^There is some parallel between the performative sense of knowledge-how and the externalist, reliabilist view of knowledge-that. Carl, for example, is reliable at distinguishing male from female baby chicks, without knowing how he’s able to be so reliable.
^Analogously, there are some parallels between the acquaintance sense of know-how and internalist views of knowledge-that. Steve’s know- how is closely tied to his having a representation of the kind of mechanics necessary to serve a tennis ball over 120 miles per hour.
And Steve is able to verbalize his
knowledge in a way that is helpful to the players he coaches.
^Relatedly, internalism about
knowledge-that supports the idea that the justifications of our knowledge are the sorts of things we’re often aware of. Because we’re aware of our justifications, we can not only verbalize them and transmit our knowledge to others but also explain to them the reasons for our knowledge.
^British philosopher Gilbert Ryle was the first to argue explicitly for the claim that know-how is a form
Theories of Knowledge LECTURE 16 Know-how versus Propositional Knowledge
of knowledge utterly distinct from factual or propositional knowledge—
knowledge-that. He suggests that there’s a threat of infinite regress if we think all knowledge is knowledge- that, or propositional knowledge.
Because that would be bad, Ryle thinks we’re forced to acknowledge that there’s another type of knowledge that is different in kind from knowledge-that. He thinks this different type of knowledge is knowledge-how.
I n his book The Concept of Mind, Ryle argues that knowledge-how is a form of knowledge utterly distinct from knowledge-that:
To put it quite generally, the absurd assumption made by the intellectualist legend [i.e., the idea that all knowledge-how is a form of knowledge- that] is this, that a performance of any sort inherits all its title to intelligence from some anterior internal operation of planning what to do. … By the original argument, therefore, our intellectual planning process must inherit its title to shrewdness from yet another interior process of planning to plan, and this process could in its turn be [analyzed with respect to its shrewdness]. The regress is infinite.
T he expression
“the ghost in the machine” is one of Ryle’s colorful ways of dismissing the idea of internal, unobservable mental states.
Theories of Knowledge LECTURE 16 Know-how versus Propositional Knowledge
^In our discussion of Steve and Carl, we saw a number of independent reasons for thinking that at least one sense of knowledge-how, the performative sense, is not a form of knowledge-that. This would seem to provide some support for Ryle’s claim.
^An influential challenge to Ryle was published in the Journal of Philosophy in 2001 by philosophers Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson, who read Ryle as trying to show that the assumption “all knowledge-how is really just propositional knowledge”
leads to a contradiction. Ryle does this by suggesting, first, that if you perform some action intentionally, then you’re employing knowledge- how to perform that action. From there, he suggests that if you employ some of your knowledge-that, or propositional knowledge, it means that you must be contemplating the proposition that you know.
^Here, according to Stanley and Williamson, is how Ryle thinks the problematic regress gets started.
According to this reading of Ryle, everyone who performs some action intentionally is employing knowledge- how. And if the “intellectualist legend” is true, this means that by employing knowledge-how, they’re actually employing knowledge-that.
^Everyone who employs knowledge- that, according to this reading of Ryle, must contemplate the proposition
that they know. Contemplating a proposition, however, is itself an action. And now we’re trapped in the beginning of the regress.
^Stanley and Williamson object to Ryle’s argument. To do so, they appeal to an earlier reply to Ryle given by philosopher Carl Ginet in his book Knowledge, Perception, and Memory. They argue that Ryle is making a mistake if he’s suggesting that whenever anyone employs propositional knowledge they’re also performing the distinct action of contemplating the proposition that they know. Why think that contemplating a proposition is itself a distinct and separate action?
^That does indeed seem plausible.
And the only way Ryle can dispute Ginet’s argument, Stanley and Williamson suggest, is by interpreting the contemplation of propositions as a nonintentional—or otherwise deflated sense—of action. But the whole point of Stanley and Williamson’s reading of Ryle’s argument requires that the actions we’re looking at be intentional actions. Without that, the regress won’t get off the ground.
^In other words, according to Stanley and Williamson, Ryle needs two fundamental claims to make his infinite regress argument against the intellectualist legend: Ryle needs it to be the case that when you contemplate a proposition, you’re performing an
Theories of Knowledge LECTURE 16 Know-how versus Propositional Knowledge
action, and he needs it to be the case that it should count as an intentional action. But those two things together, according to Stanley and Williamson, just aren’t plausible. So, it seems that Ryle’s argument just won’t work.
^If Stanley and Williamson are reading Ryle correctly, then it seems that Ryle’s argument rests on a mistake. The regress that Ryle tries to use against what he calls the “intellectualist legend” can’t even get started.