Hanks' Univocality Objection to Theories of Interrogative Content

In his paper, “The Content-Force Distinction”, Peter Hanks claims that three prominent semantic accounts of interrogatives—those of Hamblin (1973), Karttunen (1997), and Groenendijk and Stokhof (1982, 1997)—are all inadequate because they fail to preserve the univocality of “knows that” (e.g. Jones knows that Smith is tall) and “knows whether” (e.g., Jones knows whether Smith is tall). I will not examine the three accounts of interrogatives that Hanks impugns here.  Nor will I attempt to assess the various replies to Hanks’ argument that may be offered on behalf of the three approaches in order to show that they can, in fact, preserve the univocality of “knows” across cases of “knows that” and “knows whether”. Instead, I will examine Hanks’ argument directly, and challenge the assumption that the term “knows” is univocal in the way Hanks suggests.

Hanks begins by noting that the term “knows” is genuinely ambiguous when used in its acquaintance sense (e.g., “Jones knows Wilson”) and in its propositional sense (e.g., “Jones knows that Smith is tall”). This is what explains the infelicity of the following sentence:

(1)  Jones knows that Smith is tall and Wilson.  

In short, it is ambiguity of “knows” in its acquaintance and propositional senses that explains the infelicity of (1).  Hanks draws the preliminary conclusion that one cannot form a conjunction with a genuinely ambiguous use of “knows” (in the manner illustrated in (1)) without infelicity. So goes the first stage of Hanks argument.

The second stage of Hanks’ argument consists in his contention that the difference between “knows that” and “knows whether” is best conceived of as the difference between a knowledge claim that modifies indicative content and a knowledge claim that modifies interrogative content, respectively. In support of this conclusion, Hanks invites us to consider two statements:

(2) Jones knows that Smith is tall.(3) Jones knows whether Smith is tall.

It is clear that (2) and (3) have different contents.  Suppose that Jones knows that Smith is not tall. In that case, (2) would be false, while (3) would be true.  But how are we to make sense of the difference between (2) and (3).  It is tempting to view (3) as a disjunction of two knowledge claims, along the lines of (4):

(4)  Either Jones knows that Smith is tall or he knows that Smith is not tall.

On the present suggestion, “knows whether” is elliptical for a disjunction of a pair of competing “knows that” claims.

However, Hanks maintains that the above analysis of “knows whether” is unsatisfactory.  This is because the commitment to compositionality requires that we see expressions like “whether Smith is tall” as making the same semantic contribution to different sentences in which it occurs. But this requirement cannot be satisfied if we conceive of (3) along the lines of (4).  For example, consider (5):

(5)  Jones asked whether Smith is tall.

If we assume that “knows whether” statements are an elliptical treatment of a disjunction, then (given the commitment to compositionality) we would have to interpret (5) along the lines of (6):

(6)  Either Jones asks that Smith is tall or Jones asks that Smith is not tall.

But (6) is clearly infelicitous.  Hence, interpreting “knows whether” as a disjunction comes at the cost of compositionality.

According to Hanks, our best chance of making sense of (3) in a way that satisfies the compositionality requirement is to hold that the embedded expression “whether smith is tall” is an instance of interrogative content.  How we understand interrogative content will of course depend on our theory of interrogatives, which is what is under dispute in Hanks’ paper. But the basic idea is this: the expression “Jones knows whether Smith is tall” is best interpreted along the lines of “Jones knows the answer to: is Smith tall?” This is the conclusion of the second stage of Hanks argument.

In the third, and final, stage of his argument, Hanks observes that the following claim is felicitous:

(7)  Jones knows that Smith is tall and whether Wilson is married.

According to Hanks, this suggests that “knows” is not ambiguous across “knows that” and “knows whether”. 

Given that “know that” is a knowledge claim with embedded indicative content, and “know whether” is a knowledge claim with embedded interrogative content, it follows that “knows” is not ambiguous across indicative and interrogative content. Hence, Hanks concludes that those accounts of interrogative content that fail to preserve the univocality of “knows” across indicative and interrogative contents are mistaken. 

Here is a recap of all three stages of Hanks’ argument and his conclusion:

Stage 1: One cannot form a conjunction with a genuinely ambiguous use of “knows” without infelicity. 

Stage 2: “knows that” and “knows whether” correspond with knowledge claims with embedded indicative content and interrogative content, respectively.  

Stage 3: One can form a conjunction with “knows that” and “knows whether” without infelicity.  

Conclusion: Knowledge claims with embedded indicative content and embedded interrogative content do not involve a genuinely ambiguous use of “knows”.

I believe that the first stage of Hanks argument is unsound.  Consider the following sentence:

(8) Jones knows how to play the piano and that the concert is being held downtown.

(8) is no less felicitous than (7).  However, (8) features an ambiguous use of “knows”. The first conjunct is an instance of “know how” while the second conjunct is an instance of “know that”.  Or, for another example, consider (9):

(9) Jones knows how to play the piano and whether the concert is being held downtown.

(9) is also perfectly felicitous. But it too involves an ambiguous use of “knows”.  The first conjunct is an instance of “know how” and the second conjunct is an instance of “know whether”.

(8) and (9) illustrate that is possible to have a conjunction that features the ambiguous use of “knows” without infelicity. Hence, we cannot conclude from the fact that (7) is felicitous that it involves a univocal sense of “knows”.  The upshot is that it is unclear that three prominent theories of interrogative content Hanks mentions have the burden of preserving the univocality of “knows” across “knows that” and “knows how” since the claim that there is such univocality remains unestablished.

Heuer's Argument Against the Humean Theory

In his paper, “Reasons for Actions and Desires”, Ulrike Heuer attempts to cast doubt on the Humean account of practical reasons (in the sense of justificatory reasons for action). Heuer describes the Humean account as the claim that “all practical reasons are based on a person’s given motives, or desires” (p. 43).  Moreover, he takes the Humean to be committed to the following two claims:

(H1) Anything can be the object of a desire. 

(H2) Actions can be justified (at least in some rudimentary sense) by showing that they are suited to lead to the satisfaction of a desire. (p. 52)

I will put aside the question of whether the Humean is necessarily committed to (H1) and (H2) for the time being. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that she is.  This, Heuer argues, makes the Humean account susceptible to the following counterexample, due to Warren Quinn: 

Imagine that I had a disposition to turn on every radio within my reach, but not because I want to listen to music or news; as Quinn puts it: ‘Indeed, I do not turn them on in order to hear anything’. (p. 51)

The preceding case is supposed to present us with a scenario in which an agent has a desire, but in which the desire fails to justify the actions that would lead to the satisfaction of that desire.  In order to constitute a genuine counterexample to the Humean account, the Humean must be committed to saying that the agent in Quinn’s example does in fact have a desire.  In order to establish that the Humean is so committed, Heuer notes that “most Humeans rely on” a functionalist conception of desire, according to which an agent desires some end just in case she is disposed to perform actions that would lead to achieving that end (p. 51).  Since the agent in Quinn’s example satisfies the right-hand-side of the preceding biconditional, it follows that he has a desire.

One immediate problem with the preceding argument is that Heuer fails to establish that the Humean must be committed to a functionalist (or some relevantly similar) conception of desire.  He only claims that most Humeans “rely” on a functionalist conception. However, it matters little if most (or even all) Humeans rely on a functionalist conception of desire.  What Heuer needs, if he is to establish that the counterexample has force against the Humean, is that the Humean is necessarily committed to a functionalist (or some relevantly similar) conception of desire, given her other theoretical commitments. But, as we shall soon see, the Humean need not be saddled with a functionalist conception of desire.

Perhaps it is Heuer’s recognition of the above point that leads him to stress the Humean’s commitment to (H1).  The idea seems to be this: since the Humean is committed to the claim that anything can be the object of a desire, it follows that she has no basis for denying that the agent in Quinn’s example has a desire to turn on every radio within reach. If this is supposed to be Heuer’s line of argument, then it appears to rest on a mistake.  Specifically, Heuer appears to conflate two very distinct claims: the claim that (i) there is no formal constraint on the content of a desire, and the claim that  (ii) there is no formal constraint on the nature of a desire. While (H1) plausibly entails (i), it does not entail (ii).  That is to say, a Humean need not be committed to saying that every attitude that has the function of disposing an agent to act is a desire (i.e., the functionalist conception of desire). For example, a Humean may consistently subscribe to the following hybrid of a pleasure-based and action-based conception of desire:

Pleasure-Action-Hybrid View (PAH)

S desires P iff S is disposed to take whatever actions S believes necessary to bring about P, and S has this disposition in virtue of the fact that S is disposed to take pleasure in the thought that P and displeasure in the thought that not-P. 

According to PAH, an agent counts as having a desire only in those cases in which she is disposed to perform actions in a specific way; namely, in virtue of being disposed to take pleasure in the thought of the desired outcome obtaining, and displeasure in the thought of the desired outcome failing to obtain. Significantly, this is not a formal constraint on the content of a desire.  It is formal constraint on what constitutes a desire.  Admittedly, it may turn out that, as a matter of fact, a given agent may be disposed to take pleasure or displeasure in the thought of only certain outcome’s obtaining and not others. But his is an empirical and contingent matter. Not a formal one.  It remains true that, in principle, anything may be the object of desire, even if it turns out that some things seldom or never are.  Hence, PAH is perfectly consistent with (H1).

Moreover, PAH allows the Humean to adopt the following more nuanced reply to Quinn’s example.  According to PAH, the agent in Quinn’s example has a desire to turn on every radio within reach only if he is disposed to satisfy the desire in virtue of a disposition to take pleasure in the thought of every radio within reach being on and displeasure in the thought of every radio within reach being off.  But once we substitute PAH for a functionalist conception of desire, Quinn’s purported counterexample seems much less compelling.  If, on the one hand, the agent in Quinn’s example is disposed to take pleasure in thought of the radios being on, it seems less obvious that her desire to do so fails to provide her with some (even if rudimentary) justification.  After all, the fact that she is disposed to take pleasure in the thought of the radios being on does seem to provide her with some (even if rudimentary) justification for acting so as to satisfy her desire.  If, on the other hand, the agent in Quinn’s example is not disposed to take pleasure in the thought of every radio within reach being on (which seems truer to Quinn’s original intention), then the Humean may consistently deny that the agent has a desire.  She may, instead, hold that the agent merely has a pathological urge or some other motivational state distinct from desire. In short, the Humean need not be saddled with the view that all states that dispose an agent to act so as to satisfy them are genuine desires.


Finally, there seems to be a fatal flaw in the overall structure of Heuer's appropriation of Quinn's example as an argument against the Humean account. Recall, Heuer defines the Humean account as the theory of rationality according to which “all practical reasons are based on a person’s given motives, or desires” (p. 43).  The Humean is therefore committed to the claim that having a desire is a necessary condition for having a practical justification. However, the claim that all practical justification is based on desire does not entail that all desires provide practical justification.  The former specifies a necessary condition for practical justification, while the latter specifies a sufficient condition. Hence, the Humean may grant that the desire of the agent described in Quinn’s example fails to provide him with a reason.  However, it does not follow from the fact that some desires fail to provide practical justification that all desires fail to provide practical justification or that all practical justification is not based onn desire. In short, Heuer has not provided us with a valid argument against the claim that all practical justification is based on desires.

Heathwood's Disagreement Argument Against Hedonic Tone Theory

In his paper, “Desire-Based Theories of Reasons, Pleasure, and Welfare”, Chris Heathwood impugns the hedonic tone theory of pleasure in favour of an attitude-based approach.  According to the former, what makes an experience count as pleasurable is the fact that it exhibits a certain distinctive felt quality.  According to the latter, what makes an experience count as pleasurable is the fact that we desire to continue having the experience as we are experiencing it.  I find Heathwood’s overall case against the hedonic-tone theory compelling.  However, in this post, I wish to focus on his very first argument against hedonic tone theory, which I found to be less than compelling. Here is the argument in Heathwood’s own words: 

I believe the attitudinal approach to be more plausible. The cases that most clearly support it over the hedonic tone theory (the superior version of the felt-quality approach) involve sensations that some people like and others don’t, and sensations that bother some people but not others. The sound of fingernails scratching on a chalkboard is extremely unpleasant to many people, but not at all unpleasant to others. If unpleasantness is intrinsic to unpleasant sensations, as is maintained by the hedonic tone theory, then one of these groups of people has to be mistaken. If this sound really is intrinsically unpleasant, then those whom it doesn’t bother and who therefore judge it to be not at all unpleasant, are wrong. That is hard to swallow (Heathwood (2010: 91). 

Let's call the argument limned in the preceding passage the "Disagreement Argument". We may reconstruct Heathwood’s Disagreement Argument as follows:

[P1]:  The hedonic tone theory is committed to the claim that if a sensation, S, is pleasant, then S is intrinsically pleasant, and if S is unpleasant, then S is intrinsically unpleasant.

[P2]: Some sensation, S, may be found to be pleasant by some people and not found to be pleasant by others, or found to be unpleasant by some people and not found to be unpleasant by others.

[C]: The hedonic theory is committed to saying that if some sensation, S, is found to be unpleasant by some person, X, and not found to be unpleasant by some other person, Y, then either X or Y must be mistaken.

Given that it is not plausible that X or Y must be mistaken if they disagree about the unpleasantness of some sensation, S, it follows that the hedonic tone theory has implausible consequences.  

However, the defender of the hedonic tone theory may plausibly deny [P2].  Recall, Heathwood describes the hedonic tone theory as “the superior version of the felt quality approach”.  This suggests that the notion of a sensation at play in the preceding argument may be identified with the felt quality of an experience.  Moreover, if anything qualifies as subjective, then the felt quality of an experience certainly does. However, by treating a sensation (i.e., the felt quality of an experience) as something shared between different people, the preceding argument fails to take seriously their subjective quality.  Once we do, then a straightforward response to Heathwood’s argument immediately becomes apparent.  Heathwood assumes that the person who finds fingernails scratching on a chalkboard unpleasant, and one who does not, share an experience with the same felt quality.  But this is controversial, to say the least.  It seems to me that the hedonic tone theorist may consistently hold that while the felt quality of X’s experience of fingernails being dragging on a chalk board is intrinsically unpleasant, the same is not true of the felt quality of Y’s experience of fingernails being dragged on a chalk board, since the felt quality of X’s and Y’s experience are different.  This is just part of what it means to say that the felt quality of an experience is subjective.  Moreover, saying that the felt quality of an experience is subjective is not at odds with saying that it has intrinsic properties. For example, if I see a red after-image as a result of a flashbulb going off, the redness associated with the after-image is an intrinsic property of my experience, despite the fact that there is no objective red spot present and my experience of the red after-image is entirely subjective.  Hence, saying that an experience has a certain intrinsic property is consistent with saying that it is subjective. If this is right, then the hedonic tone theorist may consistently accept [P1] and yet reject [P2]. 

Furthermore, if we take the subjective character of an experience’s felt quality seriously, then [P1] should be reworded along the following lines:

[P1*]:  The hedonic tone theory is committed to the claim that if a sensation, S, is pleasant for some person, X, then S is intrinsically pleasant for X, and if S is unpleasant for X, then S is intrinsically unpleasant for X.

In short, given that the felt quality of an experience is subjective, it should always be understood as being relative to an experiencing subject.