Know How and Skill: The Puzzles of Priority and Equivalence

This chapter explores the relationship between knowing-how and skill, as well other success-in-action notions like dispositions and abilities. I offer a new view of knowledge-how which combines elements of both intellectualism and Ryleanism. According to this view, knowing how to perform an action is both a kind of knowing-that (in accord with intellectualism) and a complex multi-track dispositional state (in accord with Ryle’s view of knowing-how). I argue that this new view—what I call practical attitude intellectualism—offers an attractive set of solutions to various puzzles concerning the connections between knowing-how and abilities and skills to perform intentional actions.