Abstract
Intellectualism is the doctrine that knowing how to do something consists in knowing that something is the case. Drawing on contemporary linguistic theories of indirect interrogatives, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson have recently revived intellectualism, proposing to interpret a sentence of the form ‘DP know how to VP’ as ascribing to DP knowledge of a certain way w of VPing that they could VP in w. In order to preserve knowledge-how’s connection to action and thus avoid an overgeneration problem, they add that this knowledge must be had under a “practical” mode of presentation of w. I argue that there can be non-knowledgeable true beliefs under a practical mode of presentation and that some such beliefs would nevertheless be sufficient to establish knowledge-how’s characteristic connection to action, and thus count as knowledge-how. If so, Stanley and Williamson’s account is faced with a serious undergeneration problem. Moreover, the structural features on which the argument relies make it likely to present a quite general challenge for intellectualist strategies.
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Notes
Some authors think that ‘know how’-ascriptions are context dependent in the sense that, for example, ‘Helen knows how to play the guitar’ can be uttered truly in a context where we are looking for someone to play by the bonfire and can be uttered falsely in a context where we are looking for someone to play at Carnegie Hall (see e.g. Sgaravatti and Zardini 2008, pp. 257–261). To fix ideas for these authors, throughout I’ll be presupposing a bonfire-like context. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.
Throughout, the phrase ‘‘know how’-ascriptions’ will be used exclusively to refer to such ascriptions. In this sense, not every ascription of the form ‘DP know how IP’ is a ‘know how’-ascription (think for example of ‘Rudolf knows how the exam went’). Indeed, in this sense, it is not even clear that every ascription of the form ‘DP know how to VP’ is a ‘know how’-ascription (think for example of ‘Rudolf knows how to prove the completeness of first-order logic’). I shall maintain neutrality on this issue.
Throughout, I’ll use ‘action’ in a suitably broad way, so as to encompass, roughly, any property which is under a subject’s control to exemplify. This is in order to do justice to ‘know how’-ascriptions like ‘Helen knows how to look beautiful’ and contrasts with the usual, stricter understanding of ‘action’ in philosophy of action.
For simplicity and concreteness, I follow Stanley and Williamson in assuming some of the specifics of Karttunen’s (1977) well-known theory of indirect interrogatives. As they note, nothing important for our discussion hinges on the details of this choice. I also ignore some features of their proposal not relevant to our discussion.
Throughout, I assume answers to be propositions and take ‘P’ to range over these.
The psychological reality of knowledge-wh (i.e. knowledge expressed by ‘know’ when taking an indirect interrogative as complement) is thus reduced to that of knowledge-that (see Schaffer 2007 for an interesting criticism of this reductionist strategy in the specific case of ‘know whether’-ascriptions and Sgaravatti and Zardini 2008, pp. 252–254 for a more general criticism concerning any kind of ‘know wh’-ascriptions).
At least, assuming that the truth-conditional equivalence signalled by ‘iff’ is strong enough as to warrant a reduction of one side of the equivalence to the other. In the following, I’ll set aside this complication, as my dialectic targets the stability of the equivalence itself.
In spite of the considerations adduced in the text, on closer inspection there are arguably significant syntactic and semantic differences between ‘know how’-ascriptions and other ‘know wh’-ascriptions which make the linguistic argument in favour of intellectualism very problematic (see Sgaravatti and Zardini 2008, pp. 225–235, Zardini 2011). I shall not go into this aspect of the debate here.
I don’t claim to be using exactly the same concept of aptness as Sosa’s. Sosa’s concept is such that an action is apt iff it is “accurate” because “adroit”. While it is clear that accuracy (as understood by Sosa) just is the same thing as successfulness (as understood by me), it is much less clear that this is so also for adroitness (as understood by Sosa) and intelligence (as understood by me).
Drawing on Hawley (2003, p. 27), Bengson et al. (2009, pp. 395–398) offer cases where, basically, one is disposed successfully to do something because of some deviant chain proceeding from one’s intelligence. For example, Irina, a skater, might have a severe misconception of what a Salchow jump involves, but nevertheless be disposed successfully (and reliably) to perform such a jump because some neurological abnormality causes her to jump in the right way whenever she attempts to jump according to her misconception. Such cases pose no problem for (right-to-left) (KHA), since, on the intended sense of ‘because’, they are not cases where the action is successful because—under normal external conditions—performed intelligently, and hence they are not cases where one is disposed aptly to do something (see also Stanley 2011a, pp. 216–218, b, pp. 177–178 for a similar take on such cases).
The discussion can remain neutral as to the specifics of the underlying theory of attitudes and their objects (Fregean, Russellian, Lewisian-Stalnakerian etc.) as long as this recognizes something like modes of presentation.
Possibly with some minor restrictions on their acceptable instances. In the following, I’ll leave this qualification implicit.
Taking (TA) and (KHA) literally, this move would strictly speaking target the latter rather than the former. The move itself, however, suggests an easy amendment to (KHA) (just add the extra clause that the disposition to apt action has the required robustness). In order for my argument to remain valid, (TA) would then have to be correspondingly amended, and the move is in effect targeting this latter amendment. This is why I think it’s more illuminating to discuss this move in connection with strategy (ii).
Williamson (2000, p. 63) remarks that “stubbornness […] cannot replace knowing in all causal-explanatory contexts, for the simple reason that those who know p often lack a stubborn belief in p”. I agree, but notice that all the point in the text needs is simply a case where stubbornness is present and produces a similar robustness against contrary (misleading) evidence as is produced by knowledge-that (I hasten to add that Williamson does not put forth that remark—nor the burglar example discussed in the text—in order to address the issue at hand). Indeed, stubbornness and its like are sometimes more valuable than knowledge-that when it comes to practical evaluation. Stanley (2011b, p. 181) writes that “knowledge of how to do something is more valuable than true belief. Suppose that John has formed a true belief about how to fly a plane from an unskilled flight instructor who has, by luck, given John the correct instructions. We would not be as happy with John as our pilot as we would be with someone trained by a skilled flight instructor even if we were antecedently assured that their beliefs about how to fly the plane are the same”. But that arguably depends on the details. To take but one example, if John has thereby acquired an exhaustive set of stubborn and correct—albeit lucky—beliefs about how to fly the plane on which he also acts promptly, while the other candidate—albeit knowledgeable—is very insecure and also takes hours of rumination before acting on her knowledge, I think we would be much happier with John as our pilot than with the other candidate.
Because of examples such as that offered by Setiya (2008, p. 404), the claim may need some qualification for non-basic actions. If such qualification is in fact needed, we should assume that what we’re considering is a basic action.
I’m grateful to both Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson for discussions on this issue.
Stanley (2011a, p. 219, b, pp. 180–181) suggests the condition that speaker and audience are more interested in the belief’s truth rather than in its epistemic credentials. Setting aside whether this interesting suggestion works in the case of other ‘know wh’-ascriptions and ‘know that’-ascriptions, it does not seem to work for ‘know how’-ascriptions: the obtaining of the suggested condition seems to be pretty much independent from the tendency to attribute knowledge-how in the presence of merely true belief. On the one hand, the suggested condition might obtain but the tendency be absent. For example, Helen might truly believe, for some way w, that she could play the guitar in w but initiate completely wrong movements every time she tries to play one (a benign demon may then each time correct her movements so that they conform to w). In such a case, even in contexts where one is only interested in truth (and success) rather than epistemic credentials, there is little if any intuition that Helen knows how to play the guitar. On the other hand, the suggested condition might fail to obtain but the tendency be present. To elaborate on a previous example, Helen might have a merely true but unshakeable belief, deriving from an extremely unreliable source, for some way w, under a PMP of w, that she could play the guitar in w, and such a belief, given that (TA) is now no longer under discussion, can be assumed to suffice for her to play the guitar divinely (even better than Segovia!). In such a case, even in contexts where one is interested in epistemic credentials, the strong intuition persists that Helen, such a divine player, knows how to play the guitar (it would for instance be felicitous to assert ‘Although her source is extremely unreliable, Helen knows how to play the guitar’).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing this worry.
Don’t say that this problem can be finessed by switching, for example, from (KHA2) to something along the lines of:
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(KHA2*) Necessarily, Rudolf knows why to jog iff, under suitable conditions, he is disposed aptly to jog on the basis of good reasons for jogging
For, while not as obviously false as (KHA2), at least on its most natural reading (KHA2*) still does not have much prima facie plausibility (if Rudolf’s only source for believing that jogging is good for his health is the tarot, (KHA2*) is intuitively false). Moreover, and more importantly, this move would be utterly useless in substantiating the worry discussed in the text: since my argument uses (KHA) rather than an analogue of (KHA2*), that worry requires analogues of (KHA) for a ‘know wh’-ascription involving an interrogative pro-form other than ‘how’ (and so, say, (KHA2) rather than (KHA2*)) to have prima facie plausibility, which they don’t (at best, this move would show that a hypothetical anti-intellectualist argument that relied on analogue of (KHA2*) rather than on (KHA) may be problematic, but that would not be my argument).
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For what’s worth, I think that the rather unclear phrase ‘Gettier case for knowledge-how’ can sensibly be used to mean at least two very different things: under either reading, I would wholeheartedly agree that there are Gettier cases for knowledge-how and nothing I say in this paper entails otherwise. More specifically, under one reading, that phrase stands for cases where one knows how to F although some of one’s beliefs relevant to Fing are Gettiered and none is knowledgeable. I think there are such cases, but a defence of this claim lies beyond the scope of this paper. Under another reading, it stands for cases where one intelligently and successfully Fs and one’s beliefs contributing to one’s intelligence are justified, although there is not the right connection between this justification (or the resulting intelligence) and one’s success. Something similar to the latter reading (with talk of justification dropped) is adopted by Poston (2009), who argues for the implausible conclusion that there are no such cases. In so doing, Poston has to rely on a principle similar to (right-to-left) (KHA), but in which, given Poston’s desired conclusion, aptness is replaced by the mere conjunction of intelligence and success. Poston’s principle and his desired conclusion are both conclusively refuted, I think, by the kind of case discussed in n. 10.
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Zardini, E. Knowledge-how, true indexical belief, and action. Philos Stud 164, 341–355 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9852-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9852-4