Porcelain Publishing / JHC / Volume 7 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.47297/wspjhcWSP2515-469902.20230702
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Attention and Practical Knowledge

Hao Tang1
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1 Tsinghua University, Beijing
Published: 27 November 2023
© 2023 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Practical knowledge, in the sense made famous by G. E. M. Anscombe, is “the knowledge that a man has of his intentional actions”. This knowledge is very ordinary, but philosophically it is not easy to understand. One illuminating approach is to see practical knowledge as a kind of self-knowledge or self-consciousness. I offer an enrichment of this approach, by (1) exploiting Gilbert Ryle’s discussion of heeding (that is, paying attention), in particular paying attention to one’s own intentional action, and (2) constructing and applying a practical analogue of Kant’s apperceptive “I think”. Combining (1) and (2), I offer an argument for my main claim—paying attention to what one is doing is an exercise of practical self-consciousness – it is how practical self-consciousness gets “schematized”.

Keywords
Philosophy of Mind; Action; Epistemology; Intention; Heeding; Anscombe
References

[1] Anscombe, G. E. M. 1957/63. Intention, second edition, Blackwell.

[2] Kant, Immanuel. 1781/87. Kritk der reinen Vernunft. Translated as Critique of Pure Reason, by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

[3] Ryle, G. 1949. The Concept of Mind, Hutchinson.

[4] Wittgenstein, L. 1922. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by C. K. Ogden. Kegan Paul, 1922. Alternative  translation by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961/74.4.

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Journal of Human Cognition, Electronic ISSN: 2753-5215 Print ISSN: 2515-4699, Published by Porcelain Publishing