Papers by Ian Harmon
Many philosophers of science believe that empirical psychology can contribute little to the philo... more Many philosophers of science believe that empirical psychology can contribute little to the philosophical investigation of explanations. They take this to be shown by the fact that certain explanations fail to elicit any relevant psychological events (eg, familiarity, insight, intelligibility, etc.). We report results from a study suggesting that, at least among those with extensive science training, a capacity to render an event intelligible is considered a requirement for explanation. We also investigate for whom explanations must be capable ...
Modes of Explanation, 2014
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +B... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Explanation' appears to be ambiguous between a representational-artifact, an objective, and a dox... more Explanation' appears to be ambiguous between a representational-artifact, an objective, and a doxastic sense. That the distinctions between the three are still poorly understood we regard as an impediment to progress in the philosophy of science and as a source of the field's resistance to greater integration with experimental psychology. We elucidate the overlapping contours of the three sense of 'explanation' using a variation on Powell & Horne's Semantic Integration paradigm, showing that both laypeople and scientists regard doxastic explanations as constitutive of representational-artifact, but not of objective, explanations and accuracy as closely connected to objective, but not representational-artifact, explanations.
Modes of Explanation: Affordances for Action and Prediction (eds M. Lissack and A. Graber).
Many philosophers of science believe that empirical psychology can contribute little to the philo... more Many philosophers of science believe that empirical psychology can contribute little to the philosophical investigation of explanations. They take this to be shown by the fact that certain explanations fail to elicit any relevant psychological events (e.g., familiarity, insight, intelligibility, etc.). We report results from a study suggesting that, at least among those with extensive science training, a capacity to render an event intelligible is considered a requirement for explanation. We also investigate for whom explanations must be capable of rendering events intelligible and whether or not accuracy is also viewed as a requirement.
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +B... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
The Knowledge Argument of Frank Jackson has not persuaded physicalists, but their replies have no... more The Knowledge Argument of Frank Jackson has not persuaded physicalists, but their replies have not dispelled the intuition that someone raised in a black and white environment gains genuinely new knowledge when she sees colors for the first time. In what follows, we propose an explanation of this particular kind of knowledge gain that displays it as genuinely new, but orthogonal to both physicalism and phenomenology. We argue that Mary's case is an instance of a common phenomenon in which something new is learned as the result of exploiting representational resources that were not previously exploited, and that this results in gaining genuinely new information.
Talks by Ian Harmon
Discussion of know how has focused on the debate between intellectualists and anti-intellectualis... more Discussion of know how has focused on the debate between intellectualists and anti-intellectualists. In general intellectualists hold that knowing how to φ consists in having some sort of relevant propositional knowledge regarding φ. On the other hand, anti-intellectualists hold that knowing how to φ consists in having a certain corresponding ability to φ.
A largely ignored issue comes from the fact that know how attributions can be specified to various degrees. For example, we can say “Tom knows how to throw,” or more specifically, “Tom knows how to throw a football.” While for many activities it is unproblematic to specify a subject’s know how, there are cases in which such specification is problematic, in that the specified know how attribution entails a false statement, and is thereby itself false. In this paper I explore the issue of specificity in know how attributions.
Discussion of know how has focused on the debate between intellectualists and anti-intellectualis... more Discussion of know how has focused on the debate between intellectualists and anti-intellectualists. In general intellectualists hold that knowing how to φ consists in having some sort of relevant propositional knowledge regarding φ. On the other hand, anti-intellectualists hold that knowing how to φ consists in having a certain corresponding ability to φ.
A largely ignored issue comes from the fact that know how attributions can be specified to various degrees. For example, we can say “Tom knows how to throw,” or more specifically, “Tom knows how to throw a football.” While for many activities it is unproblematic to specify a subject’s know how, there are cases in which such specification is problematic, in that the specified know how attribution entails a false statement, and is thereby itself false. In this paper I explore the issue of specificity in know how attributions.
Thesis Chapters by Ian Harmon
Epistemological Implications of Representational Pluralism, 2014
There is widespread agreement in epistemology that all knowledge is propositional. I show that th... more There is widespread agreement in epistemology that all knowledge is propositional. I show that this is a mistake. In light of this focus, our standard epistemological framework is not equipped to accommodate non-propositional knowledge. I develop a broader epistemological framework that can accommodate knowledge of this sort. I then argue that, once we appreciate the non-propositional aspects of knowledge, we have to radically revise our understanding of epistemic rationality, allowing that practical considerations will often trump purely truth-directed considerations.
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Papers by Ian Harmon
Talks by Ian Harmon
A largely ignored issue comes from the fact that know how attributions can be specified to various degrees. For example, we can say “Tom knows how to throw,” or more specifically, “Tom knows how to throw a football.” While for many activities it is unproblematic to specify a subject’s know how, there are cases in which such specification is problematic, in that the specified know how attribution entails a false statement, and is thereby itself false. In this paper I explore the issue of specificity in know how attributions.
A largely ignored issue comes from the fact that know how attributions can be specified to various degrees. For example, we can say “Tom knows how to throw,” or more specifically, “Tom knows how to throw a football.” While for many activities it is unproblematic to specify a subject’s know how, there are cases in which such specification is problematic, in that the specified know how attribution entails a false statement, and is thereby itself false. In this paper I explore the issue of specificity in know how attributions.
Thesis Chapters by Ian Harmon
A largely ignored issue comes from the fact that know how attributions can be specified to various degrees. For example, we can say “Tom knows how to throw,” or more specifically, “Tom knows how to throw a football.” While for many activities it is unproblematic to specify a subject’s know how, there are cases in which such specification is problematic, in that the specified know how attribution entails a false statement, and is thereby itself false. In this paper I explore the issue of specificity in know how attributions.
A largely ignored issue comes from the fact that know how attributions can be specified to various degrees. For example, we can say “Tom knows how to throw,” or more specifically, “Tom knows how to throw a football.” While for many activities it is unproblematic to specify a subject’s know how, there are cases in which such specification is problematic, in that the specified know how attribution entails a false statement, and is thereby itself false. In this paper I explore the issue of specificity in know how attributions.