Nathan Fox

Research Student

I’m a Canadian, living in Vancouver, with an MFA in musicology (York University) and an MA in philosophy (University of British Columbia). I’m presently a part-time PhD student at OU and my supervisors are Professors Carolyn Price and Alex Barber.

Earlier in my life, I made a living for periods of time as a professional musician and as a high school mathematics and physics teacher. Over the course of a number of years now, I developed an assisted living home for middle-aged disabled residents who depend on government support. However, I still gig occasionally.

Current research

The aim of my thesis, titled ‘The Environmental Complexity Thesis and the Problem of Knowledge’, is to identify application conditions of the verb ‘to know’. These application conditions are hard to discern because use-patterns of ‘know’ seem inconsistent and the mental states that control our use of ‘know’ are largely unconscious. So, I argue, one must infer them. But on what basis may we do so? I follow Edward Craig in inferring application conditions from hypotheses about the function of knowledge. If we know what role knowledge plays in our lives, we might be able to work backwards to infer the conditions under which we tend to attribute knowledge.

The question then becomes ‘what are the functions of knowledge?’ To answer that question, I turn to biological theory. Peter Godfrey-Smith’s ‘Environmental Complexity Thesis’ implies that human behaviour that is specialized for particular environments depends for its effectiveness on correctly identifying those particular environments. My hypothesis is that a function of knowledge is to identify the particular environments for which our behaviours are specialized. I think that there is a second function that also follows from biological theory. Communication is a fundamental part of human social life and produces benefits for individuals. So, a second function of knowledge is to pick out propositions that one would do well to communicate. The application conditions of ‘know’ that one may infer from these two function hypotheses predict the use-patterns of ‘know’ I’ve examined and they explained apparent inconsistencies associated with those use-patterns.