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Henne co-authored The Know-How Solution to Kraemer's Puzzle with Associate Professor of Philosophy Carlotta Pavese in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. 

The abstract of the article reads: “In certain cases, people judge that agents bring about ends intentionally but also that they do not bring about the means that brought about those ends intentionally—even though bringing about the ends and means is just as likely. We call this difference in judgments the Kraemer effect. We offer a novel explanation for this effect: a perceived difference in the extent to which agents know how to bring about the means and the ends explains the Kraemer effect. In several experiments, we replicate the Kraemer effect in a variety of non-moral and moral scenarios, and we find support for our new account. This work accords with a burgeoning area of action theory that identifies an important connection between know-how and intentionality.”

The research paper was published in Cognition, an international journal that publishes theoretical and experimental papers on the study of the mind. It covers a wide variety of subjects concerning all the different aspects of cognition, ranging from experimental studies of behavior and of the brain to formal analysis.

Henne and Pavese also co-authored Epistemic Luck, Knowledge-How, and Intentional Action with University of Florida Assistant Professor of Philosophy Bob Beddor. Their paper was published in Ergo, an open access philosophy journal covering philosophical topics and traditions. 

The abstract for their paper reads: “Epistemologists have long believed that epistemic luck undermines propositional knowledge. Action theorists have long believed that agentive luck undermines intentional action. But is there a relationship between agentive luck and epistemic luck? While agentive luck and epistemic luck have been widely thought to be independent phenomena, we argue that agentive luck has an epistemic dimension. We present several thought experiments where epistemic luck seems to undermine both knowledge-how and intentional action and we report experimental results that corroborate these judgments. We argue that these findings have implications for the role of knowledge in a theory of intentional action and for debates about the nature of knowledge-how and the significance of knowledge representation in folk psychology.”

A graduate of Lake Forest College, Henne double majored in philosophy and English literature. He researches causal and moral reasoning, the judgments associated with these reasoning processes, and the moral and political decisions that result from them.

Related Links

• Meet Assistant Professor Paul Henne ’11
• Explore the Neuroscience Program 
• Check out the Department of Philosophy