Knowledge-How,Abilities, and Questions

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. 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.     

Knowing things and going places

When I say “I know Sarah,” or “I know Berlin,” what sort of knowledge am I claiming? Such knowledge of a particular is, I claim, not reducible to either propositional knowledge-that or to traditional physical know-how. Mere, bare knowledge by acquaintance also does not capture the kind of knowledge being claimed here. Using knowledge of a place as my central example, I argue that this kind of knowledge-of, or “objectual knowledge” as it is sometimes called, is of a distinctive epistemological sort. It is a genre of inherently first-personal aesthetic knowledge, but it also, like know-how, involves active skill. I end by exploring a couple of classic problems in aesthetic epistemology, applied to the case of knowledge-of as active aesthetic knowledge.     

Swimming and Speaking Spanish

The dominant view of the status of knowledge of language is that it is theoretical or what Gilbert Ryle called knowledge-that. Defenders of this thesis may differ among themselves over the precise nature of the knowledge which underlies language, as for example, Michael Dummett and Noam Chomsky differ over the issue of unconscious knowledge; however, they all agree that acquisition, understanding and use of language require that the speaker have access to a theory of language. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken. Knowledge of language is properly seen as practical knowledge, knowledge-how. My target is Michael Dummett’s treatment of theory of meaning in The Seas of Language. If my argument goes through, underlying assumptions about the nature of cognition as computational must be adjusted to allow for other forms of knowledge, which are arguably more basic, and which underlie knowledge-that.     

Propositional knowledge and know-how

This paper is roughly in two parts. The first deals with whether know-how is constituted by propositional knowledge, as discussed primarily by Gilbert Ryle (1949) The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson (2001). Knowing how. Journal of Philosophy, 98, pp. 411–444 as well as Stephen Hetherington (2006). How to know that knowledge-that is knowledge-how. In S. Hetherington (Ed.) Epistemology futures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The conclusion of this first part is that know-how sometimes does and sometimes does not consist in propositional knowledge. The second part defends an analysis of know-how inspired by Katherine Hawley’ (2003). Success and knowledge-how. American Philosophical Quarterly, 40, pp. 19–31, insightful proposal that know-how requires counterfactual success. I conclude by showing how this analysis helps to explain why know-how sometimes does and sometimes does not consist of propositional knowledge.     

A metaphysics for practical knowledge

Is Anscombean practical knowledge independent of what the agent actually does on an occasion? Failure to understand Anscombe’s answer to this question is a major obstacle to appreciating the subtlety and plausibility of her view. I argue that Anscombe’s answer is negative, and turns on the nature of mistakes in performance, and reveals a distinctive implicit metaphysics of mind and knowledge, structured by related capacities and exercises of capacities. If my interpretation is correct, then practical knowledge shares features with knowledge-how and knowledge-that, but deserves its own epistemic category.     

Knowledge in the information society

The German Council for Research, Technology and Innovation defines the “information society” as a type of society where the acquirement, storage, processing, exchange, diffusion and utilization of knowledge inclusive of their technological possibilities of interactive communication, here become increasingly important. In this notion, knowledge has become the decisive factor for economic growth and technological advance. As a social scientist I transform the term “information society” into processes of automatization of knowledge, which is called its informatization and computerization. It is argued that these processes affect the societal condition of knowledge in that the part of knowledge relating to the contents diminishes while the importance of the technical and/or formal part increases. In contrast to the claim of many social scientists, this trend does not lead to a superficial or shallow type of knowledge. What is changing is the social requirement of professional skills and qualifications. The great looming question about information society then is: Which knowledge do people need to behave competently, effectively and successfully in a world full of computers? The structure of this article is as follows. First I will have a look at the micro‐level of the composition of knowledge, next I will proceed to the historical shift from subject‐specific knowledge to media‐competence and finally I will talk about the meaning of the evolving dominance of—what I will call “media‐competent experts”.     

Varieties of Knowledge in Plato and Aristotle

I develop the relatively familiar idea of a variety of forms of knowledge??not just propositional knowledge but also knowledge-how and experiential knowledge??and show how this variety can be used to make interesting sense of Plato??s and Aristotle??s philosophy, and in particular their ethics. I then add to this threefold analysis of knowledge a less familiar fourth variety, objectual knowledge, and suggest that this is also interesting and important in the understanding of Plato and Aristotle.     

Knowledge and abilities: The need for a new understanding of knowing-how

Stanley and Williamson (The Journal of Philosophy 98(8), 411–444 2001) reject the fundamental distinction between what Ryle once called ‘knowing-how’ and ‘knowing-that’. They claim that knowledge-how is just a species of knowledge-that, i.e. propositional knowledge, and try to establish their claim relying on the standard semantic analysis of ‘knowing-how’ sentences. We will undermine their strategy by arguing that ‘knowing-how’ phrases are under-determined such that there is not only one semantic analysis and by critically discussing and refuting the positive account of knowing-how they offer. Furthermore, we argue for an extension of the classical ‘knowing-how’/‘knowing-that’-dichotomy by presenting a new threefold framework: Using some core-examples of the recent debate, we will show that we can analyze knowledge situations that are not captured by the Rylean dichotomy and argue that, therefore, the latter has to be displaced by a more fine-grained theory of knowledge-formats. We will distinguish three different formats of knowledge we can have of our actions, namely (1) propositional, (2) practical, and (3) image-like formats of knowledge. Furthermore, we will briefly analyze the underlying representations of each of these knowledge-formats.     

The Automaton Self: Defensive organisation,psychodynamics and treatment approaches

Abstract

This paper is not primarily concerned with the content of theory and what we then, in the light of this and of our own experience, say to our clients. Rather, it is concerned with the nature of this knowledge that we are using and that the client in turn uses and experiences in the counselling.

How, or the way in which, we know, defines our knowledge as much as the actual content of that knowledge. The paper delineates two fundamental ways of knowing. One is our ordinary practical and rational way of understanding reality and is usually about achieving some goal – this is what I am calling the product side of counselling: the other is concerned with our more immediate first-hand experiential knowing of ourselves and our world.

The paper opens with a definition of these two kinds of knowledge, product and process, and presents some clinical material to show how these different ways of knowing can have a real effect on the counselling. It then moves on to the question of why counselling trainings are becoming increasingly concerned with product knowledge, and ends with a discussion of how Freud himself was constantly using both ways of knowing as if they were the same, without understanding the implications of this for therapeutic practice.     

The Distinction between Knowledge-That and Knowledge-How

I first argue why Stanley and Williamson fail to eliminate the distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how. Then I argue that knowledge-how consists in a special kind of ways of thinking of ways of engaging in actions. So the distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how is twofold: the objects of knowledge-that and knowledge-how are different; the ways in which we entertain the object of knowledge are also distinct when we have knowledge-that and knowledge-how. At the end, I consider two recent intellectualist efforts on knowledge-how and show why they fail.     

Hierarchies, similarity, and interactivity in object recognition: "category-specific" neuropsychological deficits.

Category-specific impairments of object recognition and naming are among the most intriguing disorders in neuropsychology, affecting the retrieval of knowledge about either living or nonliving things. They can give us insight into the nature of our representations of objects: Have we evolved different neural systems for recognizing different categories of object? What kinds of knowledge are important for recognizing particular objects? How does visual similarity within a category influence object recognition and representation? What is the nature of our semantic knowledge about different objects? We review the evidence on category-specific impairments, arguing that deficits even for one class of object (e.g., living things) cannot be accounted for in terms of a single information processing disorder across all patients; problems arise at contrasting loci in different patients. The same apparent pattern of impairment can be produced by damage to different loci. According to a new processing framework for object recognition and naming, the hierarchical interactive theory (HIT), we have a hierarchy of highly interactive stored representations. HIT explains the variety of patients in terms of (1) lesions at different levels of processing and (2) different forms of stored knowledge used both for particular tasks and for particular categories of object.     

Knowing‐how: Problems and Considerations

In recent years, a debate concerning the nature of knowing‐how has emerged between intellectualists who claim that knowledge‐how is reducible to knowledge‐that and anti‐intellectualists who claim that knowledge‐how comprises a unique and irreducible knowledge category. The arguments between these two camps have clustered largely around two issues: (1) intellectualists object to Gilbert Ryle's assertion that knowing‐how is a kind of ability, and (2) anti‐intellectualists take issue with Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson's positive, intellectualist account of knowing‐how. Like most anti‐intellectualists, in this paper I will raise objections to Stanley and Williamson's account of knowing‐how and also defend the claim that ability is necessary for knowing‐how attributions. Unlike most discussions of knowing‐how, however, I will return to more Rylean considerations in order to illustrate that any intellectualist account of knowing‐how, not simply Stanley and Williamson's preferred variety, will fail because it will be unable to account for fundamental differences in the knowledge required to instantiate an ability and the knowledge involved in propositional thought.     

Knowing Other People: A Second‐Person Framework

What does it mean to know another person, and how is such knowledge different from other kinds of knowledge? These questions constitute an important part of what I call ‘second‐person epistemology’ – the study of how we know other people. I claim that knowledge of other people is not only central to our everyday lives, but it is a kind of knowledge that is unlike other kinds of knowledge. In general, I will argue that second‐person knowledge arises from repeated interactions with another person, and that it also requires employment of certain cognitive abilities and a unique kind of second‐order knowledge. This paper provides the framework for a second‐person epistemology by examining some of our ordinary claims about what it means to know another person. I describe four conditions that typically characterize knowing another person. Then I describe the psychological grounds of knowing a person. Finally, I conclude with some thoughts about the unique symmetries of second person knowledge and the role of such knowledge in our broader epistemological endeavours.     

Longer,smaller, faster,stronger: On skills and intelligence

ABSTRACT

How does practice change our behaviors such that they go from being awkward, unskilled actions to elegant, skilled performances? This is the question that I wish to explore in this paper. In the first section of the paper, I will defend the tight connection between practice and skill and then go on to make precise how we ought to construe the concept of practice. In the second section, I will suggest that practice contributes to skill by structuring and automatizing the motor routines constitutive of skilled actions. I will cite how this fact about skilled action has misled many philosophers to conclude that skills are mindless or bodily. In the third section of the paper, I will challenge this common misconception about automaticity by appealing to empirical evidence of motor chunking. This evidence reveals that there are two opposing processes involved in the automaticity of skilled action: one process that is largely associative, which I will call “concatenation,” and a second which is a controlled cognitive process, which I will call “segmentation.” As a result of this evidence, we will be in a position to see clearly why skills are minded and intelligent not merely during their acquisition and not simply in virtue of their connection to intentional states but, rather, in their very nature. I will end by reflecting on some theoretical reasons for why this is exactly what we should expect to be the case when it comes to skilled action.     

Śaṇkara on Action and Liberation

In this paper I attempt to understand the implications of ?a?kara's claim that liberation is not an action. If liberation is not an action, how is it up to us and therefore our responsibility? What role do actions have in a life concerned with liberation? The key to understanding ?a?kara's view, I suggest, requires broad reflection on his claim in his commentary on Brahma Sūtra I.1.4 that cessation of action in accordance with Vedic prohibition is not an action. I will conclude by discussing the implications of this interpretation on the nature of māyā in ?a?kara.     

Young children''s naive theory of biology

This article aimed at investigating the nature of young children's naive theory of biology by reviewing a large number of studies conducted in our laboratories. More specifically, we tried to answer the following five critical questions. What components does young children's knowledge system for biological phenomena (or naive biology) have? What functions does it have in children's lives? How is it acquired in ontogenesis? How does its early version change as children grow older? Is it universal across cultures and through history? We propose that young children's biological knowledge system has at least three components, that is, knowledge needed to specify the target objects of biology, ways of inferring attributes or behaviors of biological kinds, and a non-intentional causal explanatory framework, and that these three constitute a form of biology, which is adaptive in children's lives. We also claim that the core of naive biology is acquired based on specific cognitive constraints as well as the general mechanism of personification and the resultant vitalistic causality, but it is differently instantiated and elaborated through activity-based experiences in the surrounding culture.