Ryle’s account of practical knowing is much controverted. The paper seeks to place present disputations in a larger context and draw attention to the connection between Ryle’s preoccupations and Aristotle’s account of practical reason, practical intelligence, and the way in which human beings enter into the way of being and acting that Aristotle denominates ethos . Considering matters in this framework, the author finds inconclusive the arguments that Stanley and Williamson offer for seeing knowing how to as a special case (...) of knowing that. The paper then explores certain implications of the author’s position for the philosophy of mind and the grammatical analysis of constructions involving ‘know how to’. It ends with a neo-Rylean remark about Aristotelian nous. (shrink)

Argues that we know without observation or inference at least some of what we are doing intentionally and that this possibility must be explained in terms of knowledge-how. It is a consequence of the argument that knowing how to do something cannot be identified with knowledge of a proposition.

Argues from the possibility of basic intentional action to a non-propositional theory of knowing how. The argument supports a broadly Anscombean conception of the will as a capacity for practical knowledge.

In his most recent book, Stanley (2011b) defends his Intellectualist account of knowledge how. In Know How, Stanley produces the details of a propositionalist theory of intelligent action and also responds to several objections that have been forwarded to this account in the last decade. In this paper, I will focus specifically on one claim that Stanley makes in chapter one of his book: I will focus on Stanley’s claim that automatic mechanisms can be used by the intellectualist in order (...) to terminate Ryle’s regress. I will argue that this proposed solution to the regress, regardless of how propositions are individuated, cannot provide an adequate intellectualist account of skillful action. I should note that the solution to Ryle’s regress is central to the intellectualist agenda. If Stanley fails to stop the regress or stops the regress by appealing to nonpropositional knowledge, then his intellectualist project fails. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

Many philosophers believe that there is a fundamental distinction between knowing that something is the case and knowing how to do something. According to Gilbert Ryle, to whom the insight is credited, knowledge-how is an ability, which is in turn a complex of dispositions. Knowledge-that, on the other hand, is not an ability, or anything similar. Rather, knowledge-that is a relation between a thinker and a true proposition.