Knowledge‐How and Cognitive Achievement

According to reductive intellectualism, knowledge‐how just is a kind of propositional knowledge (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011a, 2011b; Brogaard, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2011, 2009, 2011). This proposal has proved controversial because knowledge‐how and propositional knowledge do not seem to share the same epistemic properties, particularly with regard to epistemic luck. Here we aim to move the argument forward by offering a positive account of knowledge‐how. In particular, we propose a new kind of anti‐intellectualism. Unlike neo‐Rylean anti‐intellectualist views, according to which the possession of knowledge‐how is just a matter of possessing certain abilities, we submit that knowledge‐how is a particular kind of cognitive achievement attained just when cognitive ability is connected in the right way with successful performance.     

(ANTI)‐Anti‐Intellectualism and the Sufficiency Thesis

Anti‐intellectualists about knowledge‐how insist that, when an agent S knows how to φ, it is in virtue of some ability, rather than in virtue of any propositional attitudpaes, S has. Recently, a popular strategy for attacking the anti‐intellectualist position proceeds by appealing to cases where an agent is claimed to possess a reliable ability to φ while nonetheless intuitively lacking knowledge‐how to φ. John Bengson and Marc Moffett and Carlotta Pavese have embraced precisely this strategy and have thus claimed, for different reasons, that anti‐intellectualism is defective on the grounds that possessing the ability to φ is not sufficient for knowing how to φ. We investigate this strategy of argument‐by‐counterexample to the anti‐intellectualist's sufficiency thesis and show that, at the end of the day, anti‐intellectualism remains unscathed.     

Knowing Your Ability

In this article, we present an attempt to reconcile intellectualism and the anti‐intellectualist ability account of knowledge‐how by reducing “S knows how to F” to, roughly speaking, “S knows that she has the ability to F demonstrated by a concrete way w.” More precisely, “S has a certain ability” is further formalized as the proposition that S can guarantee a certain goal by a concrete way w of some method under some precondition. Having the knowledge of our own ability, we can plan our future actions accordingly, which would not be possible by merely having the ability without knowing it, and this pinpoints the crucial difference between knowledge‐how and ability. Our semi‐formal account avoids most of the objections to both intellectualism and the anti‐intellectualist ability account, and provides a multistage learning process of knowledge‐how, which reveals various subtleties.     

De Lubac,Grace, and the Pure Nature Debate

Henri de Lubac's doctrine of grace and nature emerged out of the pastoral and sacramental context of confession. Although recent critics have assumed a Thomist setting, a close reading shows that the doctrine is rooted in de Lubac's critical engagement with Augustinianism. In the form of Jansenism and drawing especially on Augustine's late, anti‐Pelagian writings, this sensibility pervaded modern French theology. Notwithstanding its distorted conceptions of grace's mode of operation and of human nature, Jansenism provoked de Lubac into developing new understandings of the relation between belief and knowledge, and of theological anthropology. In advocating for the continuity of Augustine's theology, de Lubac made an important contribution to Augustine scholarship. His resulting doctrine of grace and nature, in which the person of Adam is central, has wider, abiding theological salience.     

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.     

The essential invisibility of trauma and the need for repetition commentary on Shabad's “resentment,indignation, entitlement”;

This paper assesses the implications of Grünbaum's critique of Freud's “science”; for a discussion of the relation between theory and practice in psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy. Guided by the work of the French sociologist, Bourdieu, it places Grünbaum's argument within a logic of intellectualism—a framework that tends to instrumentalize reason and romanticize practice, delineating the well‐known territories of objectivism and subjectivism. Grünbaum's arguments within this logic are taken to be rhetorical maneuvers—such as valorizing the tally argument and then debunking it—aimed at rejuvenating an objectivistic approach to theory and practice. Grünbaum is successful insofar as much of the debate generated by his views accepts the terms of his intellectualist bias. It is suggested, however, that these are terms that have long been suspect; that, indeed, it was Freud who helped bring them into question; and that there is a broader framework of discourse that relativizes intellectualism within a dialectical opposition to “participationism.”; A form of rationality founded in a nonconceptual knowledge of practice has begun to emerge within this more inclusive discourse under such rubrics as “social constructivist”; and “relational”; approaches to psychotherapy. It is argued that within the therapy situation a kind of “practical reason”; can mitigate the controlling, instrumental authority of intellectualism as well as the collusive, sentimental servility of participationism.

[T]he theoretician's claim to an absolute viewpoint, the “perspec‐tiveless view of all perspectives”; as Leibnitz would have put it, contains the claim to a power, founded in reason, over particular individuals, who are condemned to error by the partisan partiality of their individual viewpoints [Bourdieu, 1990, pp. 28–29]1 ^lThe work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1990; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) focuses on a scientific study of human interaction that is cognizant of the pitfalls of the conflicting poles within intellectualism of “objectivism”; and “subjectivism"—both of which are rejected. and redefined relative to the recognition of a distinct “logic of practice.”; I hope that the perceived significance of this work to the understanding of psychoanalytic practice will justify my extensive use of quotations.      

Holiness in the Making

In this essay, I will argue that a political theology of human work can provide the sacramental principle underlying the theology of labor. This principle could complement the foundations of Catholic social teaching, since the sacramental aspects of work have not been made very explicit in the ethical framework of the Church's theology of work. The view of labor as the active participation in God's future is an important aspect of such a theology. In order to serve as a foundation for faith‐based labor organizing, I will claim that it needs to be complemented by a sacramental view of labor as art, a labor‐aesthetic that undergirds a labor‐ethic, in which labor itself becomes a sign and instrument of the way the Church becomes God's work in the world. First, I will sketch an outline of some of the major positions on labor in modern Catholic theology. Then, I will draw on the writings of the British poet and painter David Jones to explore a sacramental view of human work, arguing that a sacramental view of work could support the Church's social criticism of laborer's circumstances.     

BETWEEN THE OLD METAPHYSICS AND THE NEW EMPIRICISM: COLLINGWOOD'S DEFENCE OF THE AUTONOMY OF PHILOSOPHY

Collingwood has failed to make a significant impact in the history of twentieth century philosophy either because he has been dismissed as a dusty old idealist committed to the very metaphysics the analytical school was trying to leave behind, or because his later work has been interpreted as advocating the dissolution of philosophy into history. I argue that Collingwood's key philosophical works are a sustained attempt to defend the view that philosophy is an autonomous discipline with a distinctive domain of inquiry and that Collingwood's attempt to defend the autonomy of philosophy is intimately connected to his defence of intensional notions against the kind of meaning scepticism which came to prevail from the 1920s. I defend the philosophical claim that there is a third way between the idealist metaphysics with which Collingwood is often associated and the neo‐empiricist agenda which characterised analytic philosophy in mid‐century by defending the hermeneutic thesis that Collingwood's work is a sustained attempt to articulate a conception of philosophy as an epistemologically first science. Since there is a via media between the old metaphysics and the new empiricism there is no need to choose between a certain kind of armchair metaphysics and a scientifically informed ontology.     

TOWARDS A NON‐POSSESSIVE CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE: ON THE RELATION BETWEEN REASON AND LOVE IN AQUINAS AND BALTHASAR1

Because of the consistent emphasis he places on the supremacy of love, Hans Urs von Balthasar has occasionally been thought to incline toward a problematic irrationalism. This essay addresses this charge through a comparison of Aquinas and Balthasar on the question of the relationship between intellect and will. It is argued that the superiority of intellect over will generally attributed to Aquinas itself leads paradoxically to irrationalism whenever the object exceeds the soul, and that Balthasar's insistence on the supremacy of love—precisely because it integrates will and intellect and thereby makes the intellectual act structurally ecstatic—in fact allows us to avoid such an irrationalism.     

THE ART OF KNOWING

A creative intuition lies latent within St. Thomas' theory of knowledge, one first explored in Jacques Maritain's Art and Scholasticism , and one whose patinas come to clearer prominence when juxtaposed with the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Though obviously not a Thomist, the latter helps to deliver us from the false dilemma of choosing between divine and human creativity. He also aids in bridging a divide between two potent versions of twentieth century Thomism: the conceptualism Maritain took from John of St. Thomas and the dynamic intellectualism of Joseph Maréchal's Thomism.     

A Capacity to Get Things Right: Gilbert Ryle on Knowledge

Gilbert Ryle's distinction between knowledge‐how and knowledge‐that faces a significant challenge: accounting for the unity of knowledge. Jason Stanley, an ‘intellectualist’ opponent of Ryle's, brings out this problem by arguing that Ryleans must treat ‘know’ as an ambiguous word and must distinguish knowledge proper from knowledge‐how, which is ‘knowledge’ only so‐called. I develop the challenge and show that underlying Ryle's distinction is a unified vision of knowledge as ‘a capacity to get things right’, covering both knowledge‐how and knowledge‐that. I show how Ryle specifies the general notion into knowledge‐how and knowledge‐that and discuss the mutual interdependence exhibited by the two forms of knowledge. Ryle's positive view of knowledge, properly understood, emerges as an important, neglected, alternative which should be brought back into the ongoing conversation about practical and theoretical knowledge.     

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.     

Know How to Transmit Knowledge?

Intellectualism about knowledge‐how is the view that practical knowledge is a species of propositional knowledge. I argue that this view is undermined by a difference in properties between knowledge‐how and both knowledge‐that and knowledge‐wh. More specifically, I argue that both knowledge‐that and knowledge‐wh are easily transmitted via testimony while knowledge‐how is not easily transmitted by testimony. This points to a crucial difference in states of knowledge. I also consider Jason Stanley's attempt to subsume knowledge‐how under an account of de se knowledge. I argue that there are crucial differences between de se knowledge and knowledge‐how. Thus, this paper advances both the discussion of intellectualism and the literature on the nature of de se knowledge.     

Knowing in the “Executive Way”: Knowing How,Rules, Methods,Principles and Criteria

I advance a variety of intellectualism about knowing‐how that is, paradoxically, suggested by Ryle's positive discussions of that phenomenon. I discuss the roots of the view in Ryle's work, its affinity with John Hyman's (2015) view of factual knowledge, and important points of contrast with Stanley and Williamson's (2001) proposal. Drawing on work by Cath (2015) and Wiggins (2012) I also discuss conditions on knowing practically, in ‘the executive way’, as an alternative to appealing to practical modes of presentation.     

The Defeasibility of Knowledge‐How

Reductive intellectualists (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011a; 2011b; Brogaard 2008; 2009; 2011) hold that knowledge‐how is a kind of knowledge‐that. If this thesis is correct, then we should expect the defeasibility conditions for knowledge‐how and knowledge‐that to be uniform—viz., that the mechanisms of epistemic defeat which undermine propositional knowledge will be equally capable of imperilling knowledge‐how. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, against intellectualism, we will show that knowledge‐how is in fact resilient to being undermined by the very kinds of traditional (propositional) epistemic defeaters which clearly defeat the items of propositional knowledge which intellectualists identify with knowledge‐how. Second, we aim to fill an important lacuna in the contemporary debate, which is to develop an alternative way in which epistemic defeat for knowledge‐how could be modelled within an anti‐intellectualist framework.     

Reply to Kenneth Thomas's “Wild Analysis in Politics”

We try to clarify Kenneth Thomas's (“Wild Analysis in Politics”) mistakes about our analysis of the question: Do right‐wing authoritarian (RWA) beliefs originate from psychological conflict? We suggest, contrary to Thomas's analysis, an approach that builds on the kinds of psychodynamic causes we use to explain RWA and the importance of confirming them empirically.     

The Means of Prosperity: The Neo‐Pentecostal Interpretation of the Lord's Supper in Nigeria

This article investigates the Nigerian neo‐Pentecostal reinterpretation of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper using the lens of the prosperity gospel. This article describes the neo‐Pentecostal view of prosperity as an integral part of salvation, and shows how this impacts its hermeneutics of the Lord's Supper as the means of prosperity. The article argues that such neo‐Pentecostal reinterpretation does not distort the traditional significance of the Lord's Supper, but expands and complements it. As a result, Lutherans may have much to learn from the neo‐Pentecostal view of the Lord's Supper.     

In Defense of Trait‐Based Love

It is widely believed that a person's 1 traits can function as reasons for loving her. (Many a metropolitan rag, for instance, carries lonely hearts ads that attest to this belief with their laundry lists of coveted characteristics.) Notable contemporary work in the philosophy of love has taken the rejection of this premise as its point of departure. As far as I can tell, none of that work has engaged with a careful philosophical exposition of the view under discussion. In the following pages, I will defend the idea of trait‐based love against three of its critics and one of its advocates. I will discuss work on this topic by Harry Frankfurt, Niko Kolodny and David Velleman, arguing that their criticisms fail and that the alternatives they offer to trait‐based love create more difficulties than they solve. What these authors have in common is a deflationary approach to love that reduces it to a beneficent disposition, a valuing relationship and a visceral form of moral regard, respectively. I will compare these to the multiplex, nuanced depiction of trait‐based love in Plato's Symposium. While it is plausible that love can motivate a beneficent disposition, develop in relationships and entails moral regard, I will argue that the attempt to reduce it to any of the foregoing fails. Frankfurt, Kolodny and Velleman reject trait‐based love in part because they think it would differ in unacceptable ways from the love most of us practice. Plato advocates the cultivation of a love that in some respects resembles the picture of trait‐based love the contemporary authors balk at. However, unlike those critics, he appreciates that trait‐based love need not resemble the ideal he proposes. His richer view of love accounts for elements such as need and feeling that the contemporary thinkers are driven to implausibly bracket as distractions. As I will try to show, the most compelling criticisms of Platonic love do not tell against its responsiveness to the loved one's traits. I will argue that trait‐based love is consistent with an intuitive picture of love and that this commonsense approach is more defensible than competing views in these texts. These authors' disagreements about what can count as reasons for love are bound up with the differences in what each takes love to be. Thus, in the course of arguing for trait‐based love, I will critically assess their various proposals as to the nature of love.