Abstract
ABSTRACTThe debate about the nature of knowledge-how is standardly thought to be divided between intellectualist views, which take knowledge-how to be a kind of propositional knowledge, and anti-intellectualist views, which take knowledge-how to be a kind of ability. In this paper, I explore a compromise position—the interrogative capacity view—which claims that knowing how to do something is a certain kind of ability to generate answers to the question of how to do it. This view combines the intellectualist thesis that knowledge-how is a relation to a set of propositions with the anti-intellectualist thesis that knowledge-how is a kind of ability. I argue that this view combines the positive features of both intellectualism and anti-intellectualism.
Highlights
Knowing-how seems to be a distinctively practical kind of knowledge
The debate about the nature of knowledge-how is standardly thought to be divided between intellectualist views, which take knowledge-how to be a kind of propositional knowledge, and anti-intellectualist views, which take knowledge-how to be a kind of ability
My goal in this paper is to explore a view that combines the weak anti-intellectualist claim that knowledge-how is a kind of ability with the weak intellectualist claim that knowledge-how is a relation to a set of propositions that answer the question how to V? According to the interrogative capacity view, knowing how to V is one’s standing in a certain kind of ability-to-answer relation to the question how to V? This view is not completely novel: Masto [2010] and Farkas [2016a, 2016b] defend related views of knowledge-wh, Michaelis [2011: 278] suggests this view of knowledge-how in passing, and Dickie [2012] and Stanley and Williamson [2016] develop related views of skill
Summary
Knowing-how seems to be a distinctively practical kind of knowledge. Yet, according to the standard semantics for knowledge-how ascriptions, to be truly said to know how to do something requires standing in a relation to a proposition about how to do it. Intellectualists about knowledge-how typically take their lead from the semantics of knowledge-how ascriptions, claiming that knowledge-how is a kind of propositional knowledge. As a consequence, they have trouble explaining the practical properties of knowledge-how. Since abilities are typically relations to activities rather than to propositions, anti-intellectualists have the parallel problem of making their view compatible with linguistic theory. I explore a novel compromise position: the interrogative capacity view. According to this view, knowledge how to do something is a certain kind of ability to generate answers to the question of how to do it. I argue that combining a propositional object with an abilitative relation makes the view uniquely well-placed to defuse the tension between semantic theory and the practicality of knowledge-how, and allows it to illuminate the relation between knowledge-how, propositional knowledge, and abilities
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