The 2nd annual Interdisciplinary Approach to
Philosophical & Psychological Issues Conference

"Surprising Connections Between Knowledge and Intentional Action: The Robustness of the Epistemic Side-Effect Effect"
James Beebe
SUNY-Buffalo

Consider the following, widely endorsed theses: (i) Whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends only upon epistemic factors such as evidence or reliability. (ii) Because the target of philosophical analyses of knowledge is the ordinary person's concept of knowledge, such analyses should be answerable to data about "what the ordinary person would say" in response to various epistemological thought experiments. In a recent series of experiments my collaborators and I have found that the knowledge attributions of ordinary subjects are influenced in surprising ways by a number of non-epistemic factors. These results call into question the conjunction of (i) and (ii). Our studies reveal that the tendency of ordinary subjects to count a true belief as knowledge is influenced by the following factors: (a) the ethical goodness or badness of an action undertaken in light of the belief, (b) the aesthetic goodness or badness of such an action, (c) the prudential goodness or badness of such an action, (d) the ethical goodness or badness of the attitude the believer takes toward the action s/he performs in light of the belief, and (e) whether an action undertaken in light of the belief violates any salient social norms. Our results reveal unforeseen connections between knowledge and action in folk epistemological practice. Several prominent epistemologists (e.g., Hawthorne, Stanley, Fantl, McGrath) have recently articulated accounts of the relation between knowledge and action. Most of them are committed to (ii). None of them, however, could have predicted that evaluative properties of actions performed in light of beliefs could affect folk assessments of the epistemic status of those beliefs. Furthermore, none of them would allow that these non-epistemic factors should affect the epistemic status of those beliefs. Our experimental results thus pose a challenge to a number of projects in contemporary epistemology.