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.
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Notes
This term owes to Clark and Chalmers (1998), who distinguish active externalism from ‘passive externalism’, which they use to characterize the kind of externalism that is implied by the view that mental contents are widely individuated (e.g. Putnam 1975; Burge 1986). For a representative example of some recent defences of active externalist views, see Clark and Chalmers (1998), Clark (2008), Clark (2010), Hutchins (1995), Menary (2006), Palermos (2011), (2014a, b), Theiner et al. (2010), Wilson (2000), (2004).
Put slightly differently, we might also say that different varieties of active externalism map on to different strategies for combating what Clark calls ‘bioprejudice’—viz., when it is just on account of something’s being located outside the skull and skin that it is excluded from cognition. Active externalism is thus egalitarian in its approach to cognitive theorizing.
There is a version of active externalism that is perhaps more radical by the lights of orthodoxy than the extended mind thesis. This is the distributed cognition thesis (e.g. Hutchins 1995). We’ll be setting this view aside for the present purposes.
See, along with the bloat objection noted here, Adams and Aizawa’s (2008) objection to the extended mind which draws from a distinction between derived and underived content.
Clark’s (2010, 46) criteria are that: (1) “That the resource be reliably available and typically invoked.” (2) “That any information thus retrieved be more-or-less automatically endorsed. It should not usually be subject to critical scrutiny. [...] It should be deemed about as trustworthy as something retrieved clearly from biological memory.” (3) “That information contained in the resource should be easily accessible as and when required.”
Compare the case of Otto, who mutually interacts with his notebook, with ‘one-way’ or non-reciprocal causation, as we might have in an amended case where Otto does not interact himself with the notebook by writing entries in it, but rather, simply relies on an external signal to tell him what to do at each juncture. In a case where Otto simply accepts the instructions of the signaler, the signaler is not (according to DST at least) a part of Otto’s extended cognitive process, as the relevant causal relations are not mutually directed but one-way.
Ryle of course took himself to be challenging more generally Descartes’ picture of the mind as a ‘ghost in the machine’ a picture on which action has intelligence properties only when guided by acts of the mind—viz., the consideration of regulatory propositions. However, what matters for the present purposes is that Chapter 2 of The Concept of Mind as well as Ryle’s (1945) Aristotelian Society Address constitute the seminal case for thinking, in particular, that knowing how to do something is grounded in abilities, not (propositional) knowledge, and it is this picture that has been inherited in mainstream epistemology, more or less, until recent challenges by Stanley and Williamson and others on linguistic grounds.
An even more simplified picture of the distinction between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism goes like this: knowing how to do something just is having a certain ability or disposition to do that thing; by contrast, intellectualism claims that knowing how to do something just is a kind of propositional knowledge. While Ryle probably endorsed something like this simplified view of anti-intellectualism and Stanley and Williamson (2001), as well as Stanley (2011) endorse this simplified statement of intellectualism, we have resisted this kind of characterization. This is because, following 1, we think the simplified picture runs together two issues that can come apart. On the one hand, there is the issue of what grounds knowledge how—e.g. what is it in virtue of which one knows how to do something. This is we think the key question separating anti-intellectualist and intellectualists. One says propositional attitudes, the other abilities. A separate matter altogether is what is the metaphysical nature of knowing how to do something: here, for instance, an intellectualist can say that the nature of knowing how to do something is a relation between an agent and a proposition, though this need not be one’s answer to the nature question, simply in virtue of being an intellectualist about what grounds knowledge how. For an example of an intellectualist proposal that is not ‘reductive’ (e.g. which does not simply reduce the nature of knowing how to a propositional attitude relation), see Bengson and Moffett (2011a).
The recent emergence of linguistically-driven intellectualism has led a number of writers to go back and give sustained critiques of Ryle’s original ‘regress’-style arguments for anti-intellectualism about knowledge how. See here, for instance, Bengson and Moffett (2011b).
This point has been noted by Paul Snowdon (2004).
Recently Carter and Pritchard (2014) have offered a different approach featuring (actual) achievement as candidate for knowledge-how.
For more on this difference see, for example, Stout (2005).
Note that, when EMT is applied to mental states, the claim about propositional knowledge-how is that it may be—among other available options—an appropriately formed true belief with some \(\varphi \)-relevant content. But if in formulating EM*T we attempted to draw on a strict analogy with EMT, we would arrive at the thesis whereby appropriately successful action is extended. Although, actions seem to make good candidates for extension, there is no straightforward way of construing them as mental states. This is why it seems more natural to attend to dispositions.
Note that insofar as this latter formulation is intended as expository rather than motivational, it does not attain the status of a principle. EM*T, as we envisage it here, is motivated by Epistemic Parity Principle for States of Knowledge-How. Granting that Epistemic Parity Principle for States of Knowledge-How holds, it simply entails the parity of exercises.
This is because, one is in a position to speak about extended knowledge how in those cases where it is not exercised. We will not rehearse examples to this effect here.
Earlier we have mentioned hybridization of categorical base. Nonetheless, in cases such as Jens’s it is easy to imagine that continuous advancements in the stem cell research will facilitate the production of medium wavelength cones.
By which we mean the range of colours available to an agent with normally functioning visual system.
Thanks to Duncan Pritchard and Orestis Palermos for helpful discussion. This article was written as part of the AHRC-funded ‘Extended Knowledge’ (AH/J011908/1) research project that is hosted by the University of Edinburgh’s Eidyn research centre. Bolesław Czarnecki’s research was supported by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Mobility Plus III research grant (1112/MOB/2013/0).
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Carter, J.A., Czarnecki, B. Extended Knowledge-How. Erkenn 81, 259–273 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-015-9738-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-015-9738-x