The frame problem was originally a problem for Artificial Intelligence, but philosophers have interpreted it as an epistemological problem for human cognition. As a result of this reinterpretation, however, specifying the frame problem has become a difficult task. To get a better idea of what the frame problem is, how it gives rise to more general problems of relevance, and how deep these problems run, I expound six guises of the frame problem. I then assess some proposed heuristic solutions to (...) the frame problem; I show that these proposals misunderstand, and fail to address, an important aspect of the frame problem. Finally, I argue that though human cognition does not solve the frame problem in its epistemological guise, human cognition avoids some of the epistemological worries. (shrink)

Is there a successful regress argument against intellectualism? In this article I defend the negative answer. I begin by defending Stanley and Williamson's (2001) critique of the contemplation regress against Noë (2005). I then identify a new argument – the employment regress – that is designed to succeed where the contemplation regress fails, and which I take to be the most basic and plausible form of a regress argument against intellectualism. However, I argue that the employment regress still fails. Drawing (...) on the previous discussion, I criticise further regress arguments given by Hetherington (2006) and Noë (2005). (shrink)

One of the main challenges in the philosophy of language is determining the form of knowledge of the rules of language. Michael Dummett has put forth the view that knowledge of the rules of language is a kind of implicit knowledge; some philosophers have mistakenly conceived of this type of knowledge as a kind of knowledge-that . In a recent paper in this journal, Patricia Hanna argues against Dummett’s knowledge-that view and proposes instead a knowledge-how view in which knowledge of (...) the rules of language is a kind of practical knowledge, like an agent’s non-propositional knowledge of counting. In this paper I argue, first, that Hanna misunderstands Dummett’s conception of knowledge of linguistic rules, and, second, that Dummett’s considerations of practical knowledge of language pose a problem for Hanna’s knowledge-how view. At the end of the paper, I briefly sketch an account of practical knowledge of language that meets the requirements set by Dummett. (shrink)

In recent times, Evans’ idea that mental states could have non-conceptual contents has been attacked. McDowell (Mind and World, 1994) and Brewer (Perception and reason, 1999) have both argued that that notion does not have any epistemological role because notions such as justification or evidential support, that might relate mental contents to each other, must be framed in conceptual terms. On his side, Brewer has argued that instead of non-conceptual content we should consider demonstrative concepts that have the same fine (...) grainess of non-conceptual contents while having conceptual structure. In what follows I will argue that, first, that the notion of demonstrative concept is not viable and, second, that there is an epistemological role for non-conceptual content. (shrink)

It has been claimed that the attempt to analyze know-how in terms of propositional knowledge over-intellectualizes the mind. Exploiting the methods of so-called “experimental philosophy”, we show that the charge of over-intellectualization is baseless. Contra neo-Ryleans, who analyze know-how in terms of ability, the concrete-case judgments of ordinary folk are most consistent with the view that there exists a set of correct necessary and sufficient conditions for know-how that does not invoke ability, but rather a certain sort of propositional knowledge. (...) To the extent that one’s considered judgments agree with those of the folk (or to the extent that one is unwilling to contravene widespread judgments), this constitutes a strong prima facie case against neo-Ryleanism. (shrink)

It is widely believed that an agent can be morally responsible for something only if they were able to do otherwise. But what kind of ability to do otherwise is needed? Despite the obvious disagreements, incompatibilist and compatibilist leeway theorists tend to agree that, at the very least, an agent needs the ‘general’ ability to do otherwise. Cyr and Swenson [Cyr, T. W., and P. Swenson. 2019. “Moral Responsibility Without General Ability.” The Philosophical Quarterly 69/274: 22–40. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqy034.] offer a series (...) of putative counterexamples to this thesis. Using their discussion as a jumping off point, I distinguish between two ways in which an ability can be general. I argue that these two types of generality – and the corresponding types of non-generality – are orthogonal and that therefore the question ‘Does moral responsibility require the general ability to do otherwise?’ needs precisifying. In failing to distinguish the two types of generality, Cyr and Swenson’s discussion comes to erroneous conclusions. I show that the ability to do otherwise only needs to be general in one of the ways identified. I also argue that the granularity of description employed in characterising the ability to do otherwise and the granularity of description employed in ascribing responsibility need not match in order for an agent to be morally responsible. (shrink)

Knowledge, like other things of value, can be faked. According to Hawley (2011), know-how is harder to fake than knowledge-that, given that merely apparent propositional knowledge is in general more resilient to our attempts at successful detection than are corresponding attempts to fake know-how. While Hawley’s reasoning for a kind of detection resilience asymmetry between know-how and know-that looks initially plausible, it should ultimately be resisted. In showing why, we outline different ways in which know-how can be faked even when (...) a given performance is successful; and in doing so, we distinguish how know-how can be faked (no less than know-that) via upstream and downstream indicators of its presence, and within each of these categories, we’ll distinguish (in connection with detection resilience) both faking symptoms and (various kinds of) criteria. The unappreciated resilience of faked knowledge-how to successful detection highlights a largely overlooked dimension of social-epistemic risk – risk we face not just in our capacity as recipients of testimony, but in our capacity as both (would-be) apprentices and clients of knowledge-how. (shrink)

In this paper, we present results of cross-linguistic studies of Japanese and English knowing how constructions that show radical differences in knowledge-how attributions with large effect sizes. The results suggest that the relevant ability is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge-how captured by Japanese constructions. We shall argue that such data will open up a gap between otherwise indistinguishable two conceptions of the very topic of knowledge-how, or the debate between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, namely a debate about the nature of (...) knowledge-how and a debate about the state captured by “know how”, which we call the knowledge-how interpretation and the state interpretation, respectively. Consequently, the results have not only various possible philosophical implications that have not been considered or discussed in the literature but also provide new topics in the theory of knowledge-how, including the question of which interpretation of the topic is correct itself. (shrink)

Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental, and one common way action theorists have attempted to explain this is with reference to control. The idea, in short, is that intentional action implicates control, and control precludes accidentality. But in virtue of what, exactly, would exercising control over an action suffice to make it non-accidental in whatever sense is required for the action to be intentional? One interesting and prima facie plausible idea that we wish to explore in this paper is (...) that control is non-accidental in virtue of requiring knowledge—either knowledge-that or knowledge-how (e.g., Beddor and Pavese 2021; cf., Setiya 2008; 2012 and Habgood-Coote 2018). We review in detail some key recent work defending such knowledge-centric theories of control, and we show that none of these accounts holds water. We conclude with some discussion about how control opposes the sort of luck intentional action excludes without doing so by requiring knowledge (that- or how). (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Gilbert Ryle’s claim that ordinary competence with logical principles or rules is a kind of knowing how, where such knowledge is understood as a skill, a multi-track disposition. Ryle argues that his account of ordinary logical competence helps avoid Lewis Carroll’s famous regress argument (Carroll 1895), which suggests that elementary deductive reasoning might be impossible. Indeed, Carroll’s regress is the central motivation for Ryle’s account. I argue that this account is inadequate on two counts: it (...) cannot serve to articulate the way ordinary reasoners might exercise their knowledge in reasoning and it does not do much to help us avoid Carroll’s regress. I sketch an alternative view, still Rylean in spirit, that fares better on both counts. (shrink)

The gradation of know-how is a prominent challenge to intellectualism. Know-how is prima facie gradable, whereas know-that is not, so the former is unlikely to be a species of the latter. Recently, Pavese refuted this challenge by explaining the gradation of know-how as concerning either the quantity or the quality of practical answers one knows to a question. Know-how per se remains absolute. This paper argues, however, that in addition to the quantity and quality of practical answers, know-how also differs (...) in how reliably the agent is supposed to fulfil the task given her default constitution. Intellectualism is still troubled by the gradability challenge. (shrink)

Practical knowledge is discussed in close relation to practical expertise. For both anti-intellectualists and intellectualists, the knowledge of how to φ is widely assumed to entail the practical expertise in φ-ing. This paper refutes this assumption. I argue that non-experts can know how to φ via other experts’ knowledge of φ-ing. Know-how can be ‘outsourced’. I defend the outsourceability of know-how, and I refute the objections that reduce outsourced know-how to the knowledge of how to ask for help, of how (...) to get things done, or of external contents. Interestingly, outsourcing differs from social cooperation, collective agency, testimonial transmission, and many other notions in social-epistemological debates. Thus, outsourcing provides not only a hitherto unconsidered form of know-how but also a novel way for knowledge to be social. Furthermore, outsourcing plausibly involves a ‘social’ cognitive extension that does not rest on EMT or HEC. Given the outsourceability of know-how, we must reconsider the nature of know-how and expertise, as well as the relation between non-experts and experts. (shrink)

This idea that what is distinctive of intentional performances (or at least of those intentional performances that amount to skilled actions) is one’s practical knowledge in it —i.e., knowledge of what one is doing while doing it— famously traces back to Anscombe ([]1963] 2000). While many philosophers have theorized about Anscombe’s notion of practical knowledge (e.g., Setiya (2008), Thompson et al. (2011), Schwenkler (2019), O’Brien (2007)), there is a wide disagreement about how to understand it. This paper investigates how best (...) to understand practical knowledge for it to play the desired explanatory role in a reductive theory of intentional action, of intention-in-action, and of control-in-action. I argue that practical knowledge ought to be construed as a dynamic knowledge state and that structured practical senses (Pavese 2015) are needed to model it. (shrink)

1. What is the relation between skilful action and knowledge? According to most philosophers, the two have little in common: practical intelligence and theoretical intelligence are largely separate...

Our view is that the folk concept of knowing how is more complicated than many epistemologists assume. We present four studies that go some way towards supporting our view—that the folk concept of knowledge-how is a philosophical hybrid, comprising both intellectualist and anti-intellectualist features. One upshot is, if we are going to award a presumptive status to philosophical theories of know-how that best accord with the folk concept, it ought to go to those that combine intellectualist and anti-intellectualist elements.

Can we think of a task in a distinctively practical way? Can there be practical concepts? In recent years, epistemologists, philosophers of mind, as well as philosophers of psychology have appealed to practical concepts in characterizing the content of know-how or in explaining certain features of skilled action. However, reasons for positing practical concepts are rarely discussed in a systematic fashion. This paper advances a novel argument for the psychological reality of practical concepts that relies on evidence for a distinctively (...) productive kind of reasoning. (shrink)

Skilled action typically requires that individuals guide their activities toward some goal. In skilled action, individuals do so excellently. We do not understand well what this capacity to guide consists in. In this paper I provide a case study of how individuals shift visual attention. Their capacity to guide visual attention toward some goal (partly) consists in an empirically discovered sub-system – the executive system. I argue that we can explain how individuals guide by appealing to the operation of this (...) sub-system. Understanding skill and skilled action thus requires appreciating the role of the executive system. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle famously wrote that practical knowledge (knowing how) is distinct from propositional knowledge (knowing that). This claim continues to have broad philosophical appeal, and yet there are many unsettled questions surrounding Ryle’s basic proposal. In this article, I return to his original work in order to perform some intellectual archeology. I offer an interpretation of Ryle’s concept of action that I call ‘adverbialism’. Actions are constituted by bodily behaviours performed in a certain mode, style or manner. I present various (...) challenges to adverbialism – scenarios in which it seems we publicly behave one way, but privately feel another. And I offer a response – Ryle’s stated practice of re-describing those situations in ways that pose no threat to his adverbialism. I also present an interpretation of practical knowledge in Ryle’s work. Knowing how is a special kind of action, undertaken only when we progressively self-modify our behaviours in the presence of new challenges or opportunities. (shrink)

We represent the world in a variety of ways: through percepts, concepts, propositional attitudes, words, numerals, recordings, musical scores, photographs, diagrams, mimetic paintings, etc. Some of these representations are mental. It is customary for philosophers to distinguish two main kinds of mental representations: perceptual representation (e.g., vision, auditory, tactile) and conceptual representation. This essay presupposes a version of this dichotomy and explores the way in which a further kind of representation – procedural representation – represents. It is argued that, in (...) some important respects, procedural representations represent differently from both purely conceptual representations and purely perceptual representations. Although procedural representations, just like conceptual and perceptual representations, involve modes of presentation, their modes of presentation are distinctively practical, in a sense which I will clarify. It is argued that an understanding of this sort of practical representation has important consequences for the debate on the nature of know-how. (shrink)

According to a prominent account of knowledge-how, knowledge-how is a species of propositional knowledge. A related view has it that to know how to perform an action is for it to seem to one that a way to perform that action is in fact a way to do so. According to a further view, knowledge-how is a species of objectual knowledge. Each of these intellectualist views has significant virtues including, notably, the ability to account for the seemingly epistemic dimensions of (...) knowledge-how. However, while intellectualist views can account for the seemingly epistemic dimensions of knowledge-how, such views have difficulty accounting for the practical dimensions of knowledge-how. The objection I level against existing intellectualist views here seizes on this deficiency. I argue that, in virtue of the practical dimensions of knowledge-how, propositional knowledge under a practical mode of presentation is not sufficient for knowledge-how. Even when the sufficiency conditions for knowledge-how set out by extant intellectualist views are met, one may fail to know how to perform an action in virtue of a disposition to act on a false belief about a way for one to perform that action. Thus, whereas critics of intellectualist views often allege that such views place overly demanding conditions on knowledge-how, the objection developed here suggests that existing intellectualist views place insufficiently demanding conditions on knowledge-how. (shrink)

When two agents engage in a joint action, such as rowing together, they exercise joint know-how. But what is the relationship between the joint know-how of the two agents and the know-how each agent possesses individually? I construct an “active mutual enablement” account of this relationship, according to which joint know-how arises when each agent knows how to predict, monitor, and make failure-averting adjustments in response to the behaviour of the other agent, while actively enabling the other to make such (...) adjustments. I defend the AME account from three objections, and I then use this account as the platform for an examination of the reducibility of joint know-how to joint propositional knowledge. A summative account of joint propositional knowledge is incompatible with the reduction of joint know-how to joint propositional knowledge, whereas a distributive account is not. I close by highlighting some open questions the AME account brings into view concerning the evolutionary origin and scaling up of joint know-how. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA paper in two parts, the first is a critique of the commonly held view among both cognitivist and non-cognitivist sport philosophers that conscious mental representation of knowledge that is a necessary condition for skill acquisition. The second is a defense of a necessary causal condition for skill acquisition, a necessary causal condition that is mimetic, physically embodied, and socially embedded. To make my case I rely throughout on a common thought experiment in and beyond the philosophy of sport literature, (...) the seminal work of Kuhn and Quine counter the representational theory of knowledge, and recent argument in the philosophy of sport related to neurophysiology, cognition, and intentionality. Ultimately I conclude that the failure of a necessary representational condition and its replacement by a necessary casual condition in skill acquisition jeopardizes much of what has been said in the philosophy of sport about not just skill acquisition but the more popular topic of high-level skill. It does, because it challenges the assumption that there is some necessary baseline knowledge that which, according to cognitivists, is brought forward in some way into highly skillful performance or, according to non-cognitivists, is somehow left behind or subsumed into a background in highly skillful performance. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAchievements are among the things that make a life good. Assessing the plausibility of this intuitive claim requires an account of the nature of achievements. One necessary condition for achievement appears to be that the achieving agent acted competently, i.e. was not just lucky. I begin by critically assessing existing accounts of anti-luck conditions for achievements in both the ethics and epistemology literature. My own proposal is that a goal is reached competently, only if the actions of the would-be-achiever make (...) success likely, and that this is the reason why she acts that way. (shrink)

I advance a variety of intellectualism about knowing-how that is, paradoxically, suggested by Ryle's positive discussions of that phenomenon. I discuss the roots of the view in Ryle's work, its affinity with John Hyman's () view of factual knowledge, and important points of contrast with Stanley and Williamson's () proposal. Drawing on work by Cath () and Wiggins () I also discuss conditions on knowing practically, in ‘the executive way’, as an alternative to appealing to practical modes of presentation.

According to Intellectualism knowing how to V is a matter of knowing a suitable proposition about a way of V-ing. In this paper, I consider the question of which ways of acting might figure in the propositions which Intellectualists claim constitute the object of knowledge-how. I argue that Intellectualists face a version of the Generality Problem – familiar from discussions of Reliabilism – since not all ways of V-ing are such that knowledge about them suffices for knowledge-how. I consider various (...) responses to this problem, and argue that none are satisfactory. (shrink)

The sensorimotor theory of vision and visual consciousness is often described as a radical alternative to the computational and connectionist orthodoxy in the study of visual perception. However, it is far from clear whether the theory represents a significant departure from orthodox approaches or whether it is an enrichment of it. In this study, I tackle this issue by focusing on the explanatory structure of the sensorimotor theory. I argue that the standard formulation of the theory subscribes to the same (...) theses of the dynamical hypothesis and that it affords covering-law explanations. This however exposes the theory to the mere description worry and generates a puzzle about the role of representations. I then argue that the sensorimotor theory is compatible with a mechanistic framework, and show how this can overcome the mere description worry and solve the problem of the explanatory role of representations. By doing so, it will be shown that the theory should be understood as an enrichment of the orthodoxy, rather than an alternative. (shrink)

Orthodoxy has it that knowledge is absolute—that is, it cannot come in degrees. On the other hand, there seems to be strong evidence for the gradability of know-how. Ascriptions of know-how are gradable, as when we say that one knows in part how to do something, or that one knows how to do something better than somebody else. When coupled with absolutism, the gradability of ascriptions of know-how can be used to mount a powerful argument against intellectualism about know-how—the view (...) that know-how is a species of propositional knowledge. This essay defends intellectualism from the argument of gradability. It is argued that the gradability of ascriptions of know-how should be discounted as a rather superficial linguistic phenomenon, one that can be explained in a way compatible with the absoluteness of the state reported. (shrink)

A dispositional theory of skill, such as that defended by Stanley and Williamson, might seem promising. Such a theory looks to provide a unified intellectualist account of skill reflecting insights from cognitive science and philosophy. I argue that any theory of the kind fails given that skill is broadly answerable to the will. A person may be characteristically disposed both against the exercise of her skill and against any associated intentional forming of knowledge. Clearly she does not cease thereby to (...) be skilled. I consider four replies, none of which vindicate this kind of theory. (shrink)

The sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience claims that perception is constituted by bodily interaction with the environment, drawing on practical knowledge of the systematic ways that sensory inputs are disposed to change as a result of movement. Despite the theory’s associations with enactivism, it is sometimes claimed that the appeal to ‘knowledge’ means that the theory is committed to giving an essential theoretical role to internal representation, and therefore to a form of orthodox cognitive science. This paper defends the role (...) ascribed to knowledge by the theory, but argues that this knowledge can and should be identified with bodily skill rather than representation. Making the further argument that the notion of ‘representation hunger’ can be replaced with ‘prima facie representation hunger’, it concludes that although the theory could optionally be developed scientifically in part by reference to internal representation, it makes a strong and natural fit with anti-representationalist embodied or enactive cognitive science. (shrink)

Reductive intellectualists (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011a; 2011b; Brogaard 2008; 2009; 2011) hold that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. If this thesis is correct, then we should expect the defeasibility conditions for knowledge-how and knowledge-that to be uniform—viz., that the mechanisms of epistemic defeat which undermine propositional knowledge will be equally capable of imperilling knowledge-how. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, against intellectualism, we will show that knowledge-how is in fact resilient to being undermined by (...) the very kinds of traditional (propositional) epistemic defeaters which clearly defeat the items of propositional knowledge which intellectualists identify with knowledge-how. Second, we aim to fill an important lacuna in the contemporary debate, which is to develop an alternative way in which epistemic defeat for knowledge-how could be modelled within an anti-intellectualist framework. (shrink)

Anti-intellectualists about knowledge-how insist that, when an agent S knows how to φ, it is in virtue of some ability, rather than in virtue of any propositional attitudes, S has. Recently, a popular strategy for attacking the anti-intellectualist position proceeds by appealing to cases where an agent is claimed to possess a reliable ability to φ while nonetheless intuitively lacking knowledge-how to φ. John Bengson & Marc Moffett (2009; 2011a; 2011b) and Carlotta Pavese (2015a; 2015b) have embraced precisely this strategy (...) and have thus claimed, for different reasons, that anti-intellectualism is defective on the grounds that possessing the ability to φ is not sufficient for knowing how to φ. We investigate this strategy of argument-by-counterexample to the anti- intellectualist’s sufficiency thesis and show that, at the end of the day, anti-intellectualism remains unscathed. (shrink)

The prequel to this paper has discussed the relation between knowledge and skill and introduced the topic of the relationship between skill and know how. This sequel continues the discussion. First, I survey the recent debate on intellectualism about knowing how (§1-3). Then, I tackle the question as to whether intellectualism (and anti-intellectualism) about skill and intellectualism (and anti-intellectualism) about know how fall or stand together (§4-5).

Know-how and expressivism are usually regarded as disjoint topics, belonging to distant areas of philosophy. This paper argues that, despite obvious differences, the two debates have important similarities. In particular, semantic and conceptual tools developed by expressivists can be exported to the know-how debate. On the one hand, some of the expressivists' semantic resources can be used to deflect Stanley and Williamson's influential argument for factualism about know-how: the claim that knowing how to do something consists in knowing a fact. (...) On the other, expressivism provides the resources to formulate a nonfactualist account of know-how. On this account, know-how has a kind of nonpropositional content and plays the role of guiding performance of action, rather than recording information from the environment. (shrink)

A conspicuous oversight in recent debates about the vexed problem of the value of knowledge has been the value of knowledge-how. This would not be surprising if knowledge-how were, as Gilbert Ryle [1945, 1949] famously thought, fundamentally different from knowledge-that. However, reductive intellectualists [e.g. Stanley and Williamson 2001; Brogaard 2008, 2009, 2011; Stanley 2011a, 2011b] maintain that knowledge-how just is a kind of knowledge-that. Accordingly, reductive intellectualists must predict that the value problems facing propositional knowledge will equally apply to knowledge-how. (...) We show, however, that this is not the case. Accordingly, we highlight a value-driven argument for thinking that knowledge-how and knowledge-that come apart. (shrink)

Propositionalism explains the nature of knowledge-how as follows: P: To know how to ϕ is to stand in a special propositional attitude relation to propositions about how to ϕ. To know how to ride a bike is to have the required propositional attitude to propositions about how to do so. Dispositionalism offers an alternative view.D: To know how to ϕ is to stand in a behavioral-dispositional relation, a being-able-to relation, to ϕ-ing. To know how to ride a bike is to (...) have an ability to do so in the form of a complex disposition to behave in ways that constitute bike riding. Objectualism presents a third option.O: To know how to ϕ is to stand in a non-propositional, non-behavioral-dispositional objective attitude relation to a way of j-ing. To know how to ride a bike is to have an objectual attitude, perhaps a form of knowledge of, to a way of doing so.Dispositionalism is often dismissed on the basis of two criticisms designed to show its shortcomings relative to Propositionalism and Objectualism. According to the Epistemic Improvement Objection, Dispositionalism cannot account for the fact that gaining knowledge-how is an improvement in our epistemic state. According to the Modified Ability Objection, it cannot account for the fact that being able to do something is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowing how to do it. I develop a form of Dispositionalism, the Special Ability View, that avoids both objections. (shrink)

This paper defends Michel Foucault’s notion of archaeology of knowledge against the influential and putatively devastating criticism by Dreyfus and Rabinow that Foucault’s archaeological project is based on an incoherent conception of the rules of the discursive practices it purports to study. I argue first that Foucault’s considered view of these rules as simultaneously implicit and historically efficacious corresponds to a general requirement for the normative structure of a discursive practice. Then I argue that Foucault is entitled to that view (...) despite the charges to the contrary by Dreyfus and Rabinow. I also explain in detail how the argument by Dreyfus and Rabinow arises from a misunderstanding of Foucault’s archaeological project as transcendental inquiry, while archaeology of knowledge is, in fact, a diagnostic project. The result is a novel understanding of the notion of archaeology of knowledge that enables a reassessment of Foucault’s philosophical work in connection with current debates regarding the relationship between reflection and practice in the structure of thought. (shrink)

In recent years, a debate concerning the nature of knowing-how has emerged between intellectualists who claim that knowledge-how is reducible to knowledge-that and anti-intellectualists who claim that knowledge-how comprises a unique and irreducible knowledge category. The arguments between these two camps have clustered largely around two issues: intellectualists object to Gilbert Ryle's assertion that knowing-how is a kind of ability, and anti-intellectualists take issue with Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson's positive, intellectualist account of knowing-how. Like most anti-intellectualists, in this paper (...) I will raise objections to Stanley and Williamson's account of knowing-how and also defend the claim that ability is necessary for knowing-how attributions. Unlike most discussions of knowing-how, however, I will return to more Rylean considerations in order to illustrate that any intellectualist account of knowing-how, not simply Stanley and Williamson's preferred variety, will fail because it will be unable to account for fundamental differences in the knowledge required to instantiate an ability and the knowledge involved in propositional thought. (shrink)

I first argue why Stanley and Williamson fail to eliminate the distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how. Then I argue that knowledge-how consists in a special kind of ways of thinking of ways of engaging in actions. So the distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how is twofold: the objects of knowledge-that and knowledge-how are different; the ways in which we entertain the object of knowledge are also distinct when we have knowledge-that and knowledge-how. At the end, I consider two recent intellectualist efforts (...) on knowledge-how and show why they fail. (shrink)

Intellectualist theories attempt to assimilate know how to propositional knowledge and, in so doing, fail to properly explain the close relation know how bears to action. I develop here an anti-intellectualist theory that is warranted, I argue, because it best accounts for the difference between know how and mere “armchair knowledge.” Know how is a mental state characterized by a certain world-to-mind direction of fit (though it is non-motivational) and attendant functional role. It is essential of know how, but not (...) propositional knowledge, that it makes possible performance errors and has the functional role of guiding action. The theory is attractive, in part, because it allows for propositional, non-propositional and perhaps even non-representational varieties of know how. (shrink)

Although Gilles Deleuze never explicitly developed what might be considered a ‘philosophy of technology’, this article nonetheless attempts to outline the rudiments of a Deleuzian approach to technology by proposing a series of interrelated concepts: (1) prosthesis (technological artefacts are externalised organs); (2) proto-technicity, or originary technicity (but this technicity already exists in Nature, all the way down, and precedes any ‘theory’); (3) exodarwinism (the fact that evolutionary time has bifurcated, and technology evolves in a faster and accelerating time scale); (...) (4) de-specialisation or de-differentiation (what conditions the externalisation of organs is their deterritorialisation); (5) motricity (the link between the brain and the hand/mouth is primarily one of movement); (6) inscription, or graphism (the link between mouth and hand takes place through phonetic writing, when the hand reproduces speech in graphic inscriptions); (7) maker's knowledge (we know the organisations of matter found in nature through the organisations of matter that we ourselves have created); and finally, (8) totipotence (like a stem cell, the body is capable of externalising an almost unlimited number of forms and functions; it is itself an abstract and the source of abstractions). (shrink)

ABSTRACT A version of Meno’s paradox applies to intellectualism about knowledge-how. If one does not know that p, one does not know that w is a way of working out that p. According to intellectualists, the latter such knowledge constitutes knowledge how to work out that p. One thus knows how to work out that p only if one already knows that p. But if this is right, nobody can work anything out.

I identify and characterize the kind of personal-level control-structure that is most relevant for skilled action control, namely, what I call, “practical intention”. I differentiate between practical intentions and general intentions not in terms of their function or timing but in terms of their content. I also highlight a distinction between practical intentions and other control mechanisms that are required to explain skilled action. I’ll maintain that all intentions, general and practical, have the function specifying, sustaining, and structuring action but (...) that several functions that have been attributed to proximal intentions are actually implemented by other control mechanisms that are not themselves best identified as intentions. Specifically, I will claim that practical intentions do not initiate, monitor, specify or guide the fine-grained, online, kinematic aspects of action. Finally, I suggest that the way in which practical and general intentions should be differentiated is in terms of their content, where general intentions specify the overall goal, outcome, or end of an action as it is conceived of by the agent at a time, and practical intentions determine the means to that end. I conclude by providing empirical evidence to support this way of characterizing the intentions that “interface” with the mechanisms of motor control. Though this discussion has repercussions for action in general, I will limit my discussion to cases of skill. (shrink)

An overview of the knowing-how debates over the last ten years.

Stanley and Williamson :411–444, 2001) argue for intellectualism—the thesis that knowing how is a type of knowing that—in part by defending a thesis about the semantics of English ascriptions of knowing how. But ascriptions of practical knowledge seem to exhibit significant crosslinguistic variation. This observation has been invoked to argue that S&W’s analysis reflects a quirk of English rather than a general feature of the concept of knowledge. I argue that the type of argument employed by both S&W and their (...) critics presupposes that the categories of denotational semantics correspond to those of the theory of mental content. But the relation between the semantic theory and the theory of content is more complex than this. Specifically, a closer look at ascriptions of practical knowledge and other obligatory control constructions in various languages shows that semantic theory needs distinctions that are redundant from the perspective of the theory of content, and that important distinctions in the theory of content may fail to correspond to any distinctions in semantic theory. It follows that we may not be able to read off as much about mental states as S&W and their critics try to from the structure of their ascriptions. (shrink)

Following Gilbert Ryle’s arguments, many philosophers took it for granted that someone knows how to do something just in case they have the ability to do it. Within the last couple decades, new intellectualists have challenged this longstanding anti-intellectualist assumption. Their central contention is that mere abilities aren’t on the same rational, epistemic level as know how. My goal is to intellectualize know how without over-intellectualizing it. Intelligent behavior is characteristically flexible or responsive to novelty, and the distinctive feature of (...) creatures who exhibit flexible behavior is their capacity to learn. As it turns out, Ryle already identified a core characteristic of learning shared widely across the animal kingdom from the lowly rat to the top athlete. Taking my cues from Ryle, I argue that know how is successful performance resulting from self-regulated abilities. To regulate an ability is to be disposed to adjust to error and respond to feedback. While regulating sophisticated human abilities often requires propositional knowledge, in many simpler cases it does not. I focus on the navigational know how of rats and honeybees. Although they possess know how, whether they possess propositional knowledge is at best an open question. (shrink)

Intellectualism is the claim that practical knowledge or ‘know-how’ is a kind of propositional knowledge. The debate over Intellectualism has appealed to two different kinds of evidence, semantic and scientific. This paper concerns the relationship between Intellectualist arguments based on truth-conditional semantics of practical knowledge ascriptions, and anti-Intellectualist arguments based on cognitive science and propositional representation. The first half of the paper argues that the anti-Intellectualist argument from cognitive science rests on a naturalistic approach to metaphysics: its proponents assume that (...) findings from cognitive science provide evidence about the nature of mental states. We demonstrate that this fact has been overlooked in the ensuing debate, resulting in inconsistency and confusion. Defenders of the semantic approach to Intellectualism engage with the argument from cognitive science in a way that implicitly endorses this naturalistic metaphysics, and even rely on it to claim that cognitive science support Intellectualism. In the course of their arguments, however, they also reject that scientific findings can have metaphysical import. We argue that this situation is preventing productive debate about Intellectualism, which would benefit from both sides being more transparent about their metaphilosophical assumptions. (shrink)

Reductive intellectualists about knowledge-how hold, contra Ryle, that knowing how to do something is just a kind of propositional knowledge. In a similar vein, traditional reductivists about understanding-why insist, in accordance with a tradition beginning with Aristotle, that the epistemic standing one attains when one understands why something is so is itself just a kind of propositional knowledge—viz., propositional knowledge of causes. A point that has been granted on both sides of these debates is that if these reductive proposals are (...) right, then knowledge-how and understanding-why should be susceptible to the same extent as knowledge-that is to being undermined by epistemic luck. This paper reports experimental results that test these luck-based predictions. Interestingly, these results suggest a striking positive correlation between self-reported philosophical expertise and attributions of knowledge-how, understanding-why and knowledge-that which run contrary to reductive proposals. We contextualize these results by showing how they align very well with a particular kind of overarching non-reductive proposal, one that two of the authors have defended elsewhere according to which knowledge-how and understanding-why, but not knowledge-that, essentially involve cognitive achievement. We conclude by situating the interpretive narrative advanced within contemporary discussions about the role of expertise in philosophical judgment. (shrink)