations available for context-sensitive expressions. Thus, if we take seri-

ously the effects of salience on our judgments about when agents know

and when they do not, we will likely end up as contextualists about

knowledge claims. Contextualism has a number of putative benefits

above and beyond a charitable explanation of many of our intuitions.

For instance, it promises to deliver a response to skepticism that both

accounts for the force skeptical arguments have on us, as well as our

disinclination to believe that they undermine ordinary claims to know.

It can provide such an explanation, consistent with preservation of sin-

gle-premise epistemic closure. Contextualism also can explain many of

the cases in which we think someone does not know something because

of heightened risk, by assimilating such cases to ones in which counter-

possibilities to the proposition putatively known are more salient to the

knowledge attributor. Contextualism can provide such an explanation

without undermining the attractive thesis of intellectualism, which is

that whether or not someone bears an epistemic property to a proposi-

tion does not depend on the practical facts of their situation. Finally,

contextualism in epistemology fits with a several decade old trend in

philosophy generally of finding contextualist solutions to long-standing

philosophical problems, such as the sorites paradox, the liar paradox,

and the problem of material constitution. Contextualism and interest-

relativity are not in and of themselves competing accounts; one can be

a contextualist, and hold that the various different denoted knowledge

relations are interest-relative in nature. But if one is a contextualist,

one can provide explanations for many of the phenomena that lead

one to reject intellectualism. Since intellectualism is a powerful and per-

haps non-negotiable theoretical commitment of many philosophers, the

desire to preserve it is a central motivation for contextualism.

That salience affects our intuitions about knowledge attributions

should not lead us directly to contextualism. Raising certain features of

a situation to salience also may significantly distort our judgments. The

tendency we have to give up knowledge-attributions in the face of sali-

ent counter-possibilities may be a psychological framing effect rather

than a semantically significant feature of our epistemic practice. Since

salience is a dubious nail on which to hang a theory, other sort of cor-

roboration should be available in support of the contextualist thesis in

epistemology. Since contextualism is an all-purpose strategy for evading

philosophical problems (albeit the favored strategy of some of the best

and the brightest philosophers), there is extra reason for those not yet

BOOK SYMPOSIUM 169

convinced of the contextualist thesis in epistemology to seek more evi-

dence in support of its central claims.

In Knowledge and Practical Interests (henceforth K&PI), I spend

three chapters evaluating the costs and benefits of contextualism in

epistemology. There are several reasons for spending so much space

rebutting the contextualist thesis. First, contextualism is the most plau-

sible alternative to the interest-relativity of knowledge for many of the

intuitions we have about the effects of practical facts upon the truth of

various knowledge ascriptions. Secondly, by focusing intensively on the

one case of contextualism in epistemology, I show what sorts of consid-

erations can be advanced for and against a contextualist thesis about a

kind of discourse. This kind of investigation is particularly important,

since, as anyone familiar with non-historical areas of philosophy in the

past three decades knows, contextualism is a widely employed strategy

in addressing philosophical problems. Finally, since my own work in

philosophy of language is characterized by sympathy for non-obvious

context-sensitivity in natural language, I am naturally predisposed

towards the doctrine.

In the fifth chapter of K&PI, I develop a detailed version of an

interest-relative theory of knowledge. Following Williamson (2000),

I reject reductive analyses of the knowledge relation. The form episte-

mology should take is to state facts about the primitive knowledge rela-

tion, and that is my strategy in this book. My purpose in developing an

analysis of knowledge along interest-relative lines was not to show that

an analysis of knowledge is possible, but merely to show that interest-

relativity does not add unmanageable complexity to the epistemological

project. Furthermore, by engaging in the fiction of analyzing the knowl-

edge-relation along interest-relative lines, I am able to investigate some

of the central notions involved in investigating the interest-relativity of

knowledge, such as the notion of serious practical question (a proposi-

tion that a rational agent must take seriously in decision making).

In the sixth chapter, I turn to an explicit comparison between the

thesis of interest-relativity and the thesis of contextualism as explana-

tions for various puzzling epistemological problems, including the

problem of skepticism. It is tempting to think that the reason we do

not need to worry about skepticism is that skeptical propositions are

not serious practical questions for us. But I do not think that that the

fact that knowing is an interest-relative relation provides a viable solu-

tion to the problem of skepticism. This does not favor contextualism,

since I also do not think that contextualism provides a viable solution

to the problem of skepticism. At the very least, to the extent it does, its

solution can be mimicked by the advocate of the interest-relativity of

knowledge.

170 JASON STANLEY

Interest-relativity is not a special methodology for evading philo-

sophical problems. Rather, it is a way of using the philosophical prob-

lems to gain insight about the metaphysics of the properties and

relations in question. In contrast, contextualism is a special methodol-

ogy that is applicable everywhere. Another special methodology is rela-

tivism about truth. Like contextualism, relativism is a method that can

be applied to any philosophical dispute in any area. In contrast to con-

textualism, which is obviously correct about many apparent disputes, it

is not clear that there is a single apparent dispute for which relativism

about truth is the resolution. Nevertheless, relativism about truth has

been fashionable in recent years, thanks in large part to its develop-

ment and defense in the work of John MacFarlane (e.g., MacFarlane

(2005)). In the seventh chapter, I turn to a critique of relativism about

truth as applied to apparent disputes about knowledge. I spend less

time on relativism, for several reasons. First, unlike contextualism, it

has very little empirical support from uncontroversial stretches of dis-

course. Second, if one is concerned to defend the ‘‘purity’’ of the

knowledge relation from invidious infection by practical facts, adopting

relativism about truth is scarcely the method to do so. Those unsympa-

thetic with the view that knowledge is a matter of practical facts are

unlikely to be assuaged by the prospect that the truth-value of proposi-

tions containing the knowledge relation depends upon such facts,

though its metaphysical analysis does not. Those who are uncomfort-

able with accepting the intrusion of practical facts into the analysis of

the knowledge relation are likely to be even more uncomfortable with

their intrusion into the analysis of truth.

My main purpose in K&PI is to elaborate and defend the thesis of

interest-relativity about knowing. But my subsidiary purpose is meth-

odological. Resolutions to philosophical problems have increasingly

taken the form of applications of general methodologies, applicable

everywhere (e.g., contextualism, fictionalism, relativism). This is a wor-

risome development, especially when there are few agreed upon meth-

ods of evaluating the application of such global methodologies. In

writing K&PI, I wanted to provide rigorous introductions to some of

these methodologies, and discussions of the sorts of considerations that

are relevant for and against them. In chapter 8, I therefore broaden my

outlook to consider these issues against the philosophical backdrop of

quandaries in areas outside epistemology. My focus in Chapter 8 is on

contextualist and quasi-interest-relative theories about vagueness,

though my considerations bear on contextualist views about the liar

paradox as well. I conclude that there is little plausibility in appealing

to an interest-relative metaphysics of properties in these domains. The

fact that knowing is an interest-relative relation is an important

BOOK SYMPOSIUM 171

epistemological discovery, one that helps elucidate the connections

between knowledge and action. But interest-relativity does not seem to

help extricate us from any of the classic philosophical quandaries.

References

MacFarlane, John (2005): ‘‘Making Sense of Relative Truth’’, Proceed-

ings of the Aristotelian Society 105 (2005), 321–39.

Stanley, Jason (2005): Knowledge and Practical Interests (Oxford:

Oxford University Press).1

Williamson, Timothy (2000): Knowledge and Its Limits (Oxford: Oxford

University Press).

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