hornsby_2005_semantic knowledge and practical knowledge (1)

April 7, 2005 Time: 04:29pm Hornsby.tex

semantic knowledge and practicalknowledge

by Jennifer Hornsby and Jason Stanley

IJennifer Hornsby

abstract The central claim is that the semantic knowledge exercisedby people when they speak is practical knowledge. The relevant idea ofpractical knowledge is explicated, applied to the case of speaking, andconnected with an idea of agents knowledge. Some defence of the claim isprovided.

W hen epistemological questions have been discussed inphilosophy of language, the focus has often been onhearers. My focus here will be with language users in their roleas speakersas agents. So I shall be taken up with some generalquestions about the relations between knowledge and agency aswell as with questions about specifically linguistic knowledge. Myidea is to bring some considerations different from those that areusually introduced to bear on the question of what it is to knowa languageor, more specifically, since this is what philosophershave mostly attended to, on the nature of knowledge ofmeaning, of so-called semantic knowledge. (I say so-called,because I doubt that semantic knowledge corresponds to anyintuitive category of knowledge. I speak of semantic knowledgein order to take a stand in a debate in epistemology thatarises when philosophers turn their attention to questions aboutmeaning.)

I claim that semantic knowledge is a sort of practicalknowledge. Here I want to explicate the claim, and to say a littlein its defence. I start with something about speakers and hearersand the sorts of thing that they are sometimes supposed to know(Section I). Then I elicit the relevant idea of practical knowledge(Section II), relate it to semantic knowledge (Section III), andconnect it with an idea of agents knowledge (Section IV). I tryto place the claim in a positive light (Section V).

imacHornsby


108 jennifer hornsby and jason stanley

IThere are (at least) two possible explanations of why, when itcomes to the epistemology, philosophers focus should often,and sometimes exclusively, have been on hearing speech.1

One explanation is that in attempting to determine the natureof linguistic meaning, it has seemed appropriate to adopt thestance of an observer of linguistic behaviour. So we find thefigure of the radical translator (Quine 1960) or interpreter(Davidson 1973) whose task is to construct a theory about thespeech of others. Neither Quine nor Davidson says that ordinaryspeakers have the knowledge which translators or interpreterscome by. But it could be that their influence, or simply thethought that we must respect the public aspect of meaning, canlead to neglecting the perspective of a speaker. Perhaps when itcomes to the epistemological questions, the agenda have beenset in the light of certain metaphysical concerns. Not that therehas to be anything wrong with this: it is obviously a goodquestion what it is for the noises language users make to havethe significance that they do.

A different explanation of why language users knowledgeis often thought about from the perspective of a hearer isthat a certain notion of meaning and a certain notion ofunderstanding are readily connected. A connection can bemade between the standing knowledge of meaning which isbrought to bear on the occasions when speech is heard andthe understanding of utterances on such occasions.2 Whenthis episodic notion of understanding is introduced, a questionabout the knowledge of L-users becomes a question about theknowledge of those who hear speech in L.

Many have answered this question by claiming that the bestexplanation of someones being in a position to understand

1. Its another question why philosophers tendency to focus on hearers should oftengo unnoticed. Theres one rather trivial explanation: speaker of L denotes someonewho speaks and is spoken to in L, so that language users are referred to as speakersand thus as if they spoke, even when they are actually thought about only in theirrole as hearers.2. Pettit 2002 puts the usually assumed connexion into doubt. I rely here on theidea that understanding is usually based in semantic knowledge, so that I neitherdispute nor face up to Pettits examples, although I think that conceiving of semanticknowledge as I do will help in accommodating them.


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what another says on occasion is that their standing knowledgeincludes knowledge of a compositional semantic theory for theirlanguage.3 Such a theoryfor English, or for Farsi, or forGerman, or . . . treats sentences of the language as composedfrom bits of vocabulary which combine with one another insemantically relevant modes. Within such a theory, for anysentence, a statement of the potential content of any of itsutterances is derivable.4 Thus the theory effects pairings betweensentences and the potential contents of utterances of them,where these pairings are derived from assignments of semanticproperties to the individual pieces of the languages vocabularyalong with axioms or rules treating their modes of combination.The claim then is sometimes that users of a language know such atheory for their language, sometimes that they know only certaintheorems of such a theory. Whatever its exact content, the claimis that ordinary users of a language have knowledge, deployed inunderstanding, of propositions that semantic theorists articulate.Now an objection to the claim is that in order for someone toknow the theorists propositions, they would need intellectualresources which are simply not needed for using their language.5It is because this objection seems to me devastating that I thinkwe need a different view of semantic knowledge.

But there is no need to raise objections to notice that so farthe claim relates only to the task of hearers. To say that certainknowledge should be imputed to someone in order to accountfor how she manages to understand anothers utterance wouldappear to say nothing about how she might manage to findsentences whose utterances have meanings suited to her ownthoughts.6 Well, the response to this might be that a speaker

3. This claim, or some variant, is found e.g. in Higginbotham 1988, 1995, Larsonand Segal 1995, Matthews 2003.4. I say potential content in order to allow that the context and the circumstances ofan utterance are determinants of what is actually said by a speaker who produces asentence on some occasion. Insofar as acknowledgement of this creates difficulties (asI think it does) for thinking that there can be a codification of what is understoodwhen an arbitrary utterance is made, the difficulties will surely encroach upon aconception of understanding as something yielded by knowledge of a theory. I shantgo into the matter of context and circumstances, then, thinking that accommodatingthem must be more problematic for my opponents than for me.5. See e.g. Soames 1987.6. Compare Chomskys response to Fodors (1983) treatment of language perceptionas a modular input system. Chomsky said We might consider supplementing



doesnt need knowledge beyond what serves for understandingsomeone elses speech, because knowledge of biconditionals(whether these be axioms or theorems) is exercised in speakingand hearing alike. But consider the two conditionals whichcompose a certain familiar biconditional belonging to a theorythat may be supposed to serve as a semantic theory for English:(A) Snow is white is true if snow is white; (B) Snow iswhite if snow is white is true. (A) might be supposed to helpanswer the question What is to be understood by an utteranceof the sentence Snow is white?; (B) might be supposed to helpanswer the question What sentence is such that an utterance ofit will be understood to say that snow is white?. So if languageusers really did need to know things like these, then it wouldseem to be (A) which served a hearer and (B) which served aspeaker.7 It then seems as if speakers needed semantic knowledgeadditional to that which hearers use. At any rate, if theoreticalknowledge is introduced in order to explain how someone canunderstand someone else, then something needs to be said aboutthe knowledge a person has in the role of speaker. Very obviouslythere is no speech to be heard unless a language is spoken. And itis evident that we need to think about speakers as well as hearersif we are to account for communicative exchange.

Davidson pointed out that a sort of communication is possiblebetween people who do not share a language: between, say,an Italian speaker who understands spoken Spanish, and aSpanish speaker who understands spoken Italian. Prima faciesuch examples might be thought to show that speaking in alanguage and understanding in that language required differentknowledge. This first reaction would surely be wrong, however.

[Fodors] picture by adding an output system, but plainly this must be linked to theinput system; we do not expect a person to speak only English and understand onlyJapanese. Chomsky, 1987, n. 10 at p. 14 in Ch. 1.7. Im not clear how my opponents actually think about this. But the fact thatspeaking is not yet accommodated shows up when knowing a semantic theory isequated (as it is e.g. in Matthews 2003) with possession of the ability to computea functiona function such as a semantic theory could be used to define, whichpairs utterances of sentences with things said. No doubt there is another computablefunctionan inverse onewhich pairs things to be said with sentences to be uttered;and no doubt this function could also be defined, and a speakers knowledge mightbe supposed to go hand in hand with an ability to compute this other function. Butan ability to compute the one function is plainly not an ability to compute the other.See Pagin, 2003.



Certainly one can distinguish between productive and receptiveabilities in a language. (In the example, the two people have, as itwere, reciprocally mismatched productive and receptive abilitiesin Spanish and Italian.) But if someone can speak intelligiblyin some language, then the language is one which, in somesense, she comprehends. Given that such comprehensionofwhat one says oneselfis integral to normal speech, somethingwould seem to provide both for making intelligible utterancesand for finding utterances intelligible. And it is this which canbe labeled semantic knowledge: in the case of any language, it isan aspect of knowing the language (of knowing English, or Farsi,or whatever). Obviously quite different abilities and faculties areneeded for speaking and for hearing speech, and obviously quitedifferent things sorts of thing must go on in speakers brainsand hearers brains. But these considerations have no tendencyto show that we should not think of knowledge of meaning assomething shared by speaker and hearer in the normal case. Theyshow only (a) that linguistic communication requires much moreof people than semantic knowledge, and (b) that there is plentywhich goes on when there is a linguistic exchange of which theparties need know nothing at all.

***Those who would impute theoretical semantic knowledge tolanguage users are not alone in tending to confine attentionto the receiver of speech. Those (like me) who take a differentview often advert to the phenomenology. Thus: when you hearutterances in a language you knowin a language that servesyou as a mother tongue ordinarily serves a person8you hearthem simply as meaning what they do: you hear the meaningin the words. This can suggest that there is no call to thinkthat you know about properties of utterances such as a semantictheory might articulate, upon which your knowledge of whatthe utterances mean is based. And so it may be said that in

8. I mean a home language in the sense of Fricker 2003. In addition to confiningmyself to home languages, I confine attention to cases where the idiosyncrasies ofparticular speakers dont interfere with communication. I think that these restrictionsdont force any departure from what has to be central in the communicative use oflanguage, and Fricker gives reasons to think this. I should need to say more thanI can here, however, if Davidsons different idea of what is central were introduced.



hearing language one exercises a perceptual capacity, and thereinhears, directly, what is said.9 With talk of a perceptual capacity,it become evident that speaking has been left out of account.10

Still, the phenomenology of hearing has a counterpart forspeaking. Just as it seems that you directly hear utterances asthe meaningful things that they are, so it seems that when youspeak you directly produce meaningful things: it seems (as I shallput it) that you directly voice your thoughts.

I think that we can discover the import of the idea thatspeakers voice their thoughts directly by thinking about speakingas a case of intentional activity. I shall take it for granted that itdoes seem to us that we are able to voice our thoughts directly.The first task is to see what in general a claim to the effectthat something is directly done amounts to. That will put usin a position to determine what it would be for this seemingto be veridical, so that there will be a little more about thephenomenology in due course.

IIWhen someone does something for a reason, they do itintentionally. And an explanation of someones intentionallydoing something11 which uncovers their motivation may advertto their desires and to beliefs they have about ways to bringabout things in line with their desires. Hence the popularity ofthe standard story, told by many philosophers, in which actionsare said to be bodily movements caused and rationalized bydesires and beliefs. Belief need not come into the account that Iwant to offer, however, because it will be enough to think about

9. See e.g. McDowell 1981, McDowell 1997, Hunter 1998, Fricker 2003. Hunter andFricker cast doubt on the connexion which is usually assumed between understandingand coming to knowledge of what is said. And Pettit 2002 casts doubt on theconnexion which is usually assumed between putative standing knowledge andunderstanding.10. Campbell 1994 argues that when understanding is treated as a perceptualcapacity, a capacity to perform speech acts is dissociated from a capacity tocomprehend them.11. Here and throughout, I rely on an ordinary understanding of this something,according to which the things people do are, as it were, as fine-grained as the thingsthat they think or know.



some central sorts of case of successful action.12 In such cases anagent who does things for reasons typically draws on knowledgeof how to do them.

A person draws on knowledge how to do something when,for instance, she takes a bus. Perhaps she has a reason to get toTrafalgar Square. In knowing the route of the 24 bus, she mayknow how to get there. Such knowledge may be thought of asprocedural. Expressions of procedural knowledge can take theform: One can ! by "-ing. There are certainly plenty of thingswe know, upon which our ability to do what we are able todo intentionally relies, which we should not formulate first offin an instance of this schema. (Were more likely to say thatshe knows which bus, where to go to get it, etc.) Again, whenit actually comes to action, knowledge of a more specific sortthan this schema conveys is evidently needed: "-ing is how Ishall now !; and there are evidently differences between knowinghow !-ing can be done and knowing how to ! oneself. Still,the one can ! by "-ing form is used here only roughly tocircumscribe a kind of knowledge which is pressed into service inaction. The fact that it can be so used shows, incidentally, thatsome knowledge quite obviously falls under the heads both ofknowledge-how (including knowledge-how-to) and knowledge-that. A claim endorsed by many influenced by Gilbert Rylethat knowledge-that and knowledge-how are disjointis clearlyfalse.13

Often an agent needs to invoke several pieces of proceduralknowledge. For one thing, even a limited goal usually takes amore than one-step procedure to achieve: if you are not alreadyat the right bus stop, then in order to get to Trafalgar Square bybus, you have to know where the bus stop is and how to get there,as well as knowing which bus to take. Even where only a one-step procedure is called for, more than one piece of proceduralknowledge may be required. Thus, to take a well-worn example,someone may know how to illuminate the roomby pressing

12. There is some diagnosis of the standard storys errors in Stout 2004. Here I cansimply set the story to one side.13. The mistake that Ryle (1949, Ch. 2) is blamed for fostering is highlighted recentlyboth in Stanley and Williamson 2001 and in Snowdon 2004. On knowledge-wh?(knowledge where or when the bus goes, knowledge which bus goes to the Square,etc.), and knowledge+inf., see also e.g. Franklin 1981 and Moore 1997.



that light switch; and know how to press that light switchbyusing their finger appropriately. Here one can ! by "-ing and onecan " by #-ing; and "-ing and #-ing will both be things an agentdoes intentionally if she exercises such knowledge of how to !.Sometimes a whole series of procedural facts needs to be knownto get something done: One can ! by "-ing and #-ing and One can" by $-ing and One can # by %-ing, and . . . (whatever). There arepotential regresses here. But it must be possible to halt them. Forwe surely do not require indefinitely much procedural knowledgein order to get anything done. Thus some thingsat the end ofthese by-chains, as it weremust be done without possessionof knowledge of procedures. These are things the agent doesdirectly. They are basic things, in one sense of that action-theoretic notion.14 They are things which we are inclined to saythe agent is able to simply do.

Now some take the view that the basic thing a person doesis always to move their body, or some part of it, in someway or other. This view can result from undertaking to locaterecognizably physical ingredients in action. But the notionof basicness I have introduced need be no part of such anundertaking. And whatever the origin of this view, it cannotbe right. Speaking provides an immediate counterexample; andthere is no need to attend to the semantic dimension of speechin order to see this. Most of us have next to no idea of how wemove the various bits of our vocal apparatus when we producethe linguistic sounds we do. We can learn something out aboutthis: we discover an extremely rough account by concentratingattention on our own mouths and tongues, and a more detailedone by learning some relevant anatomy and phonetics. But if wego in for such discoveries, then we acquire knowledge whose lackhad been no barrier to our speaking. Other examples in whichthe final link in the by-chains linking things intentionally done

14. In Hornsby 1980, I labeled a sense of basic akin to the relevant one hereteleological. When Snowdon 2004 imagines someone saying there is nothing whichis my way of doing it, I take him to be eliciting the idea of basicness relevant here.(Actually, though, one might be able to think of something as ones way of !-ingeven when !-ing is not basic in the relevant sense. Contracting ones flexor carpiradialis and other muscles is the way of moving ones forearm, and one may knowthis; but an ordinary capacity to move the forearm, even on the part of someone withthe anatomical knowledge, does not depend upon their possessing that knowledge.A different idea of more basic thanwhich I labeled causalshows up here.)



by the agent do not reach back to the body are found in caseswhere practice equips one with a skill: touch-typing, jugglingwith balls or clubs, and playing musical instruments are casesin point. And notice that even when the agents knowledge doesextend back to their body, the by-chain that records it may notstop with bodily movings, but with a bodily activity. Walkingis an example: one walks by making certain specific movementsalternately of ones left leg and foot and of ones right leg andfoot; but one does not exercise knowledge of this procedure forwalking when one walks. Learning how to walkas children do,at around thirteen monthsis surely not a matter of learningfacts about how exactly walking is done.

We now have a way of thinking about practical knowledge.Someone whose knowledge how to ! is practical is able to simply! (at least so long as it is actually possible for her to !15). Ourpractical knowledge provides for our doing all of the things andengaging in all of the activities which we do or engage in asagents. We can do, and may have reason to do, a very greatdeal more than we are able to simply do; but our doing theseother things requires procedural knowledge that we can put intopractice. Practical knowledge, when it has been learned and notforgotten, is what enables an agent to get started, as it were.

So much for the idea of practical knowledge as it informs myclaim about knowledge of language. I dont say that practicalknowledge, so understood, corresponds to any prior intuitiveidea. We may have a conception of the knowledge involvedin action; and if we do, then most likely it will subsume bothprocedural and practical knowledge in my sense, and also includeknowledge of reasons for doing thingsof why this or thatshould be done. I doubt that grammatical criteria alone canserve to mark out any recognizable prior category of practicalknowledge: some of our knowledge can be ascribed in morethan one grammatical way, and just about any knowledge,

15. The qualification is needed because even when x knows how to !, conditionsrequired for x to be able to ! may be absent. Someone may know how to say things,for instance, even when her lips are literally sealed. See Snowdon 2004 for examplesin which knowledge how to do something comes apart from ability in this way.Snowdon also gives examples of an opposite sortin which ability is present, andknowledge how is absent; these include examples in which (in my terms) the agentlacks relevant procedural knowledge.



however ascribed, might be put into practice. That is why myown characterization of procedural knowledge had to be rough,and why it was addressed to a question about what explainspeoples doing things that actually they do. The special idea ofpractical knowledge, meanwhile, was introduced by reference tothe thought that procedural knowledge comes to an end.

It seems to me quite likely that when Ryle made muchof the idea of knowing-how, he wanted to draw attentionto the fact of our having practical knowledge in my sense.This may seem surprising in view of Ryles encouragement ofthe erroneous claim that knowledge-how and knowledge-thatare disjoint. Well, Ryle was interested in a sort of knowledgewhich he took his opponents wrongly to assimilate to regularpropositional knowledge. Ryles opponents worked with amythical bifurcation of unwitnessable mental causes and theirwitnessable physical effects; and Ryle would certainly not havesubscribed to any programme of locating recognizably physicalingredients in action, nor thought of bodily movements asalways basic. I suggest that Ryle gave the label knowing howto a sort of knowledge that interested himknowledge whichdisposes its possessors to intelligent performances, but is notknowledge of procedural facts. He spoke of such knowledgeunder the heads of intelligent capacities, skills, competencesand aptitudes.16 If knowing how is taken to circumscribeknowledge attributed in a particular linguistic mode, then it doesnot pick out what interested Ryle. Ryles use of the label hascertainly been unfortunate. But my suggestion is that there wassomething that Ryle was driving at despite the unfortunate wayof putting it.17

16. Ryle did not bring abilities under the head of knowing how. Rosenfeldt 2004,defending Ryle, claims that something which can appropriately be ascribed as anability is ascribed by sentences of the form a knows how to F [on one of theirtwo readings]. This fails to record that Ryles concern was with aspects of our beingknowledgeable, and also seems wrong (see previous note). My own claimthat weshould understand practical knowledge in terms of an idea of what someone is ableto simply dodoes not assimilate practical knowledge to abilities.17. I take Rumfitt 2003, which is a response to Stanley and Williamson 2001, to besympathetic to my suggestion about Ryle, as well as to show that these authors didnot demonstrate their central claim.

Stanley and Williamson claim that all knowledge-how (including knowledge-how-to) is knowledge-that. If that were right, then in order to mark out practicalknowledge in my sense, we should need to mark out a class of distinctively practical



Ryle concentrated on activities. He included among things thatwe may know how to do: play an instrument, prune trees, tiea reef-knot, cook a meal, fish, swim, and talk grammatically.Someones knowing how to engage in activities such as thesewould seem to ensure that (all being well) the person has anability to simply do various things. But it is notable aboutmany of these examples, that engaging in the activity in questionwould also always require procedural knowledgeboth standingknowledge and knowledge got by, and responsive to, perceptionin the circumstances in which they act. For instance, when onecooks a meal, knowledge of where to locate the equipmentand ingredients, though obviously needed to cook the meal,is not provided by any culinary skill. Again, if, when pruninga tree, one realizes that one has started to cut a branch onedidnt mean to, seeing what one has mistakenly done willinform one of what to do next. These examples show that aneveryday ascription of knowledge of how to engage in someactivity typically presupposes (or perhaps imputes), as well aspractical knowledge, both procedural knowledge and a capacityfor acquiring relevant perceptual knowledge.18 It is hard to thinkof activities engagement in which by human beings requires onlypractical knowledge, although swimming in open water might bean example.

Those activities which Ryle mentioned in illustrating hisconception of knowing-how appear to be ones the normalparticipation in which makes essential use of practicalknowledge. If knowing how to engage in Rylean activities

propositions, not encompassed by the procedural in my conception of that. Well,Stanley and Williamson say that knowing how to F is knowing, of some way w, thatw is a way to F, and entertaining the proposition that w is a way to F under a practicalmode of presentation. So the suggestion might be that the propositions knowledge ofwhich is distinctively practical are some or all of those into whose content practicalmodes of presentation enter. But I doubt that this will work. (Even if there weresome proposition into whose content practical modes of presentation entered whichwas exercised whenever there was an action, knowledge of it would result frompossession of practical know-how rather than constituting it, I think.) For presentpurposes, however, it need not matter whether Stanley and Williamsons accountis accepted. My opponents here think that knowledge of meaning is knowledge oftheoretical propositionsthose, or some of those, that comprise a semantic theory.Thus they attribute to language users propositional knowledge whose contents arequite different from those which practical knowledge (in my sense) would amount toif Stanley and Williamson were right.18. Cf. Sellars 1962, p. 35.



exhausted practical knowledge, then it might be possible to definepractical knowledge using Ryles ideas. But in fact the thingsthat people are able to simply do extend beyond those activitieswhich we think of them as knowing how to engage in. (Rylesown concern was intelligent practice, so that his category ofknowing-how does not include, for instance, capacities for bodilymovement.) It seems plausible, nevertheless, that someone whois able to simply ! is someone who can ! in virtue of knowinghow to do something with respect to which she has know-howof a kind to which Ryle sought to draw attention.

IIIWe saw that, when it comes to speaking, by-chains recordingagents procedural knowledge do not reach back to the body.What the claim that knowledge of meaning is practical comesdown to now is that such by-chains need reach no further backthan the voicing of thoughts. Speakers can rely on the fact thatproducing meaningful things is something that they are able tosimply do. When a speaker says that p, there need be nothingsuch that she intentionally does it and says that p by doing it.

This elicits the force of the idea that we voice our thoughtsdirectly. Two points may help to clarify it.

Those who think that speakers know semantic theories will saythat something speakers intentionally do is produce utterances ofsentences. (We thought of a semantic theory as effecting pairingsbetween utterances of sentences and things said.) The advocateof knowledge of meaning as practical denies this. Now of courseno-one will deny that, in some sense, producing sentencescertain words in a certain orderis something that a speakerintentionally does. The conception of words which is drawn onwhen this appears undeniable is that which is in play whenit is said, about language users in the role of hearers now,that they hear the meaning in the words, or that they hearwords as meaningful. Words and sentences are then conceivedas laden with meaning, so that producing them can simply be amatter of saying something. A different conception of wordsand sentences is brought into play by those who tell us thata speakers knowledge of the propositions of semantic theoriesexplains what the speaker does. These people would employ bits



of the relevant semantic theory, cast in the meta-language inwhich such a theory is cast, in a statement of what a speakerintentionally does. Such a statement then would mention thewords, and not talk of them simply as usednot talk of theirmeaning as simply exploited, as it were. An advocate of practicalsemantic knowledge by contrast, thinks that speakers are ableto simply exploit words meanings in a setting in which othersshare their knowledge.19 Where semantic knowledge taken to bepractical, a distinction between mention and use such as thatwhich features in a semantic theory does not show up in thecontent of speakers states of mind.

The second point relates to what it is for something not tobe done intentionally. Usually the purpose in asking whethersomeone did something intentionally is to discover whether it wassomething she did unintentionally. But there can be things whicharent done intentionally and arent done unintentionally. Whensomeone is doing something for a reason, there are typicallyplenty of things they are therein doing which they dont do inconsequence of knowing a reason to do them. Consider onevariant of Anscombes example of a man operating a pump: heclicks out a particular rhythm with the pump handle, althoughproducing that rhythm was not something he meant to do.20 Herehis clicking out the rhythm can be explained by pointing out thathe is pumping water and has a reason to do pump the water.When his clicking out the rhythm is so explained, it is broughtwithin the purview of explanations that mention reasons fordoing things, but it is not seen as something he knows a reason todo. It might be that the most efficient way to pump the water wasto click out that rhythm, so that then there is actually a reason forhim to click it out. But this still would not mean that his clickingout the rhythm was to be explained by his knowing a reason todo it. Now producing utterances of sentences can similarly bebrought within the purview of explanations that mention reasonsfor doing things. And of course there is a reason to utter aparticular sentence when doing so will serve to communicatesomething one wants to. But that is not to say that utteringthe sentence (in the sense of producing those, mentioned, words)

19. On mention and use, and the distinctions slipperiness, see Moore 1986.20. Cf. Anscombe 1957, at p. 28 where she introduces the pre-intentional.



is something that is intentionally done. And nor is it to say thatit is something unintentionally done.

IVThe account of practical knowledge and these remarks aboutits application to speech have been meant to lend definitenessto the idea that we directly voice our thoughts when we speak.Voicing our thoughts is something that we are able to simply do(if not impeded). I take it for granted that this idea correspondsto our experience as speakers. What cannot be taken for granted,however, is that our experience of speaking informs us of whatknowledge we exercise as speakers. So there is more to be said. Ibelieve that further reflection on the phenomenology of speakingcan help to show why we should think of knowledge of meaningas practical.

The reason why experience falls short of showing whether pro-cedural knowledge is used in doing something is that an agentmay invoke knowledge unconsciously. We do many things inten-tionally but automaticallywithout any contemplation of thepropositions knowledge of which we use in doing them, and withno awareness of the reasoning involved. Consider an example.As you open a door, no thought about where the door handle iscrosses your mind, but you are not able to open the door unlessyou know where the handle is and know how to use it.21 Now thefact that we cannot demonstrate the absence of a piece of knowl-edge simply by pointing out that its content was not a content ofconsciousness may suggest that nothing much could be demon-strated by pointing out that we seem to simply voice our thoughtswhen we speak. This only shows how little conscious knowledgewe need in order to speak, it might be said. And someone mightmaintain that he discovers that if he reflects as he speaks, he findshimself aware that he is coming out with an utterance of a certainsentence, and tell us that he is therein aware of doing just that.

21. The example, mentioned in Stanley and Williamson 2000, is from Ginet 1975,at p. 7, where it is used to subvert an argument in Ryle. Ryle wrongly assumesthat wherever knowledge of propositions explains action, contemplation of thepropositions known precedes the action. My own argument that we shall be ledinto regresses unless we recognize practical knowledge is different from Ryles; butan evident parallel between the arguments helps to show why I treat Ryle is an ally.



It is in response to this that more needs to be said aboutthe perspective of someone who does something intentionally.And this is where a notion of agents knowledge comes in.22 Ifsomeone is doing something intentionally, then it is no accidentthat she knows that she is doing it.23 As an agent intentionallydoing something, she can know without observation that thatis what she is doing. She already knew how to !, and now,while she is !-ing, she knows that she is !-ing. So, at least, ithas been argued, and so I shall assume.24 This assumptionthata person knows that she is !-ing in virtue of the fact that sheis intentionally !-ing as a result of knowing a reason to !does not require that a person should be aware that she is !-ingif she is !-ing intentionally. Someone who is opening the doorusing the handle need no more be aware that she is using thehandle than she need consciously have thought about the handlewhen she proceeded to open the door. Nonetheless, in possessingagents knowledge, she is especially well placed to become awareof it: if she were to attend to, or to reflect upon, what she isdoing, then it is something she could find herself doing, and infinding herself doing it, she would not need to make observationsof the sort that a spectator might make.25

How does this apply to the case of speaking? If the speakerdid exercise procedural knowledge of how to voice her thoughts,then, even if the procedure were something of which she wasnot explicitly aware, she should be in a position to know of itwithout observation as she spoke. Does the phenomenologysupport this? We need to consider the case more closely. Therecan be more to its seeming to us as if we were able to simplyvoice our thoughts than its not seeming to us that we exercise

22. I use agents knowledge for a sort of knowledge that concerned Anscombe(Anscombe 1957), which, along with other sorts of knowledge, she herself calledpractical, and which, along with proprioceptive bodily knowledge, she called non-observational.23. A stronger claimthat one knows that one is !-ing if one is !-ing intentionallyis wrong in a way that need not be a distraction here. It is wrong because incases where ones capacities are tested beyond limits previously known, one maybe attempting to do something without knowing whether one is actually doing thething (which one will have done intentionally if one succeeds); cp. Hornsby 1995.24. The arguments upon which I rely are in Moran 2004 and Falvey 2001, whichboth develop themes in Anscombe.25. For the role of perception in agency, see Observation and the Will, Ch. 8 ofOShaughnessy 1980.



knowledge of how to voice our thoughts when we speak. Whenyou speak, you do not need to hear yourself speak in order toknow what thought you are voicing as you speak. (And if thereare cases about which you can correctly say I know what I thinkwhen I hear what I say, then they are cases in which you becomeacquainted simultaneously with what you think and what youare saying.) Although it certainly impedes your speaking if youcannot hear yourself speak, and it may even be that you need tohear yourself if you are to speak, still the explanation of yourpossessing knowledge of what you are saying is not that you hearyourself. Insofar as you are intentionally voicing the thought thatp, then, your knowing that this is what you are doing is not aconsequence of listening to yourself, and your knowledge is anexample of the non observational. It appears to be different ifyou learn that you are producing an utterance of a particularsentence such as a theorist describes: you do not then seem tobecome conscious of something that was part of your aim. Thefact that you have no need to hear yourself say something inorder to have knowledge that you are saying it seems to bea fact about the thought you are voicing but not about thesentence you come out with. (It is important here to distinguishthe question How do you know what you are saying? as it asksspecifically about your entitlement to knowledge and as it asksabout conditions required for knowledge.26 With speaking, aswith other activities, perception is evidently relied on in keepingtrack, and in correcting mistakes.)

There is a failure of parallel, then, between someone whofinds that it is by pressing on the handle that he is opening thedoor and someone who learns that it is by coming out with aparticular sentence that she is voicing her thought. In noticingthat he is pressing on the handle, the person opening the doorhas his attention drawn to a piece of agents knowledgetosomething that is available to him in his perspective as agent.By contrast, a person who becomes conscious of features ofher utterance which belong in a description of it that mentions

26. Such distinctions are something whose importance Tyler Burge has emphasizedin various connections. See Burge 1993 which argues that a question about whethera piece of knowledge is a priori is not a question about conditions necessary forits acquisition. And see Burge 2000 for an argument that one is a priori pro tantoentitled to rely upon comprehension of ones own thought and language.



the words she uses does not learn something available to herin her perspective as agent. So, I suggest, it seems. And ifit does seem so, then considerations about the experience ofspeaking suggest the explanation of why it should seem to usthat we voice our thoughts directly. The explanation is not thatwe are unconscious of something that we do more directly,but that voicing our thoughts is something that we are able tosimply do.

***Many philosophers wont be impressed by considerations aboutwhat we are conscious of as speakers. Believing that theoreticalsemantic knowledge belongs in one or another category of tacitknowledge, they say that we should not expect ourselves to beaware of its contents. But perhaps the introduction of somegeneral considerations about the springs of rational action willhave helped to create a doubt about whether the states they posit,relating language users to the propositions of semantic theories,can rightly be labeled states of knowledge.27

However that may be, I hope that by bringing speakinginto an account of agency Ill seem well placed to appreciatea view of language use asas Michael Dummett has saidconscious and rational activity. My final task is to suggest thatI am indeed well placed. I want to show that treating semanticknowledge as practical is fully compatible with such a view.In order for speech action to be seen as rational, there is noneed to credit speakers with meta-linguistic beliefs, or knowledgesuch as semantic theorists uncover, about words and sentences

27. Tacit knowledge is sometimes a name for what Michael Dummett callsimplicit knowledgewhich can be brought to consciousness, if not very readilyand sometimes a name for unconscious knowledge. I take the objection I mentionedin Section 1 (where n.5 is flagged) to count against the claim that ordinary speakershave implicit knowledge of semantic theories. And I believe that a tendency to thinkof the states the philosophers posit as states of unconscious knowledge should go awayif the thought that language users unconsciously know a theory adds nothing to thethought that the theory belongs in a correct account of their ability: see Anthony1997 and Weiss 2004 for arguments to this effect.

The projects of Chomskyan linguistics have nearly always been presentedas intended to answer a question about what is tacitly known by languageusers. For arguments that Chomsky has never really been concerned with thatquestion, and that philosophers have never got any mileage out of it, see Collins2004.



meaning.28 The role of compositional semantic theories in anepistemological story about language is quite different from thatattributed to them by my opponents in Section 1. (Compositionalsemantic theories play a role in answering the metaphysicalquestion noted in Section 1what is it for the noises languageusers make to have the significance that they do? But my concernhere is with the place of such theories in an account of languageusers knowledge.)29

VDummett said that knowledge of a language is not a merely orpurely practical ability.30 Something that I want to bring outin closing is that, in one dimension at least, semantic knowledgeis at the opposite end of the spectrum from capacities deservingthe description merely practical. A merely practical capacitymight be thought of as one that is minimally involved withcognitive states of mind.31 Semantic knowledgelike other kinds

28. Among my opponents here are Rumfitt 1995, Higginbotham 1995, and Heck2005[a]. In the present context I have to try to make a case against them withoutattending to their detailed claims.29. I might seem to have begged a crucial question in Section 1 by setting things upon the assumption that the idea of a compositional semantic theory can be in placewithout any settled view of the character of speakers knowledge. For it has beenheld that the explanatory ambitions of a theory of meaning [are] entirely dependentupon the permissibility of thinking of speakers of its object language as knowing thepropositions which its axioms codify (Wright 1986, p. 207, at which point Wright wasrecording how matters seemed to him to stand according to a view of Dummett, andaccording to a view which he argued Davidson was committed to). But there is plentyof evidence that an interest in compositional semantic theories is not dependent uponthinking of speakers as knowing their propositions. One sees this, for instance, bylooking at responses to the trivial semantic theories that Paul Horwich first proposedin Horwich 1999. Horwich assimilates facts about our understanding of a sentenceto facts about how a sentence .. gets its meaning from [its component words], sothat his modest view of what is involved in understanding dictates a deflationary viewabout the semantic composition of sentences. Replies to Horwich (e.g. Higginbotham2000, Pietroski 2000, Collins 2003 and Heck 2005[b]) argue that the phenomenon ofmeaning-compositionality must have an explanation of a kind that goes missing fromHorwichs trivial theories; and many of the arguments appeal simply to facts aboutlanguages which semanticists want to explain.30. See Dummett 1978, 1991, pp. 937, and Preface to 1993, pp. xxi.31. Dummett himself characterizes a capacity which is merely practical as somethingthat a person can possess without knowing whether they possess it and/or withoutknowing in any detail what it is a capacity to do. Some people find it less obviousthan Dummett does that knowing a language must automatically bring with itthe knowledge that Dummett thinks it does. The conception of a merely practical



of practical knowledge, only more so, as it wereis muchinvolved with other states of reasonable minds: it is maximallyso involved.

When Dummett denied that knowledge of language is amerely practical capacity, his point was not that knowledge ofa language is required for understanding others as well as forthe practice of speaking oneself. For Dummett, like me, takesit that something common to speaker and to hearer is at issuewhen linguistic knowledge is in question. And it is characteristicof much practical knowledge that it can serve a person both aspractitioner and observer. As Ryle said the knowledge requiredfor understanding intelligent performances of a specific kindis some degree of competence in performances of that kind.32Inasmuch as semantic knowledge of L serves L-speakers bothfor making their own intelligible utterances and for finding otherL-speakers utterances intelligible, we can think of it is an aspectof her knowing how to use L in communicationknowing howto engage in that activity.33

In connection with Ryles examples, we noticed that practicalknowledge is exercised in concert with other knowledge andabilities. This is obviously true of semantic knowledge: a wholeedifice of practical possibilities surrounds its exercise. In sayingalmost anything, a speaker draws on knowledge of the contextand the circumstances, and she relies on perception in keepingtrack. Ordinarily there is much more that a speaker intentionallydoes than say that p, and thus much more than this whichis subject to rational explanation. For one thing, a speakerdoes things for which saying that p is, in the circumstances,a procedureremind someone that q, or convey to someonethat r, or whatever. For another, she may intentionally say thatp loudly, for example, or with a Swedish accent. Some of theknowledge which cannot be brought under the semantic head but

capacity I have introduced is intended to be in the spirit of Dummetts but compatiblewith doubt on this score. My aim is only to acknowledge a constraint on an accountof knowledge of language which Dummett has emphasized.32. See discussion in Ryle 1949, pp. 5355.33. A fully effective response to the argument in Campbell mentioned at n.9 abovewould need to say more than I can here about the epistemic status of conscious statesof understanding. In attempting to deal with a question in epistemology about thespecifically semantic dimension of speech, I have had to set aside a range of questionsboth about speaking and about hearing speech.



which is exercised in speaking is itself practical. (Knowing how toaffect the volume of ones voice, and knowing how to imitate theEnglish speech of a Swedish speaker would hardly be examplesthat Ryle would have singled out as disposing possessors tointelligent performances. Still, someones knowing how to dothese things would seem not to be exhausted by their havingknowledge of procedural facts.) Now if one thought of semanticknowledge as practical knowledge but forgot that it was exercisedalong with everything else required for speaking, then one mightget the impression that explanations of a speakers actions hadto be confined to explanations of their saying whatever they do.And one might get the impression that a persons voicing herthought was a matter of her blurting something out: speakingmight seem to be something over which we lacked control.The truth of course is that it can be a matter for choice andreflection what to say and how to say it, and that a speakersattention may be occupied both in deciding what to say and inactually saying it. To appreciate this, one has to take into accounteverything that a speaker relies upon in speaking. One must notconfuse the idea that we are able to simply voice our thoughtswith the idea that voicing our thoughts is something thatwe simply do.

Norand this is now a different pointshould the idea thatwe are able to simply voice our thoughts be confused with theidea that an ability to voice our thoughts is a simple ability.Very evidently the ability is not a simple one. The ability whichsemantic knowledge equips a person with is seen as complexas soon as it is allowed that a particular speakers semanticknowledge is not marked out until at least her vocabulary isspecified. Speakers, as we say, know the meanings of individualwords. They also know the ways in which their words canbe combined in phrases and sentences of the language. Theirknowledge is productive.

If this were the whole story about the complexity of thoseabilitites of a language user which we bring under the head ofsemantic, then semantic knowledge might be assimilated to, forinstance, knowing how to play trills on the piano. A person whoknows how to do this knows which notes to play and how tostructure them. And thinking of their knowledge as comprisingpractical knowledge is compatible with recognizing that it has a



productive character of sorts: the piano player is able to suit thespeed and duration of trills and the manner of their beginningand ending to what new musical situations require. The analogymay help to show that treating knowledge of a language asinvolving practical knowledge is not an obstacle to recognizingits productive character.

But of course there is more to language users abilitiescomplexity than is revealed simply in recognizing theproductivity of linguistic knowledge. And it is here that acompositional semantic theory for a language can come into itsown: it articulates facts about the languages words and sentencewhich can be used to provide an explanation of how the users ofthe language are able to do all of the things that their semanticknowledge equips them to do.

Such a theory can also be used to convey knowledge ofsemantic facts. Suppose that you are a monolingual speaker ofEnglish who knows just a smattering of a language X. Then youmay have procedural knowledge which equips you to inform aspeaker of X of the colour of snow: you may know that youcan say that snow is white by uttering the X-sentence gobbledyg ook. Such knowledge could be got from a theory which(as I put it in Section 1) effects pairings between sentences andthe potential contents of utterances of them. Given plenty ofprocedural knowledge of this sort, you could say many otherthings to a speaker of X. And if you had enough such proceduralknowledge, then you would be in a position to use X to sayanything that a speaker of X might say using X. The knowledgethat would put you in such a position might be given to youby way of a complete compositional semantic theory for X(which, like anything else from which you can learn, would, byhypothesis, need to be stated in English).34

Now so long as you had to resort to a theory to determinewhich sentences of X you had reason to produce, you would

34. Here Ive attempted to convey the counterpart for speech of what I take Davidsonto have intended in saying that a semantic theory for a language is somethingknowledge of which would suffice for understanding the language. A difficulty,as it seems to me, with Davidsons formulation, is that if understanding is taken tobe a sort of standing knowledge, then it is arguably best thought of as a dispositionto be in the sort of conscious state which someone is in when she hears an utterancein her own language, and if understanding is taken to be that sort of consciousstate itself, then knowledge of a semantic theory evidently does not suffice for it.



surely not be able to simply voice your thoughts using thosesentences. But if you have practical semantic knowledge in alanguagethe knowledge I claim a person has with respect totheir mother tonguethen your ability to speak will not derivefrom knowledge of procedural facts. Not that you are ignorant ofprocedural semantic facts: you know, for instance, that one cansay that snow is white by uttering the sentence Snow is white.You know this, because your knowledge of English equips you torecognize the truth of One can say that snow is white by utteringthe sentence Snow is white, just as it equips you to understandutterances of Snow is white. Indeed whatever disposes someoneto understand some sentence s will dispose them equally torecognize the truth of a statement which uses their language torecord what s can be used to say (provided only that they knowwhat it is for a sentence to be usable to say something). Thus youcan be shown to have procedural knowledge, of a kind a semantictheory may be supposed to yield, in respect of any sentenceyou understand. The fact that we have such knowledge maybe an obstacle to our appreciating that we ordinarily make nouse of it.

***The foregoing remarks are meant to show how practical semanticknowledge is situated in the domain of knowledge and reason.But they do not yet display the deep connections there arebetween the fact that human beings are rational animals andthe fact that they are language users. The indispensability ofsemantic knowledge to the lives of rational beings shows up intwo ways. First, a child, in gaining the knowledge in which theacquisition of a language consists, comes to be able to thinkthings for reasons and do things for reasons. Secondly, someonewho has semantic knowledge is able to transmit and to gainknowledge. Equipped with semantic knowledge in L, one can useL to say things that one knows, and one can know from occasionto occasion what those who use L are sayingnot merely inthe sense that one can know that they are saying that p ratherthan that q, but in the sense that, in suitable circumstances, onecan learn from them that p. I suggested that we might thinkof practical knowledge as what enables us to get started. Thepractical knowledge that is semantic knowledge might be thought



of as what enables human beings to get started as thinkers, andas communicators of knowledge.35

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