What does it mean to know how to do something? This book develops a comprehensive account of know-how, a crucial epistemic goal for all who care about getting things right, not only with respect to the facts, but also with respect to practice. It proposes a novel interpretation of the seminal work of Gilbert Ryle, according to which know-how is a competence, a complex ability to do well in an activity in virtue of guidance by an understanding of what it (...) takes to do so. This idea is developed into a full-fledged account, Rylean responsibilism, which understands know-how in terms of the normative guidance and responsible control of one's acts. Within the complex current debate about know-how, this view occupies a middle ground position between the intellectualist claim that know-how just is propositional or objectual knowledge and the anti-intellectualist claim that know-how just is ability. In genuine know-how, practical ability and guiding intellect are both necessary, but essentially intertwined. (shrink)

Intelligent activity requires the use of various intellectual skills. While these skills are connected to knowledge, they should not be identified with knowledge. There are realistic examples where the skills in question come apart from knowledge. That is, there are realistic cases of knowledge without skill, and of skill without knowledge. Whether a person is intelligent depends, in part, on whether they have these skills. Whether a particular action is intelligent depends, in part, on whether it was produced by an (...) exercise of skill. These claims promote a picture of intelligence that is in tension with a strongly intellectualist picture, though they are not in tension with a number of prominent claims recently made by intellectualists. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss Stanley and Williamson’s take on Ryle’s argument against know-how being know-that. For this, I provide an initial consideration of the possibility of isolating Ryle’s argument from his overall philosophical outlook and Stanley and Williamson’s purpose in their discussion of Ryle. I then examine in detail Stanley and Williamson’s reconstruction of Ryle’s argument with the specific aim of showing where they have introduced extraneous elements: I examine what they take to bes additional assumptions (...) needed for the argument to be valid and how they construct the premises in order to attempt to show that Ryle's argument is not sound. I end the paper showing the limits of Stanley and Williamson’s attack, suggesting how the extraneous elements Stanley and Williamson introduce already bias the discussion against Ryle. The main aim is not to defend a form of Ryle’s regress but rather advocate the need for a deeper discussion of Ryle’s views of mind and action when discussing his views on know-how. (shrink)

A central argument against Ryle’s (The concept of mind, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1949) distinction between propositional and non propositional knowledge has relied on linguistic evidence. Stanley and Williamson (J Philos 98:411–444, 2001) have claimed that knowing-how ascriptions do not differ in any relevant syntactic or semantic respect from ascriptions of propositional knowledge, concluding thereby that knowing-how ascriptions attribute propositional knowledge, or a kind thereof. In this paper I examine the cross-linguistic basis of this argument. I focus on the (...) linguistic analysis of practical knowledge ascriptions in Modern Greek, although the issues raised are not restricted to one language. It is relatively straightforward to show that none of the three types of practical knowledge ascriptions in Modern Greek is an embedded question configuration, and hence Stanley and Williamson original claim is confined to certain languages only. This is not the end of the matter, however, since Stanley (Nous 45:207–238, 2011) argues that the equivalents of ‘knowing-how’ ascriptions in certain languages should be semantically analyzed as embedded questions despite their syntactic form. I argue that this fallback position faces a host of empirical and theoretical problems, in view of which it cannot bear the weight Stanley puts on it, supporting a conclusion about the kind of knowledge thereby attributed. (shrink)

In work culminating in Know How (2009), Jason Stanley argues, against Gilbert Ryle, that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that. In How Propaganda Works (2015), Stanley portrays this work as undermining a “flawed ideology” supporting elitist valuations of intellectual work and workers. However, the link between Stanley’s two philosophical projects is weak. Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that lacks the political consequences foreseen by Stanley. Versions of “intellectualism” have as much potential to align with hierarchical political systems as do versions (...) of “anti-intellectualism.” Consequently, the debate about knowledge-how and knowledge-that comes apart from Stanley’s more recent concerns about flawed ideologies.En un trabajo que encuentra su culminación en Know How (2009), Jason Stanely argumenta, en contra de Gilbert Ryle, que el saber-cómo es una especie del saber-qué. En How Propaganda Works (2015), Stanley presenta su trabajo como debilitador de una “falsa ideología” que respalda valoraciones elitistas del trabajo intelectual y los trabajadores intelectuales. Sin embargo, la conexión entre los dos proyectos filosóficos de Stanley es débil. La distinción de Ryle entre saber-cómo y saber-qué no tiene las consecuencias políticas previstas por Stanley. Algunas versiones del “intelectualismo” tienen el mismo potencial para alinearse con sistemas políticos jerárquico que algunas versiones del “anti-intelectualismo”. En consecuencia, el debate en torno a las nociones de saber-cómo y saber-qué no tiene incidencia sobre la preocupación más reciente de Stanley acerca de las ideologías falsas. (shrink)

This compilation of references includes all references for the knowledge-how chapters included in Bengson & Moffett's edited volume. The volume and the compilation of references may serve as a good starting point for people who are unfamiliar with the philosophical literature on knowledge-how.

The entry is intended as an advanced introduction to the topic of knowledge-how. It starts with a list of overviews, monographs and collections, followed by selected 20th century discussions. The last two sections contain sources pertaining to Ryle's own work on the topic as well as work by other influential thinkers, and themes that are sometimes associated with knowledge-how. The remaining seven sections survey the contemporary literature on knowledge-how from three perspectives: (i) generic desiderata for accounts of knowledge-how, (ii) specific (...) topics that are already well-entrenched in the tradition of particular subdisciplines and (iii) second-order controversy regarding distinct assumptions and tools employed by the debaters. (shrink)

How should we understand knowledge-how – knowledge how to do something? And how is it related to knowledge-that – knowledge that something is the case? In this paper, I will discuss a very important and influential aspect of this question, namely the claim – dubbed ‘Intellectualism’ by Gilbert Ryle – that knowledge-how can be reduced to knowledge-that. Recently, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson have tried to establish Intellectualism with the aid of linguistic considerations. This project – Linguistic Intellectualism – will (...) be criticized on three levels. First, I will reconstruct and object to Stanley and Williamson’s positive argument in favour of Intellectualism. Second, I will assess their view of the relationship between knowledge-how and practical ability and argue that their stance is not well-motivated. Third, I will discuss their criticism of Ryle’s objection against Intellectualism. After distinguishing between different versions of Ryle’s argument, I will show that its strongest version is both immune to the objection by Stanley and Williamson and a decisive argument against their own theory. Given that Intellectualism fails for these three reasons, I finally draw on a broader reading of Ryle in order to develop the beginnings of a positive account of knowledge-how and its relationship to knowledge-that. (shrink)