Juan S. Piñeros Glasscock
RESEARCH
Below you will find information about my research sorted into four categories:
Journal Publications: published and forthcoming work in refereed journals.
Other Publications: Reviews, encyclopedia entries, etc.
On hold: Projects I haven't worked on for some years, but may return to.
In the works: Projects still under development. I may have a draft version I'd be happy to share by email, depending on stage of development.
At the bottom of the page, there is a copy of my dissertation, and other non-academic work.
(For drafts, email me at jpinerosglasscock@gsu.edu).
Journal Publications
A FITTING DEFINITION OF EPISTEMIC EMOTIONS (co-written with Mike Deigan)
Short abstract: Philosophers and psychologists sometimes categorize emotions like surprise and curiosity as specifically epistemic. Is there some reasonably unified and interesting class of emotions here? If so, what unifies it? This paper proposes and defends an evaluative account of epistemic emotions: what it is to be an epistemic emotion is to have fittingness conditions that distinctively involve some epistemic evaluation. We argue that this view has significant advantages over alternative proposals and is a promising way to identify a limited and interesting class of emotions.
"The Puzzle of Learning by Doing and the Gradability of Knowledge-How" forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
Abstract: Much of our know-how is acquired through practice: we learn how to cook by cooking, how to write by writing, and how to dance by dancing. As Aristotle argues, however, this kind of learning is puzzling, since engaging in it seems to require possession of the very knowledge one seeks to obtain. After showing how a version of the puzzle arises from a set of attractive principles, I argue that the best solution is to hold that knowledge-how comes in degrees, and through practice a person gradually learns how to do something. I close by suggesting that both the standard accounts of know-how in the literature, intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, fall short of satisfactorily capturing the nature of this gradual process of learning and I present the outlines of a non-standard intellectualist view that may do so.
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"Acquittal from Knowledge Laundering" forthcoming in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.
Abstract: Subject-sensitive invariantism (SSI), the view that whether a subject knows depends on the practical stakes, has been charged with ‘knowledge laundering’: together with widely held knowledge-transmission principles, SSI appears to allow improper knowledge-acquisition. I argue that this objection fails because it depends on faulty versions of transmission principles that would raise problems for any view. When transmission principles are properly understood, they are shown to be compatible with SSI since they don’t give rise to improper knowledge acquisition. The upshot is a better understanding of the nature and structure of these transmission principles.
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"Authoritative Knowledge" forthcoming in Erkenntnis.
Abstract: This paper investigates ‘authoritative knowledge’, a neglected species of practical knowledge gained on the basis of exercising practical authority. I argue that, like perceptual knowledge, authoritative knowledge is non-inferential. I then present a broadly reliabilist account of the process by which authority yields knowledge, and use this account to address certain objections.
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(2021) "Alienation or Regress: On the Non-Inferential Character of Agential Knowledge" Philosophical Studies, vol.178, no.6, pp.1757-68.
Abstract: A central debate in philosophy of action concerns whether agential knowledge, the knowledge agents characteristically have of their own actions, is inferential. While inferentialists like Paul (2009a) hold that it is inferential, others like O’Brien (2007) and Setiya (2007, 2009, 2008) argue that it is not. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for the view that agential knowledge is non-inferential, by posing a dilemma for inferentialists: on the first horn, inferentialism is committed to holding that agents have only alienated knowledge of their own actions; on the second horn, inferentialism is caught in a vicious regress. Neither option is attractive, so inferentialism should be rejected.
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(2020) "Practical Knowledge and Luminosity" Mind, vol.129. pp.1237-67.
Abstract: Many philosophers hold that if an agent acts intentionally, she must know what she is doing. Although the scholarly consensus for many years was to reject the thesis in light of presumed counterexamples by Donald Davidson, several scholars have recently argued that attention to aspectual distinctions and the practical nature of this knowledge shows that these counterexamples fail. In this paper I defend a new objection against the thesis, one modelled after Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument. Since this argument relies on general principles about the nature of knowledge rather than on intuitions about fringe cases, the recent responses that have been given to defuse the force of Davidson’s objection are silent against it. Moreover, the argument suggests that even weaker theses connecting practical entities (e.g. basic actions, intentions, attempts, etc.) with knowledge are also false. Recent defenders of the thesis that there is a necessary connection between knowledge and intentional action are motivated by the insight that this connection is non-accidental. I close with a positive proposal to account for the non-accidentality of this link without appeal to necessary connections by drawing an extended analogy between practical and perceptual knowledge.
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(2019) "Reason in Action in Aristotle: A Reading of EE 5.12 /NE 6.12" Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol.57, no.3. pp.391-417.
Abstract: I present a reading of EE 5.12/NE 6.12 according to which Aristotle argues for an executive account of φρόνησις (practical wisdom) to show why it is useful to possess this virtue. On this account, the practically wise person's actions are expressive of his knowledge of the fine, a knowledge that only the practically wise person has. This is why he must not only be a good deliberator, but also cunning (δεινότης), able to execute his actions well. An important consequence of this reading is that the debate about whether Aristotle holds a Humean account of practical reason presupposes assumptions about the scope of rationality that Aristotle rejects.
ACTION (co-written with Sergio Tenenbaum)
Short abstract: Survey article for Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[link]
(forthcoming) "Critical Notice of Tamar Schapiro, Feeling Like It" European Journal of philosophy.
Other Publications
On hold
Some projects I may return to at some point...
Short Abstract: Defends a second-personal account of testimonial knowledge on the basis of general principles concerning the personal and direct nature of this type of knowledge. [On hold since 2019]
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Short Abstract: Defends the view that canonical causal sentences are intensional, and that this is not in tension, as has usually been thought, with the objectivity of causality. [On hold since 2017]
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In the works
THE WILL AS EPISTEMIC FACULTY
Short Abstract: To account for the spontaneity of agential knowledge I defend a 'token-level' cognitivism: the token states that constitute agential knowledge are both intentions and beliefs. To account for the directness and epistemic-wellfoundedness of agential knowledge I defend a Reidean account of warrant: as perceptions give us direct warrant to form beliefs about our envirnoment, exercises of the will give us direct warrant to form beliefs about our actions. Thus, the intentions that constitute agential knowledge are self-warranting beliefs.
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PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATIVES, PRACTICAL ANSWERS, AND THE NATURE OF SKILL
Short Abstract: I defend a novel account of the nature of skill that blends the best features from intellectualist and anti-intellectualist accounts of know-how. The central idea is that skill is the capacity to know how to do something in a particularly practical way, a way such that one can answer a question by acting (e.g. one can answer the question 'How do you cut carrot confetti?' by displaying how to cut it correctly). Like the intellectualist, I thus maintain that know-how consists in knowing answers; but like the anti-intellectualist, I hold that this is fundamentally a practical capacity. We need such an account, I argue, to understand the particular grasp that skilled agents express through what I call 'practical demonstratives': 'You do it like this' [while acting or being about to act in the relevant way].
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AGAINST COGNITIVISM ABOUT AGENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
Short Abstract: The necessary connections between practical and cognitive entities that cognitivists posit are implausible, as shown both by counterexamples and x-phi studies. Indeed, we can give a recipe that shows that cognitivism cannot escape the counterexamples, unless we claim, implausibly, that the connections are not just necessary but analytic.
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UNSAFE DISJUNCTIVISM?
Short Abstract: I present a puzzle for disjunctivism about perception, showing it to conflict with attractive epistemic principles, like safety. To solve the puzzle, we need to weaken our understanding of the 'no common factor' claim that defines disjunctivist views.
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INTENTION §45*
Short Abstract: Offers a critical interpretation of this chapter in Anscombe's book by appeal to the idea of authoritative knowledge.
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THE UNITY IN ARISTOTLE'S ACCOUNT OF PROPER AND INCIDENTAL PERCEPTION
Short Abstract: Argues for a unified account of Aristotle's view on proper and incidental perception. On this view, the most basic forms of perception are already objectual in nature (we properly perceive e.g. coloured objects rather than coloured patches), as shown by a careful study of the role that perceptual unities play in an argument in DA 3.1. Incidental perception requires only our ability to recognize by identifying and reidentifying an 'incidental object' (e.g. Diares's son) with a proper object of perception (e.g. a white, humanly-shaped thing). It is as such a genuine form of perception, rather than an act of reason, as some have thought.
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PROTEST AS SECOND-PERSONAL, SOCIAL ADDRESS
Short abstract: I argue that political protests are essentially second-personal social engagements, with their distinctive rational requirements. Because they are second-personal, they aim to give reasons that are grounded in the very act of making a claim; and because they are social, the claim takes an irreducibly plural form ('We demand that you F').
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PUZZLEMENT (co-written with Mike Deigan)
Short abstract: We argue that puzzlement is an epistemic emotion: it is an emotion that is governed by epistemic norms. You should puzzle just in case all the otherwise live answers to a question are closed.
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ON 'EPISTEMIC PARTIALITY' AND THE EXPERIENCE OF A FRIEND
Short abstract: Friendships and similar relationships make experiential demands on us: we should experience our friends 'in a good light'. I argue that this view can account for all the intuitions that support epistemic partiality (the view that friendship imposes demands on belief), but it alone can explain a deep future of friendship: how the demands of friendship can be fulfilled truthfully.
[link to Inquiry Network Handout]
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GUNS AND STEROIDS
Short abstract: Reflection on the normative structure of restrictions of drug-enhancement drugs in sports suggests that even if there were gun rights, these would have to be strongly restricted. [This is written for a broader, non-academic audience]
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Others
Dissertation
ACTION, KNOWLEDGE, AND AUTHORITY: VARIATIONS ON A REIDEAN THEME
Click here to download a copy of my dissertation.