Extended Knowledge-How

Abstract

According to reductive intellectualists about knowledge-how (e.g. Stanley and Williamson in J Philos 411–44, 2001; Stanley in Know how. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011; Brogaard in Grazer Philos Stud 77(1):147–190, 2008; Philos Phenomenol Res 78(2):439–467, 2009) knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. To the extent that this is right, then insofar as we might conceive of ways knowledge could be extended with reference to active externalist (e.g. Clark and Chalmers in Analysis 58(1):7–19, 1998; Clark in Supersizing the mind: embodiment, action, and cognitive extension: embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Oxford University Press , Oxford, 2008) approaches in the philosophy of mind (e.g. the extended mind thesis and the hypothesis of extended cognition), we should expect no interesting difference between the two. However, insofar as anti-intellectualist approaches to knowledge-how (e.g. Ryle in Proc Aristot Soc 46, 1945; The concept of mind. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1949) are a viable option, there is an overlooked issue of how knowledge-how might be extended, via active externalism, in ways very differently from knowledge-that. This paper explores this overlooked space, and in doing so, illustrates how a novel form of extended knowledge-how emerges from a pairing of active externalism in the philosophy of mind with anti-intellectualism in the theory of knowledge. Crucial to our argument will be a new way of thinking about the extended mind thesis, as it pertains to the kinds of state one is in (on an anti-intellectualist construal) when one knows how to do something, and how this state connects with non-accidentally successful performance.