2.1. Aquinas’ and Theophrastus’ features

Anscombe borrows from Aquinas the idea that,

Call being the cause of what it understands (rather than being derived from the objects known) ‘Aquinas’ Feature’.Footnote ⁵

Consider a piece of speculative knowledge; my knowledge that the pangolin is endangered. It is (inter alia) because the pangolin is endangered that I know that it is – my knowledge is in a certain sense a response to the fact which is its object. In this sense, my knowledge that the pangolin is endangered is ‘derived from the objects known’. This is a formal feature of all speculative knowledge, according to Anscombe.

It is standard – these days as when Intention was written – to think that all knowledge is ‘derived from the objects known’. But Anscombe thinks this is a mistake (57). Practical knowledge, she thinks, works differently. Take my practical knowledge that I’m (intentionally) drinking my coffee. Here, it seems that it is because I know that I am intentionally drinking my coffee that I am indeed doing so: were I drinking my coffee unawares, I would not be doing so intentionally. (Although of course I may still be doing so, if e.g. I think I’m drinking yours instead.) Here, the object of my knowledge – the fact that I am intentionally drinking my coffee – seems to be dependent on my knowing it. In this sense, my knowledge that I am drinking my coffee is ‘the cause of what it understands’.Footnote ⁶ Anscombe suggests that all practical knowledge shares this feature.

A second formal feature Anscombe thinks characterises practical (and not speculative) knowledge, is introduced in the following passage:

In such cases,

Because knowledge is factive, it will always be undermined by a mismatch between judgement and fact: such a mismatch will amount to a mistake, failure, error (etc.) for someone aiming at knowledge. We are used to thinking of a fact-judgement mismatch as embodying a mistaken judgment: if Jenni thinks the pangolin is prospering, she thinks wrongly, because the pangolin is endangered.

The idea in the passages above is that this is not the only way in which a fact-judgement mismatch might embody a knowledge-undermining mistake. A mismatch between one’s judgement and the facts might, instead, embody a mistake in what one did. It will involve this, thinks Anscombe, just when one was attempting to do something intentionally, and so, just when the knowledge one was aiming at is practical knowledge. If I think I’m drinking my coffee, but am in fact drinking yours, the problem is with what I’m doing, and what I’m doing is wrong precisely because it mismatches with what I took myself to be doing, viz. drinking my coffee. There is a knowledge-undermining fact-judgement mismatch here, but the mistake is with my performance, not with my judgement.

This shows up in the fact that when you tell me that it’s your coffee I’m drinking, and not mine, I will (typically) not simply change my mind about whose coffee I am drinking and carry on, but will put down your cup and pick up my own (cf. 56-57). What I am doing in such a case is adjusting my behaviour to match up to the persisting judgement, ‘I’m drinking my coffee’. It is because I take drinking my coffee to be what I’m up to that it makes sense for me to put your cup down, and pick up my own, thus getting my performance to match up to my judgement about what I am doing.Footnote ⁷

Anscombe attributes the distinction between the above two ways in which a fact-judgement mismatch can be normatively assessed to Theophrastus (5, 82). So I will refer to this second formal characteristic of practical knowledge – being undermined by a mistaken performance rather than (as in speculative knowledge) by a mistaken judgement – as ‘Theophrastus’ Feature’.

2.2. Why Aquinas’ and Theophrastus’ features?

Anscombe’s characterisation of practical knowledge as displaying Aquinas’ and Theophrastus’ Features might seem odd or obscure. It has certainly proved controversial, Footnote ⁸ which should be no surprise, for Anscombe herself accepts that her suggestion is at odds with the orthodox epistemological assumptions of ‘modern philosophy’. Indeed, she considers such assumptions responsible for deep misunderstandings about practical knowledge (57).

Part of what requires understanding about practical knowledge is why it should be first-person authoritative and apparently epistemically ungrounded in evidence or perception (why it should be a kind of ‘non-observational’ knowledge). Seeing practical knowledge as distinguished by Aquinas’ and Theophrastus’ Features has significant explanatory power in this context, as I will explain.

We can think of practical knowledge’s first-person authority as an epistemic privilege enjoyed by an agent, in comparison to others, in relation to the fact that she is intentionally φ-ing. And just such a privilege would follow if practical knowledge displayed Aquinas’ Feature: if the fact that I am intentionally drinking my coffee depends on my knowing that I am, then my epistemic relationship to this fact is clearly privileged compared to anyone else’s.

One way of bringing out the fact that practical knowledge appears evidentially and perceptually ungrounded is to note that it seems out of place to ask someone who is intentionally φ-ing what her evidence is for thinking that she is, and that someone who knows that she is φ-ing only because she (e.g.) visually notices herself φ-ing, seems to be someone who is precisely not φ-ing intentionally (cf. 14). Yet despite appearing to be epistemically ungrounded, we accept that people’s judgements about what they are intentionally doing can and do constitute genuine knowledge.

The standard response to such observations is to try to describe ‘hidden’ epistemic grounds for practical knowledge, and explain away its ungroundedness as merely apparent (see e.g. Donnellan [Reference Donnellan1963], Velleman [Reference Velleman1989], O’Brien [Reference O’Brien, Roessler and Eilan2003], Pickard [Reference Pickard2004], Setiya [Reference Setiya2008, Reference Setiya2009], Paul [Reference Paul2009]). But Anscombe’s account enables us to save the commonsense appearances. Both Aquinas’ and Theophrastus’ features play a role here.

First, displaying Theophrastus’ Feature would mean that practical knowledge does not need epistemic grounds. For – to speak metaphorically – the role of evidence, perception (etc.) is to guide one’s judgement in the direction of the facts. And this will be necessary only for judgements which require such guidance. And whilst – for Anscombe – this is the case in speculative knowledge, in practical knowledge, it is the performance’s job to match up with the judgement. So whilst (e.g.) vision may help me get my performance in line with my judgement that I am drinking coffee, it is not here providing me with an epistemic ground for this judgement. It is not playing the same kind of role in my practical knowledge that I am drinking my coffee as it might play in my (speculative) knowledge that (e.g.) you are drinking your coffee (50, 82).

Second, Aquinas’ Feature explains why practical knowledge could not be – specifically – perceptually grounded. For although we often can (e.g.) see what our limbs are doing, and the ways they affect our surroundings, perception can only take in facts which are there to be taken in independently of it. Perception is able to ground speculative knowledge, which is ‘derived from the objects known’, but it could not ground practical knowledge, understood as ‘the cause of what it understands’.

Fully defending Anscombe’s controversial characterisation of practical knowledge in terms of Aquinas’ and Theophrastus’ features is beyond the scope of my discussion, but I hope to have clarified a key motivation for the account: commonsense sees practical knowledge as differing to much ordinary empirical knowledge in being first-person authoritative and in seeming epistemically ungrounded. And knowledge with Aquinas’ and Theophrastus’ Features would display these very characteristics.

2.3. Practical knowledge as knowledge ‘in intention’

So whilst controversial, Anscombe’s account of practical knowledge as characterised by Aquinas’ and Theophrastus’ Features has significant explanatory power, and allows us to save the commonsense appearances when it comes to its first-person authority and epistemic ungroundedness. Now, I want to explain why someone who agrees that we should see practical knowledge as characterised by Aquinas’ and Theophrastus’ Features ought to think of practical knowledge as involving intention analogously to how speculative knowledge involves belief.

I take it that the idea that knowledge in some sense involves belief is familiar, even if in need of clarification. I will provide a clarification in Section 3.1, but for now, we can draw on this familiar idea in understanding the more general idea of a bit of knowledge ‘involving’ a psychological state, and the suggestion I want to make that practical knowledge ‘involves’ intention rather than belief.

Consider first how thinking of practical knowledge as involving intention rather than belief explains why it displays Aquinas’ Feature.

The fact that practical knowledge displays Aquinas’ Feature means that the descriptions under which one is acting intentionally are determined by the contents of one’s practical knowledge.Footnote ⁹ And it is the contents of the intentions one is executing which determine the descriptions under which one is acting intentionally.Footnote ¹⁰ I might be drinking my coffee intentionally, and in so doing also sloshing it out of the cup, but not doing this intentionally, because whilst in acting I am executing an intention to drink my coffee, I am not executing an intention to slosh it. If my practical knowledge involves my intentions, and my intentions determine the descriptions under which I am acting intentionally, it should be no surprise that the descriptions under which I am acting intentionally would be determined by the contents of my practical knowledge.

By contrast, thinking of practical knowledge as, like speculative knowledge, involving belief leaves Aquinas’ Feature unexplained. For say I know both that I am drinking my coffee, and that I am sloshing it. If my knowledge that I am doing both of these things is equally belief-involving, then it remains to be explained why my knowledge that I am drinking my coffee is ‘the cause of what it understands’, whereas my knowledge that I am sloshing it out of the cup is ‘derived from the objects known’. The point is not that it is impossible to provide this explanation whilst holding that both my (practical) knowledge that I am drinking my coffee and my (speculative) knowledge that I am sloshing it equally involve my beliefs. It is rather that, as described above, Aquinas’ Feature simply falls out of an account of practical knowledge as involving intention rather than belief.

Let’s turn to considering how thinking of practical knowledge as involving intention rather than belief explains why it should display Theophrastus’ Feature.

In displaying Theophrastus’ Feature, practical knowledge is undermined by a mistaken performance, where it is the agent’s judgement which sets the standard against which a performance will count as successful, or mistaken.

Seeing practical knowledge as involving intention rather than belief explains this because of the kind of attitude intention is: intentions set standards on performance where beliefs, by contrast, have standards set for them by how things are with the facts.Footnote ¹¹ When I judge ‘I am drinking my coffee’, but am in fact drinking yours, my mistake is a mistake in performance precisely because drinking my coffee is what I intend to be doing. If we think of my judgement ‘I am drinking my coffee’ as an intention rather than a belief, it is easy to see how a fact-judgement mismatch could embody a mistake in performance and not in judgment.

This point also undermines a certain kind of criticism of Anscombe’s characterisation of practical knowledge as displaying Theophrastus’ feature, viz. that in knowing, a person’s judgement must be answerable to the facts (see e.g. Newstead [Reference Newstead and Stephen2006, 193]). This criticism would stick if practical knowledge were belief-involving, for it is indeed hard to see how a belief which mismatches with the facts it aims to capture could be anything other than mistaken, and hard too, to see how someone’s action could possibly be answerable to how she believes she is acting.

But if the psychological attitudes (judgements) involved in practical knowledge are not beliefs, but intentions, this objection is misplaced, and it is easy to see how practical knowledge could display Theophrastus’ Feature. The trick is to understand Anscombe as using the expression ‘judgment’ neutrally between ‘intention’ and ‘belief’ – the ‘judgment’ involved in speculative knowledge is belief; the ‘judgment’ involved in practical knowledge is intention. (It is notable, on my interpretation, that Anscombe never uses the expression ‘belief’ to pick out the judgements relevant to practical knowledge.)

I have been arguing that seeing practical knowledge as involving intention analogously to how speculative knowledge involves belief best explains why practical knowledge would – unlike speculative knowledge – display Aquinas’ and Theophrastus’ Features. But isn’t there still a worry here?

For we might accept that practical knowledge would display Theophrastus’ and Aquinas’ Features if it involved intention rather than belief, but fail to understand how a kind of knowledge could possibly involve intention rather than belief. For as I noted in my introduction, philosophical orthodoxy has it that knowing always and per se involves believing, and so cannot – instead – involve intending. From the perspective of the Belief Account of knowledge, Anscombe’s account of practical knowledge is a non-starter.

The Belief Account is the orthodox general account of knowledge, but it is not the only plausible general account of knowledge. In the next section, I will outline an alternative Ability Account of knowledge and, using this as a starting-point, develop a framework within which we can make sense of the idea that knowledge might come in an intention-involving (practical) as well as a belief-involving (speculative) form.

3.1. Introducing the ability account

It is becoming relatively common to take the failure (or the lack of obvious success) of the project of defining knowledge in terms of true belief meeting some further epistemic condition to show that the concept of knowledge is unanalysable (e.g. Williamson [Reference Williamson2000, 4]). John Hyman draws a different conclusion, that we should move away from thinking of knowledge as a kind of state – as a species of belief – and towards thinking of it as a kind of ability (Hyman Reference Hyman2006, 901).

Defining abilities involves describing how they are expressed, and as Hyman points out, it is relatively easy to describe how knowledge gets expressed: we express our knowledge when we use the facts we know as reasons. More precisely,

The list, ‘doing, believing, wanting or doubting’ is suggestive rather than exhaustive:

My knowing that the pangolin is endangered, for instance, is my being able to use the fact that the pangolin is endangered as a reason for doing anything which can be done for reasons; for donating money to the WWF, for believing I will find ‘pangolin’ on a list of endangered species, for doubting I will ever see one in the wild – but also for feeling sad, for hoping the authorities clamp down on poaching, for telling you not to eat pangolin meat, and so on. Call this the Ability Account of knowledge.

It would distract from my line of thought to fully defend the Ability Account in detail, but it is nonetheless useful to outline one central motivation for adopting it, which is independent of its capacity to make sense of practical knowledge. This concerns how well the account deals with Gettier cases.Footnote ¹³ Consider the following, borrowed by Hyman (Reference Hyman1999, 447) from Jonathan Dancy (Reference Dancy1985, 25):

Re-run

Hyman asks us to imagine, further, that ‘Henry, recalling that his brother backed McEnroe and stood to win £100, infers that his brother has won £100’ (Hyman Reference Hyman1999, 447). If knowing that p is being able to use the fact that p as a reason, then Henry, who ex hypothesi does not know that McEnroe is this year’s Wimbledon champion, should not be able to use this fact as a reason for believing (inferring) that his brother has won £100.

And indeed, it does seem wrong to say that the fact that McEnroe is this year’s champion is Henry’s reason for believing that his brother has won £100. Henry did not believe his brother had won £100 because McEnroe is this year’s champion but because he believed that McEnroe is this year’s champion. This is so even though it is a fact that McEnroe is this year’s champion. We can test our intuitions by considering what Henry would say if he found out that he’d been Gettiered: whilst it would seem fine for him to say ‘I thought my brother had won £100 because I thought (or believed) that McEnroe was this year’s champion’, it doesn’t seem right for him to say ‘I thought my brother had won £100 because McEnroe is this year’s champion’ (Hyman Reference Hyman1999, 448; Reference Hyman2006, 905).

Its ability to deal so well with Gettier-type cases gives us some independent reason for accepting Hyman’s Ability Account. And whilst the Belief Account doesn’t stand a chance of accommodating Anscombe’s distinction between practical and speculative knowledge (understood as in Section 2), the Ability Account does. Let’s turn to seeing how.

3.2. Knowing as ‘involving’ a mental state: ability and ground

I said in Section 2 that we should see Anscombe’s distinction between speculative and practical knowledge as a distinction between knowledge which involves belief, and knowledge which involves intention. Let’s consider how to understand the relevant sense of ‘involvement’, starting with the case of speculative knowledge.

I know that the pangolin is endangered. What is the relationship between this knowledge and my belief that the pangolin is endangered? In some sense, we have already said, my knowledge seems to ‘involve’ my belief that the pangolin is endangered, but in what sense?

On Hyman’s view, my knowledge is my ability to use the fact that the pangolin is endangered as a reason – as a reason for feeling sad, for telling you not to eat pangolin meat, and so on. Now, when we can talk of an ability, we can often also talk of what grounds or underwrites that ability. A bird’s ability to fly, for example, is (at least partly) underwritten by, or grounded in, her physiological constitution: it is (in part) in virtue of her physiological constitution that she can fly. My ability to speak basic French is (partly) underwritten by, or grounded in, my understanding of certain French terms and expressions: it is (in part) in virtue of my understanding of these terms and expressions that I can speak basic French.

The idea of an ability’s being underwritten or grounded is familiar from commonsense, and I think it can provide a useful way of understanding how my knowledge that the pangolin is endangered – understood as an ability – involves my belief that it is. The idea is that the relationship between the ability that is my knowledge that the pangolin is endangered, and the state that is my (true) belief that the pangolin is endangered, is just an instance of this relationship between an ability and what underwrites or grounds it. My ability to use the fact that the pangolin is endangered as a reason is (at least partially) underwritten by, or grounded in, my belief that it is endangered: it is (in part) in virtue of the fact that I believe that it is endangered that I know that it is (I will elaborate on this idea in Section 3.3).

Clearly, for this idea to work, more needs to be said about the commonsense distinction and relationship between an ability and what underwrites or grounds it. There is not room to do this in any detail here, but I do want to make a few comments about this project before moving on.

First, the idea that (speculative) knowledge that p is grounded in or underwritten by a belief that p is supposed to be compatible with a non-reductionist or knowledge-first epistemological approach.Footnote ¹⁴ That is, it is supposed to be compatible with there being no specification of the conditions in which a belief in a fact will underwrite the ability to use that fact as a reason, which is both universal (captures all cases) and non-circular (can be stated without using the concepts of knowledge or ability to use a fact as a reason). This constrains how we should understand the ability/ground relationship.

Second, I take it that I am allowed to exploit the idea that abilities can have what I am calling ‘grounds’ without delving into the detailed metaphysics of grounding.Footnote ¹⁵ ‘The’ grounding relationship which has attracted so much attention in recent years – I’ll call it ‘ontological grounding’ – is ordinarily thought of as having features which what I am referring to as ‘what grounds (or underwrites) an ability’ does not.

Most obvious, perhaps – and related to the constraint described above – is the idea that if A ontologically grounds B, then A is more ontologically fundamental than B (see e.g. Bliss and Trogdon [Reference Bliss and Kelly2014, esp. Section 6.2]).Footnote ¹⁶ Thinking of my belief that the pangolin is endangered as the ontological ground of my knowledge that it is endangered would plausibly be in tension with a knowledge-first (speculative) epistemology, according to which belief is to be understood in terms of (speculative) knowledge and not vice-versa. And I at least want my account to leave room for such an approach.

Is it ad hoc to help myself to a notion of what grounds or underwrites an ability which looks so different to the notion of an ontological ground? No, for there does seem to be a commonsense distinction between ability and ground which lacks the entailment to relative ontological fundamentality. It doesn’t seem plausible to me that (e.g.) my understanding of certain French terms and expressions is more ontologically fundamental than my ability to speak basic French. It’s hard to understand exactly what such a claim would amount to, and it would be methodologically askew to insist that my understanding of those terms and expressions must be more fundamental than my ability because we are apt to see the latter as grounded in or underwritten by the former. The philosophy of ontological grounding is a highly theoretical pursuit, so we can’t assume that whenever we use the word ‘ground’ in natural language, we’re expressing the same concept with which those interested in what I have been calling ‘ontological grounding’ are concerned.

Second, it has been argued that we may need more than one notion of ontological grounding (Wilson Reference Wilson2014; Koslicki Reference Koslicki, Karen and Dean2015), in which case it might turn out that one emerges which fits with the commonsense notion I have roughly outlined. If it does, we will be able to apply it to the knowledge case. If not, then what the ontological grounders are interested in will turn out to be distinct from the commonsense relation I am interested in, despite their sharing a label. And this is something I have just suggested isn’t a problem for the project I am outlining.

Either way, although there is more work to be done in elucidating the ability/ground relationship I have in mind, I don’t see any reason to think this can’t be done in a way that meets the constraints I have outlined in this section. For now, I will carry on using the word ‘ground’ to refer to what underwrites an ability.

3.3. Why belief grounds speculative knowledge, and intention grounds practical knowledge

This section outlines two considerations which make it plausible to think that my ability to use the fact that the pangolin is endangered as a reason, is underwritten by my belief that the pangolin is endangered, and argues that parallel considerations support the conclusion that my ability to use the fact that I am intentionally φ-ing as a reason is plausibly underwritten by my intention to φ.

The first consideration is that when I express my knowledge that the pangolin is endangered, I seem to do so by expressing my belief that it is. Say you ask why I am feeling sad, and I say ‘Because the pangolin is endangered’ (something I’ve only just found out, perhaps). Stipulate that I am herein expressing knowledge. In expressing this knowledge, I represent myself as able to use the fact that the pangolin is endangered as a reason (because I suggest that I have used it as a reason – for feeling sad). Why also think I am doing so by expressing my belief?

One reason is that my assertion, ‘… the pangolin is endangered’ seems to be subject to kinds of interrogation which are appropriate to expressions of belief but not to expressions of knowledge. You can ask me ‘Why do you think (or: what's your reason for thinking) that?’, or, ‘Are you sure?’, or ‘How sure are you?’ We don’t ask questions like this in response to assertions qua expressions of knowledge.Footnote ¹⁷ It is not appropriate to ask someone qua p-knower how sure they are that p. And whilst we might ask someone, ‘How do you know that?’, this is a different question to ‘Why do you think that?’ A ‘How?’ question asks for an explanatory reason, a ‘Why?’ question for a normative reason: the questions have different senses. We ask for normative reasons for believing but not for knowing. If my assertion ‘… the pangolin is endangered’ can be interrogated in the ways appropriate to belief but not appropriate to knowledge (as well as being able to be interrogated in the ways appropriate to knowledge, of course), this suggests that it expresses belief as well as knowledge. This is one reason why it seems plausible to think of my knowledge that the pangolin is endangered as involving my belief that it is.

Consider now a bit of knowledge of intentional action – my knowledge that I am going to the bar, say. Parallel considerations motivate thinking of this knowledge as involving my intention to go to the bar. Say Alexander asks why I am checking my wallet, and I respond, ‘Because I am going to the bar’. Stipulate that in so doing I express knowledge.

In expressing this knowledge, I represent myself as able to use the fact that I am going to the bar as a reason (because I represent myself as having used it as a reason – for checking my wallet). But here, I seem to express my knowledge by expressing, not a belief that I am going to the bar, but my intention to go to there.

This requires a little explanation and defence, for which we can initially turn back to Anscombe.

Anscombe describes an important truism about the way in which expressions of intention differ from expressions of belief:

This truism gives us a test for when a ‘description of something future in which the speaker is some sort of agent’ expresses an intention. And, applying the test, it seems that I would justify my statement ‘… I am going to the bar’ in this way, if confronted with ‘Why?’, saying, perhaps, ‘I want another drink and I owe Alexander one too’. Saying this doesn’t give a reason for believing I will go to the bar, but a reason for going there, suggesting that I express my knowledge that I am going to the bar by expressing my intention to go there, not by expressing a belief that I am going there.

The second commonsense consideration which seems to underwrite the intuition that my knowledge that the pangolin is endangered involves my belief that it is, stems from thinking about cases where a person fails to know. As is often observed, and as Hyman highlights, ‘I believed that p’ is what a person retreats to after accepting that she did not know that p (Hyman Reference Hyman1999, 445). Were I provided with new – and persuasive – evidence against thinking that the pangolin is endangered, I might respond by saying ‘Oh. Well I thought (believed) it was endangered – all the evidence seemed to point to that. I guess I was missing some crucial information’.

Timothy Williamson suggests that a case in which a person’s attempt at knowledge fails, is a case in which ‘[their] mind is maladapted to [the] world’, resulting in ‘a residue of belief’ (Reference Williamson2000, 1; see also Williamson, Reference Williamson, Carter, Gordon and Jarvisforthcoming). On the view I am pressing, on which practical knowledge involves intention analogously to how speculative knowledge involves belief, this is only half-right: a residue of belief will be left when a person fails of speculative knowledge, but when a person fails to know what she is intentionally doing – when she fails of practical knowledge – the residue left over will not be belief but intention.

If I am right about this, then we should expect a person who fails to know what she is intentionally doing not to retreat to a claim about what she believed she was doing, but to a claim about what she intended. And indeed this is just what we find. Imagine that on my way to the bar, I bump into Ellisif, my housemate, who is off home. We get chatting and I end up, absent-minded as I am, walking home with her. Alexander calls up: ‘Where are you? – You said you were going to go to the bar but you’ve disappeared!’ I can’t sensibly retreat to ‘Oh. Well I thought (believed) I was going to the bar. All the evidence seemed to point to that – I guess I was missing some crucial information’. Instead, I will retreat to something like ‘Sorry, I meant to (intended to) go there – I was going to buy you a drink … I just, sort of, forgot’. Hardly a good excuse, but true nonetheless.

To sum up, it is plausible to say that speculative knowledge is underwritten by belief, because first, we seem to express speculative knowledge by expressing beliefs, and second, failures of speculative knowledge leave a ‘residue’ of belief. Analogous considerations, applied to our knowledge of our intentional actions, suggest that this knowledge is underwritten not by belief but by intention.

The picture which results from merging Anscombe’s and Hyman’s epistemologies is a two-tier account of knowledge as a genus containing two species. Hyman’s Ability Account of knowledge gives us the genus, and Anscombe’s distinction between practical and speculative knowledge (understood as an intention-involving and a belief-involving kind of knowledge) gives us the species. I have fleshed this idea out by exploiting a general distinction between an ability and what grounds it, and by showing that it is plausible that whereas in speculative knowledge, the knowledge-ability is grounded in belief, in practical knowledge it is grounded in intention.