Knowledge How

Clowes, Gärtner, and Hipólito (2021) describe the Mind-Technology Problem as a new constellation of philosophical problems about the nature of mind generated by advances in technology we increasingly rely on to meet both theoretical and practical aims. We agree with Clowes, Gärtner, and Hipólito that the problems they identify frame a timely and worthwhile new research programme. We aim to contribute to this research programme by motivating and canvassing the key contours of four different Mind-Technology problems that arise for, and (...) which are distinctive to, approaches to knowledge-how that give abilities a central theoretical role in explaining intelligent states and behaviour. The result is an agenda in the theory of know-how aimed at reconciling prevailing anti-intellectualist thinking about know-how apt abilities and their exercise with the datum that much of our know-how is increasingly supported by our use of smart technological scaffolding. We don’t fully answer the questions we raise; our objective is to put them on the map and show why we think they matter. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the prospect of extracting an account of know‐how from Descartes's philosophy. Against the traditional take, we argue that Descartes's views on know‐how cannot be simply reduced to his account of theoretical knowledge. The key to understanding Descartes on know‐how is to examine his accounts of moral certainty and the relation between the mind and the body in action.

Action theory offers well-developed treatments of tool use and of delegation, but agentic AI belongs to neither category. The user specifies an end; the system autonomously selects the means. What, then, secures the connection between the user’s intention and outcome that distinguishes intentional action from lucky coincidence when things go right? I examine five candidate approaches – Davidsonian minimalism, principal–agent decomposition, strong practical-knowledge views, permissive intention-plus-success accounts, and extended-agency frameworks – and argue that each draws the line in the wrong (...) place, variously under-crediting supervised use, over-demanding means-level transparency, erasing the competence/luck distinction, or inheriting the bloat and glue problems that plague extended-mind theories. The positive proposal then relocates non-deviance from route-identity to governance-stability. On the know-how account defended here, a user intentionally ϕ-s through agentic AI when her success manifests the exercise of supervisory know-how – viz., the competence to define an “acceptable corridor” of outcomes and means, to monitor for departures from that corridor, and to intervene or abort when drift threatens. This framework tolerates the opacity and route-variability characteristic of agentic AI, explains graded attributions across interaction profiles (in/on/out-of-the-loop), and remains neutral on whether the AI itself qualifies as an agent. It thereby vindicates, under specifiable conditions, the ordinary human claim “I ϕ-d through an AI agent” as tracking creditworthy governance. (shrink)

In this essay, we present Michael Polanyi’s theory of knowledge and outline its implications for theory development in organizational research. While Polanyi is best known in the field for his concept of tacit knowledge, we discuss here several other cognate concepts Polanyi has also introduced—notably conviviality, indwelling, tradition and lore, coherence, and post-critical reason—and show how they help us better understand organizational theorizing. Specifically, we argue the following. First, when engaged in theory creation, organizational scholars integrate largely unspecifiable particulars, in (...) search of deepening coherence, by dwelling in a fiduciary framework of previous theory, others’ narrativized experiences, and their own personal experiences. Secondly, driven by intellectual passions and commitments, organizational scholars bring about conceptual novelty by seeking to redirect intellectual attention to hitherto tacitly accepted subsidiary particulars, which they seek to reintegrate in novel ways. And, thirdly, since all knowledge, no matter how abstract, necessarily involves skillful action, organizational scholars dwell in scientific practice and, therefore, interiorize—that is, they become subsidiarily aware of—the practice’s collective purpose, which they freely and responsibly enact through the exercise of public liberty. (shrink)

We explore new connections between the epistemologies of mental rehearsal and suppositional reasoning to offer a novel perspective on skilled behavior and its relationship to practical knowledge. We argue that practical knowledge is "easy" in the sense that, by manifesting one's skills, one has a priori propositional justification for certain beliefs about what one is doing as one does it. This proposal has wider consequences for debates about intentional action and knowledge: first, because agents sometimes act intentionally in epistemically hazardous (...) environments, these justified beliefs do not always rise to the level of (practical) knowledge. Second, practical knowledge is more intimately related to basic knowledge than has been appreciated. Third, an attractive "middle way" opens between the Anscombian tradition of defending a necessary connection between intentional action and practical knowledge and the more recent tradition of explaining away substantive epistemic conditions on intentional action. (shrink)

It is widely held that an intellectual or epistemic vice is characterised by its negative relationship to epistemic goods. But which epistemic goods, exactly? The main answers in the vice-epistemological literature are (i) the truth and (ii) propositional knowledge. In this paper, I demonstrate the need to expand vice epistemology's axiology beyond these epistemic goods. In particular, I argue that vice epistemologists need to include knowledge-how in their theorising if they are to provide us with a full account of the (...) nature and development of some putative epistemic vices. First, I show that this species of knowledge can be embedded in the manifestation and development of some vices, such that agents acquire this species of knowledge in virtue of either exercising or acquiring these epistemic vices. Second, I claim that the inclusion of knowledge-how in vice epistemology has important implications for its two main theoretical camps – motivationalism and obstructivism. I end by explaining how a less popular view in the literature can possibly vindicate the relationship between epistemic vices and knowledge-how. (shrink)

In Piñeros Glasscock (2020) I presented a version of Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument against the Anscombean thesis that intentional action entails knowledge. I defend this argument from recent criticisms by Beddor and Pavese (2022) and Valaris (2021). I argue that contrary to what my past self and my critics suggest, the conclusion of this anti-luminosity argument does not rest on the existence of essentially intentional actions. The argument can be recast based on the humbler premise that agential cognition must represent actions (...) as intentional. I show that this claim is well motivated by precisely the considerations of control behind the objections. (shrink)

The problem of self-knowledge has been thoroughly discussed in the context of traditional epistemology. In parallel to the traditional approach to epistemology, Radically Embodied Cognitive Science (RECS) has emerged in the last 30 years as a genuine contender in its field. According to RECS, the unity of analysis of cognitive processes is the dynamics between brain, body and environment. In this paper, I advance a RECS approach to self-knowledge, which immediately suggests that knowing oneself is a matter of knowing what (...) one’s body can do. I then turn to resistance training, particularly weightlifting, and argue that it offers a paradigmatic case of self-knowledge in RECS’s terms. More precisely, resistance training allows the trainee to achieve knowledge of themselves in a fundamentally practical manner—and doing so is transformative of the kind of actions they are capable of. (shrink)

This paper presents a new account of pragmatic understanding based on the idea that such understanding requires skills rather than abilities. Specifically, one has pragmatic understanding of an affordance space when one has, and is responsible for having, skills that facilitate the achievement of some aims using that affordance space. In science, having skills counts as having pragmatic understanding when the development of those skills is praiseworthy. Skills are different from abilities at least in the sense that they are task-specific, (...) can be learned, and we have some cognitive control over their deployment. This paper considers how the use of AI in science facilitates or frustrates the achievement of this kind of understanding. I argue that we cannot properly ascribe this kind of understanding to any current or near-future algorithm itself. But there are ways that we can use AI algorithms to increase pragmatic understanding, namely, when we take advantage of their abilities to increase our own skills (as individuals or communities). This can happen when AI features in human-performed science as either a tool or a collaborator. (shrink)

This essay explains how reasoning is action and not reflex. It then uses that theory to explain one form of knowing how to reason. Reasoning is thinking biased by knowledge. Drawing on Louise Antony's emphasis on bias as critical for dealing with underdetermination in induction, I show that underdetermination confronts all forms of reasoning, including deduction. Reasoning must be biased if it is to emerge from action underdetermination. The bias framework recasts the concept of taking, as advocated by Paul Boghossian, (...) in terms of biased reasoning. This philosophical hypothesis is supported by empirical work demonstrating how beliefs bias attention. The paper then reveals a psychological-epistemic structure that is actualized whenever an agent reasons. The agent's knowledge, implicit or explicit, resolves underdetermination, and the underlying structure that integrates knowledge with capacities for thinking constitutes the agent's knowing how to reason. (shrink)

I argue that the outbreak of World War I facilitated a shift in the dominant view of human nature in the Cambridge-Bloomsbury intelligentsia, steering it away from an optimistic view toward a pessimistic one. The conceptualization of human reason and rationality in this group, however, remained intact through the war. Frank Ramsey and John Maynard Keynes produced some of their most notable works in this evolving intellectual context. They followed the interwar orthodoxy by adopting its description of human nature. But (...) they departed from the orthodoxy by revising its underlying conceptual commitment concerning human reason and rationality. The article shows that Ramsey and Keynes developed their ideas in tandem. They argued for the pragmatist idea that our normative theory of human life ought to be sensitive to what we can ask from human nature. Ramsey made this argument in his philosophy; Keynes made it in his economics. (shrink)

This chapter examines some key developments in discussions of the social dimensions of knowing-how, focusing on work on the social function of the concept of knowing-how, testimony, demonstrating one's knowledge to other people, and epistemic injustice. I show how a conception of knowing-how as a form of 'downstream knowledge' can help to unify various phenomena discussed within this literature, and I also consider how these ideas might connect with issues concerning wisdom, moral knowledge, and moral testimony.

In a number of papers and a book over the past thirty years, John Hyman has developed a unified account of knowledge that builds on Gilbert Ryle and Ludwig Wittgenstein's conceptions of knowledge as closely linked to ‘ability’. On Hyman's account, knowledge that p is the ability to be guided by the fact that p. In recent work, he has argued that such a notion of factual knowledge makes Ryle's notion of knowledge-how superfluous: knowledge-how, for Hyman, just is such factual (...) knowledge. This paper defends Ryle against these arguments, in part by bringing out an unnoticed aspect of Ryle's discussions of knowledge-that: namely, that he discusses two distinct notions of knowledge-that, only one of which he himself endorses. In investigating this notion of knowledge-that, as well as Ryle's arguments for the claim that knowledge-how is logically prior to such knowledge-that, it is argued both that Hyman's arguments against Ryle fail - meaning that his attempt to unify knowledge-how and knowledge-that is unsuccessful - and that he lacks a plausible response to Ryle's logical priority arguments. (shrink)

It is common in epistemology to distinguish different kinds of knowledge: factual, practical, and objectual knowledge, which are commonly expressed by the ‘know-that’, ‘know-how’ and ‘know-plus-noun-phrase’ locutions. Some philosophers argue that either practical or objectual knowledge is not reducible to factual knowledge but forms a distinct kind. This chapter asks if these distinct types of knowledge are still knowledge in a recognisable sense; it asks, in other words, whether there is a genus of knowledge to which the distinct species of (...) factual, practical, and objectual knowledge belong. The search for a comprehensive conception of knowledge in this chapter remains unsuccessful. Nontheless, I argue that anyone who believes in genuinely different kinds of knowledge will have a very good reason to try to succeed where I failed. (shrink)

Much has been written on whether practical knowledge (knowledge‐how) reduces to propositional knowledge (knowledge‐that). Less attention has been paid to what we call deliberative knowledge (knowledge‐to), i.e., knowledge ascriptions embedding other infinitival questions, like where to meet, when to leave, and what to bring. We offer an analysis of knowledge‐to and argue on its basis that, regardless of whether knowledge‐how reduces to knowledge‐that, no such reduction of knowledge‐to is forthcoming. Knowledge‐to, unlike knowledge‐that and knowledge‐how, requires the agent to have formed (...) certain conditional intentions. We discuss the philosophical implications for knowledge‐how, deliberative questions, and virtue. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to show that Kripke-Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox assumes the premise of epistemic internalism that inappropriately restricting the admissible answers about how agents can know the rules or meanings of linguistic expressions. It is argued that the rule-following problem does not concern knowledge of rules or meaning in general, but only the attribution of propositional knowledge according to internalist criteria. It is considered how the rejection of the internalist premise in Evgeny Borisov’s direct solution avoids the (...) criticism put forward by Andrei Nehaev. (shrink)

Some authors maintain that anti-intellectualism faces a general epistemic problem of explaining the cognitive aspect of know-how, and answering the question of why know-how as a kind of disposition is to be considered a distinct kind of knowledge. In the present paper, I argue for a solution to this problem, the central idea of which is that there is a broader sense of knowledge to which both knowledge-that and knowledge-how belong. I present two versions of this solution. According to the (...) first version, know-how is a distinct kind of knowledge since there is a general analyzable category of knowledge under which both know-how and know-that fall. This general category is analyzed into three components: a success component, an externalist anti-luck component, and an internalist anti-luck component. According to the second version of the solution, know-how is a distinct kind of knowledge since there is an unanalyzable analogical conception of knowledge that comes first in both the theoretical realm (as propositional knowledge) and the practical realm (as know-how). Both versions of the solution are plausible since they distinguish between know-how and knacks in an anti-intellectualist manner by positing that there is an internal relation between know-how and non-propositional intentionality. (shrink)

The paper discusses five conceptions of knowledge present in texts traditionally associated with the thought of such thinkers as Kongzi, Mozi, Mengzi, Xunzi, Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Hanfeizi. The first three maps onto conceptions of knowledge familiar to contemporary ears: skill knowledge (knowing-how), propositional knowledge (knowing-that) and objectual knowledge (knowing by acquaintance); while the next two map onto less commonly discussed conceptions of knowledge: motivational knowledge (knowing-to) and applied knowledge (knowing-how-to). The discussion aims to complement existing projects in the literature that (...) look at related issues more explicitly from the standpoint of the ‘native’ concepts. The paper concludes with some comments on the early Chinese philosophical concerns with knowledge and its relation to broader conceptions of ‘philosophical’ projects. (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)

Una introducción a la epistemología del saber-cómo, con discusiones de la disputa entre intelectualistas y anti/intelectualistas, la filosofía de la mente relevante, la posibilidad de saber-cómo colectivo, injusticia y vicios epistémicos relativos al saber-cómo y etnoepistemología. -/- Parte del proyecto ANID/Postdoctorado 3220017 'Saber Cómo: Preguntas, Maneras, Intentos.' (2022-2025).

Epistemology characteristically operates at an intellectual level, being primarily restricted to the cognitive states of human individuals and the factors that influence these states. This restriction may be undesirable for a more generalized epistemology that discusses non-individual or non-human systems that may be said to be intelligent, such as communities, animals, and complex systems whose parts may not be independently intelligent. Here, I show how such a generalized epistemology may be possible under a teleological, non-intellectual, and not conventionally mechanical view (...) of knowledge. I establish a teleological schema of knowledge-how, where a system is understood to know how to X if it is capable of being goal-directed towards X. This schema is analogous to how philosophers of biology are increasingly describing organismal agency. After developing this view, I show how it handles many controversial cases of know-how in the literature. I then show how knowledge-that may be constructed out of this teleological know-how, showing that all knowledge may be understood teleologically, without the need to reference to individual human cognitive states. Thereby, I show a generalized approach to epistemology through teleology that can extend naturally to topics in social epistemology and non-human intelligence. (shrink)

According to Dreyfusian anti-intellectualism, know-how or expertise cannot be explained in terms of know-that and its cognates but only in terms of intuition. Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus do not exclude know-that and its cognates in explaining skilled action. However, they think that know-that and its cognates (such as calculative deliberation and perspectival deliberation) only operate either below or above the level of expertise. In agreement with some critics of Dreyfus and Dreyfus, in this paper, I argue that know-that and (...) its cognates are constitutive of rather than external to know-how and expertise. However, unlike those critics, who argue for this point only from a phenomenological point of view, my argument adopts a (telic) normative point of view. (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)

Discussions of know-how typically focus on task-types. This paper discusses know-how about non-repeatable task-tokens. I define ‘non-particular’ know-how as knowledge of how to complete a task-type and ‘particular’ know-how as knowledge of how to complete a task-token. Particular know-how holds philosophical value by exhibiting interesting features. First, based on an empirical study, I argue that particular know-how makes stronger ability requirements than non-particular know-how. This disparity arises, I propose, because particular know-how is relative to actual rather than normal circumstances. Second, (...) the concept of downstream luck is applicable to particular know-how, not to non-particular know-how. The upshot is a multi-faceted pluralist approach to the essence of know-how. (shrink)

Intellectualists about know-how tend to deny that knowing how to ϕ requires the corresponding ability to ϕ. So, it’s supposed to be an attractive feature of intellectualism that it can explain cases of knowing how without ability, while anti-intellectualism—roughly, the view that knowing how is a kind of ability—cannot. I show that intellectualism fails to explain the very cases that are supposed to showcase this feature of the view. Despite appearances, this does not amount to an objection to intellectualism per (...) se, but to the intellectualist’s rejection of ability entailment. It turns out that all parties to the debate about know-how should accept that knowing how entails ability. The upshot is that the central question of the debate should not be whether knowing how entails ability, but whether ability suffices for knowing how, as anti-intellectualists sometimes claim. (shrink)

Know how and ability have a seemingly fraught relationship. I deepen the tension here, by arguing for two new pieces of data concerning know how and ability. First, know how ascriptions have two distinct readings that differ in their entailments to ability: one entails ability, the other does not. Second, in certain cases, know how claims rely on ability to have determinate truth-values at all: the indeterminacy of certain ability claims infects both readings of know how claims. No existing accounts (...) of the relationship between know how and ability captures both data points, I argue; but intellectualists about know how have special resources to account for them. Ascriptions of knowledge of infinitival questions give rise to a distinctive kind of context-sensitivity specific to infinitivals. I show how on an intellectualist view where, very roughly, knowing how to do something is knowing an answer to an infinitival question about your abilities, this context-sensitivity accounts for the relationship between know how and ability. (shrink)

The perennial question of the nature of natural-language understanding has received renewed attention in recent years. Two kinds of natural-language understanding, in particular, have captivated the interest of philosophers: linguistic understanding and utterance understanding. While the literature is rife with discussions of linguistic understanding and utterance understanding, the question of how the two types of understanding explanatorily depend on each other has received relatively scant attention. Exceptions include the linguistic ability/know-how views of linguistic understanding proposed by Dean Pettit and Brendan (...) Balcerak Jackson. On these views, to tacitly linguistically understand a sentence just is to possess the linguistic ability/knowledge-how needed to derive/infer what is said by different utterances of the sentence. Despite their focus on linguistic understanding, both views can straightforwardly explain utterance understanding as the output of a derivation/inference from a representation of the sentence uttered. Here, I take issue with these approaches to utterance understanding and then develop an alternative. More specifically, I distinguish two kinds of utterance understanding, experiential and doxastic, and then argue that experiences of what is said by utterances play distinct rational roles in the two kinds of utterance understanding. I conclude by addressing a recent challenge to my proposal. (shrink)

I argue that, for Mengzi, the kind of knowledge that features in expressions of the form ‘knowing N’, where N is a noun or a noun phrase, is not a kind of belief but is instead a capacity for intelligently performing relevant actions. My argument proceeds by showing that, first, Mengzi is committed to the view that a person knows N iff she is relevantly capable and, second, that the best explanation for this is that the kind of knowledge involved (...) in knowing N is a capacity. Finally, I motivate such a practicalist interpretation by arguing that it offers us a general but informative explanation of what it is that knowing N makes the knower capable of doing. (shrink)

En este ensayo, examino dos problemas que cualquier teoría del saber cómo y en particular una teoría del saber como grupal debe tratar: el problema de la posesión, que es la necesidad de explicar como un grupo puede estar en un estado de saber como hacer algo, y el problema de la atribución, que es la necesidad de dar cuenta de las condiciones en las que es admisible atribuir saber como a un grupo. Argumento que (a pesar de ciertas apariencias (...) iniciales) estos problemas son independientes, lo que es especialmente importante en el contexto de teorías del saber cómo donde este no puede en general reducirse a actitudes proposicionales. (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)

What kind of knowledge does one have when one knows what it is like to, say, fall in love, eat vegemite™, be a parent, or ride a bike? This Element addresses this question by exploring the tension between two plausible theses about this form of knowledge: (i) that to possess it one must have had the corresponding experience, and (ii) that to possess it one must know an answer to the 'what it is like' question. The Element shows how the (...) tension between these two theses helps to explain existing debates about this form of knowledge, as well as puzzling conflicts in our attitudes towards the possibility of sharing this knowledge through testimony, or other sources like literature, theories, and simulations. The author also offers a view of 'what it is like' knowledge which can resolve both the tension between (i) and (ii), and these puzzles around testimony. (shrink)

One prominent intellectualist position in the debate on the nature of skill, famously defended by Stanley and Williamson (2001; 2017), claims that skill and knowing-how are reducible to knowledgethat. To defend this claim, Stanley and Williamson argue that skill and knowledge-that develop in a sufficiently similar way through different learning stages. In this paper we offer a novel argument to reject this version of intellectualism on methodological, descriptive, and conceptual grounds. We do so by drawing on the work of Heidegger, (...) Dreyfus, and Ryle on skill. We first offer a descriptive account of skilful action based on the work developed by these authors, and we then move on to show that skill and knowledge-that exhibit significant differences. First, while skills cannot be imparted merely linguistically, some forms of knowledge-that can be exclusively imparted and learned verbally. Second, weshow that the temporal learning curves of skill and knowledge-that are importantly different: the former usually requires a more or less extensive training process, whereas the latter may be acquired in a relatively sudden fashion. Finally, we show that, while the structure of most forms of knowledge-that is aggregative, the structure of skilful understanding is dynamic and holistic, which entails that prior skill stages cannot be retrieved and re-enacted at will. (shrink)

In erkenntnistheoretischen Zusammenhängen hat sich für praktisches Wissen seit Ryle die Unterscheidung zwischen propositionalem knowing that und nicht-propositionalem knowing how etabliert. In der Handlungstheorie wird praktisches Wissen dagegen als ein im Handeln selbst als Wissen wirksames Wissen verstanden. Umstritten ist nach wie vor wie die Besonderheit dieser Wissensform angemessen zu erfassen ist. Der Band nimmt die Thematik des praktischen Wissens auf, indem unterschiedliche Diskussionsstränge zu diesem Begriff in historischer und systematischer Orientierung aus Handlungstheorie, Metaethik und Erkenntnistheorie zusammengeführt werden. Die Beiträge (...) wollen das Konzept eines praktischen Wissens hinsichtlich seiner Potentiale und weiterer Forschungsfragen erschließen und dabei als essentiell für die Grundlagen der praktischen Philosophie herausstellen. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey’s philosophy, developed in the 1920s in Cambridge, was in conversation with the debates surrounding intellectualism in the early twentieth century. Ramsey made his mark on the anti-intellectualist tradition via his notion of habit. He posited that human judgments take shape through habitual processes, and he rejected the separation between the domain of reason, on one hand, and the domain of habit, on the other. Ramsey also provided the ground to explore the nature of knowledge employed in acting from (...) habit. That ground was passed onto Margaret MacDonald who came up with the distinction between knowing that something is the case and knowing how to apply a rule (or habit), the distinction that set the stage for Gilbert Ryle’s philosophical project against intellectualism from the 1940s onward. Ramsey thus influenced Ryle’s account of knowledge through the channel of MacDonald. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the traditional anti-intellectualist claim that a form of knowing how to Φ (e.g., knowing how to play the guitar) exists that entails the ability to Φ (play the guitar), and that this knowledge cannot be reduced to propositions (such as ‘S knows a way _w_ to Φ’, where _w_ is a means of Φing). I also argue that S can know how to Φ in the absence of the ability to Φ, and for this knowledge (...) to be likewise irreducible to propositions. This is made possible when one distinguishes between type and token actions. Moreover, I contend that type and token actions, and one’s ability to engage in them, are differentiated at the level of motor representations. Motor representations provide an alternate means of grading knowledge how to that presented by Carlotta Pavese, insofar as this form of gradable knowledge is likewise irreducible to propositions. (shrink)

This chapter examines Mencius’s views on knowledge and how they might contribute to contemporary debates in epistemology. For this purpose, I focus on three features that I take to be characteristic (although not exhaustive) of Mencian epistemology: first, Mencius’s views on knowing things; second, the role that wisdom or intellectual virtue plays in acquiring knowledge; and third, Mencius’s views on “knowing-to”, a kind of knowledge conceptually distinct from knowing-that and knowing-how. I argue that the views we find in the Mencius (...) on these matters are relevant to contemporary debates on the nature of objectual knowledge, on the role of intellectual virtue in knowing, and on the relation between know-how and intelligent action. (shrink)

Hawley introduced the idea of the client's perspective on knowledge, which she used to illuminate knowing-how and cases of epistemic injustice involving knowing-how. In this paper, I explore how Hawley's idea might be used to illuminate not only knowing-how, but other forms of knowledge that, like knowing-how, are often claimed to be distinct from mere knowing-that, focusing on the case studies of moral understanding and ‘what it is like’-knowledge.

What occurs in the mind of an expert who is performing at their very best? In this paper, I survey the history of debate concerning this question. I suggest that expertise is neither solely a mastery of the automatic nor solely a mastery of intelligence in skilled action control. Experts are also capable of performing automatic actions intelligently. Following this, I argue that unconscious-thought theory (UTT) is a powerful tool in coming to understand the role of executive, intelligent action control (...) in the fluidly automatic performance of expertise. Relying on a body of empirical evidence concerning the cognitive structures and perceptual strategies employed by experts, I show that the realm of skilled action is an ideal environment within which the powers of unconscious cognitive processing can have positive effects on action. I conclude that experts rely upon unconscious thinking in the production of intelligently automatic skilled actions. (shrink)

This research explores the incorporation of narrative perspectives in economics as a social science and its implications for rethinking epistemology. By examining the role of narratives in economic analysis, the study highlights the advantages of narratives in providing contextualized accounts of human experiences, connecting economic concepts to real-world phenomena, and exploring diverse perspectives. It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers, economists, and social scientists to gain a comprehensive understanding of narratives' influence on economic decision-making, market dynamics, and consumer (...) behaviour. The research suggests that narratives offer a means to challenge the notion of a single, objective truth and contribute to a more inclusive and robust framework for analyzing economic phenomena. The implications extend beyond economics, urging a broader perspective on epistemology by embracing narrative perspectives and engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines. Overall, this research calls for a rethinking of epistemology, recognising the significance of narratives and their role in knowledge production. (shrink)

How, if at all, is knowing how to do something defeasible? Some, the “intellectualists”, treat the defeasibility of knowledge-how as in some way derivative on the defeasibility of knowledge-that. According to a recent proposal by Carter and Navarro (Philos Phenomenol Res 3:662–685, 2017), knowledge-how defeat cannot be explained in terms of knowledge-that defeat; instead, knowledge-how defeat merits and entirely separate treatment. The thought behind “separatism” is easy to articulate. Assuming that knowledge of any kind is defeasible, since knowledge-that and knowledge-how (...) are fundamentally different beasts, the best accounts of their defeasibility must reflect the underlying differences between them. I reject a separatist treatment of the defeasibility of knowledge-that and knowledge-how. One can acknowledge certain important differences between knowledge-that and knowledge-how without thereby needing two theories of defeasibility. Ultimately, though, I’ll argue that the defeasibility of basic knowledge-how, unlike non-basic knowledge-how, is a much more difficult issue than has been acknowledged. (shrink)

Buoyed by research in philosophy and moral psychology, virtue ethics has become increasingly influential in the literature. This renewed attention has also led to the development of the situationist challenge: empirical studies undermine the idea that we possess character traits that allow us to act virtuously across contexts. A promising reply to the situationist challenge is that we should not conceive of virtues as traits. Instead, we should conceive of them as expert skills. Here, I raise a new challenge for (...) those who go in for the (s)kill against situationism. Expert skills are brittle, rather than flexible or robust. They typically develop in narrow ways and can falter in novel situations. Experts also sometimes perform worse than novices in novel situations. Such findings present a problem for the virtue-as-skill thesis. Someone who will help others only in narrow contexts or who causes more harm than good does not exemplify virtue. The brittleness of expert skills means that virtue theorists must either (a) abandon the idea that virtues explain behaviour across contexts or (b) abandon the idea that virtues are expert skills. It’s brittle virtue or bust – you can’t teach an old dogma new skills. (shrink)

This anthology focuses on “practical” forms and expressions of knowledge, like thinking through artistic media or by crafting things out of materials. The ten chapters follow and review various tracks in conceptions of contemporary knowledge, exploring human knowledge and experience from the perspective of human activities or practices, professional, artistic, domestic, or whatever. A guiding idea is that human knowledge seldom, perhaps never, fits into the traditional dualism between thinking and doing. -/- The chapters are written by philosophers and musicians (...) – some with a double experience as artists and theoreticians. The themes are philosophical, but above all, they touch on questions that are essential for how we understand ourselves as thinking and playing bodies, indeed as parts of nature. The book does not propose one single “theory of knowledge” but steps towards a more diverse and open attitude to the meaning of knowledge. -/- We hope that the texts will be of interest and useful in both disciplinebased and professional education: in philosophy, art schools, tea cher education, and in other programmes where tacit and practical knowledge are essential for the (future) practitioners. It is possible to independently read, and profit from, most of the chapters. (shrink)

Scientific and medical practice both relate to and differ from each other, as do discussions of how to handle decisions under uncertainty in the laboratory and clinic respectively. While studies of science have pointed out that scientific practice is more complex and messier than dominant conceptions suggest, medical practice has looked to the rigour of scientific and statistical methods to address clinical uncertainty. In this article, we turn to epistemological studies of the laboratory to highlight how clinical practice already has (...) strategies for dealing with messiness. We draw on Hans-Jo ̈rg Rheinberger’s Toward a History of Epistemic Things, in which he invokes the metaphor of a spider’s web to explain the role of tacit practices in experimental biochemistry for helping practitioners manage messiness. We argue that diagnostic practices in clinical medicine employ similar, albeit codified, procedures to evaluate epistemic significance, ensure sensitivity to the unforeseen, and allow focused grounds for action. We consider three practices: (a) the pre-set structure of medical records, ensuring broad coverage in initial anamnesis, (b) the use of lists of differential diagnoses and ongoing ‘anchoring and adjusting’ as inquiry progresses, and (c) shared decision-making as an occasion to synthesize empirical evidence and reopen inquiry for potential missed information. We end by suggesting that while philosophy of medicine may learn from laboratory epistemology, the sciences may learn something from medical practice. (shrink)

What is wisdom? What does a wise person know? Can a wise person know how to act and live well without knowing the whys and wherefores of his own action? How is wisdom acquired? This Element addresses questions regarding the nature and acquisition of wisdom by developing and defending a skill theory of wisdom. Specifically, this theory argues that if a person S is wise, then (i) S knows that overall attitude success contributes to or constitutes well-being; (ii) S knows (...) what the best means to achieve well-being are; (iii) S is reliably successful at acting and living well (in light of what S knows); and (iv) S knows why she is successful at acting and living well. The first three sections of this Element develop this theory, and the final two sections defend this theory against two objections to the effect that there are asymmetries between wisdom and skill. (shrink)

What is the nature and structure of phronesis or practical wisdom? According to the view widely held by philosophers and psychologists, a person S is wise if and only if S knows how to live well. Given this view of practical wisdom, the guiding question is this: What exactly is “knowing how to live well”? It seems that no one has a clear idea of how to answer this simple but fundamental question. This paper explores knowing how to live well (...) (or “life know-how”) by showing how its nature and structure can be understood through contemporary epistemology of knowledge-how. I will achieve this by doing the following. In Section I, I highlight the two as-yet unanswered “integration questions” about life know-how. In Section II, I explain why the epistemology of knowledge-how has good potential to address the integration questions. In Sections III and IV, I construct two positions—intellectualism and anti-intellectualism—for the epistemology of life know-how and show how they address the two integration questions. In Section V, I show how the epistemology of life know-how established in the previous sections can be used in the philosophy of wisdom and the psychology of wisdom. (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 paper examines what it takes for a state of knowledge-how to be extended (i.e. partly constituted by entities external to the organism) within an anti-intellectualist approach to knowledge-how. I begin by examining an account of extended knowledge-how developed by Carter, J. Adam, and Boleslaw Czarnecki. 2016 [“Extended Knowledge-How.” Erkenntnis 81 (2): 259–273], and argue that it fails to properly distinguish between cognitive outsourcing and extended knowing-how. I then introduce a solution to this problem which rests on the distribution of (...) tasks between agent and non-biological entity. On closer inspection, I show that this solution is ultimately unsatisfactory, though its failure is instructive as it illuminates the important role played by an agent’s skilled interaction with an external entity. Drawing on key anti-intellectualist ideas, as well as on insight from cognitive psychology, I propose an account according to which what ultimately matters for extending knowledge-how is whether a hybrid ability is self-regulated. In closing, I illuminate the practical value of extended knowledge-how vis-à-vis cognitive outsourcing. (shrink)

In Sanskrit philosophy, the closest analogue of intuition is pratibhā. Here, I will focus on the theory of pratibhā offered by the Sanskrit grammarian Bhartṛhari (fifth century CE). On this account, states of pratibhā play two distinct psychological roles. First, they serve as sources of linguistic understanding. They are the states by means of which linguistically competent agents effortlessly understand the meaning of novel sentences. Second, states of pratibhā serve as sources of practical knowledge. On the basis of such states, (...) both human and non-human agents unreflectively know which actions they should perform under which circumstances. Given these two roles of pratibhā, modern commentators have often claimed that states of pratibhā, as understood by Bhartṛhari, are intuitions. In this article, I will reconstruct Bhartṛhari's view and to explore its consequences, I will argue that, if Bhartṛhari’s theory of pratibhā is right, then a form of human exceptionalism – which makes rationality a unique trait of human beings – becomes difficult to maintain. (shrink)

Many virtue-based approaches to propositional knowledge begin with the ability and achievement intuitions. In this paper, I rely on this pair of intuitions to explore the relationship between knowing how and knowing that. On the view that emerges, propositional knowledge is a kind of success through cognitive know how. Rather than simply equating know how with ability, I reveal deeper connections between both kinds of knowledge by focusing on the role of self-regulation.

In this paper, I argue that hinge propositions are ways of acting that constitute abilities or skills. My starting point is Moyal-Sharrock's account of hinge propositions. However, Moyal-Sharrock's account leaves gaps to be filled, as it does not offer a unified explanation of the origin of our ungrounded grounds. Her account also lacks resources to respond to the issue of demarcation, since it does not provide a criterion for distinguishing ways of acting that can legitimately fulfill the role of ungrounded (...) grounds from those that cannot. Without an answer to this issue, the relativistic threat is serious. I then propose that by narrowing the ways of acting to those that are constitutive of abilities, we can deal with the relativistic threat. I provide an ecological approach to abilities through which I explain why abilities are reality-soaked and therefore why the ways of acting that constitute them are legitimate ungrounded grounds. Based on that approach, I provide an answer to the issue of demarcation that defuses the relativistic threat. (shrink)