The intellectualist strategy of appealing to the notion of a practical mode of presentation to explain the practical component of know-how faces two standard objections. According to the first, the notion of a practical mode of presentation is mysterious; according to the second, intellectualists get the order of explanation wrong when they use the practical mode of presentation to explain know-how. In the first section, after reviewing recent literature on defusing the first objection, I employ some phenomenological insights to develop (...) four lines of argument which do show that the objection does not work. In the second section, I maintain that although the current version of the second objection is not conclusive, a restricted version of it is tenable. According to this restricted version, intellectualists do indeed get the order of explanation wrong at the level of basic action. The upshot is twofold: a challenge for anti-intellectualism to make room for the well-defined notion of the practical mode of presentation, and a challenge for intellectualism to explain the practical component of know-how at the basic level. (shrink)

Inspired by Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology, I propose a position on practical knowledge that can be called the ‘know-how-first view’; yet whereas Williamson is one of the pioneers of the new intellectualism about know-how, I employ the know-how-first view to argue against intellectualism and instead develop a know-how-first version of anti-intellectualism. Williamson argues that propositional knowledge is a sui generis unanalyzable mental state that comes first in the epistemic realm; in parallel, I propose that know-how is a sui generis unanalyzable power (...) that comes first in the practical realm. To motivate this suggestion, I put forward two arguments: drawing on dispositionalist ideas, I argue that the practical component of know-how is unanalyzable; based on an investigation of the natures of intentionality and intelligence, I argue that know-how is prior to intentional and intelligent abilities in the order of explanation of agential action. Deploying this know-how-first anti-intellectualism, I then set out know-how-first solutions to two challenging problems for anti-intellectualism: the sufficiency problem and the necessary condition problem. (shrink)

An increasingly popular objection to anti-intellectualism about know-how is that there are clear cases where an agent having the dispositional ability to φ does not suffice for her knowing how to φ. Recently, Adam Carter has argued that anti-intellectualism can only rise to meet this sufficiency objection if it imposes additional constraints on know-how. He develops a revisionary anti-intellectualism, on which knowing how to φ not only entails that the agent possesses a reliable ability to φ, but also that she (...) is equipped with certain kind of intellectual grasp of the method by which she is able to reliably φ. This paper argues that Carter's revisionary know-how does not constitute an improvement over the more standard version of anti-intellectualism. Moreover, it is argued that Carter's additional demands concede too much to the intellectualist, and, as a result, commit his revised anti-intellectualism to familiar problems facing the intellectualist account of know-how. In other words, his attempts to respond to the sufficiency objection constitutes a dangerous compromise to the intellectualist. The paper finishes with a final analysis that suggests, in the end, there are still reasons to prefer standard anti-intellectualism over intellectualism. (shrink)