Knowing How and 'Knowing How' Yuri Cath (Forthcoming in C. Daly ed. The Palgrave Handbook on Philosophical Methods, Palgrave Macmillan. Preprint prior to final copyediting, please cite the published version.) In epistemology, premises about knowledge ascriptions often play important roles in arguments about the nature or extent of knowledge. However, such arguments are often objected to on the grounds that it is a methodological error to think that mere linguistic claims about knowledge ascriptions could support metaphysical conclusions about knowledge itself. My aim in this chapter is to examine this issue and related issues as they arise in one specific area of epistemology, 1 namely, debates about the nature of knowledge-how and its relationship to knowledge-that. In particular, I will be concerned with examining the role that linguistic claims have played in recent defences of intellectualism-the view that to know how to Φ is to possess a kind of knowledge-that-by Stanley and Williamson (2001) and Stanley (2011a, 2011b). I will proceed as follows: In §1 I will offer a brief sketch of Stanley and Williamson's (2001) linguistic argument for intellectualism which appeals to claims about the syntax and semantics of a range of knowledge ascriptions. In §§2-3 I will examine critiques of this argument by Johnson (2006) and Glick (2011) each of which contends (in different ways) that Stanley and Williamson's (henceforth "S&W") linguistic premises do not support their desired conclusions about knowledge-how itself. In §§4-5 I will evaluate Stanley's (2011a) response to apparent Gettier-style counterexamples to intellectualism, and the role that linguistic considerations play in that response (including claims about the univocality of 'knows' and the pragmatics of ascribing knowledge-how). 1. S&W's Linguistic Argument Leaving out various details that will not concern us, S&W's linguistic argument can be viewed as relying primarily on a claim comparing the syntactic structure of knowledge-how 1 See Brown (2012) for a discussion of how issues of this kind arise more generally in epistemology. And, of course, similar methodological issues come up in many other areas of philosophy. 2 ascriptions like (1) with knowledge-where/whom/which/why ascriptions like (2a-d) and a claim about the semantics of (2a-d): (1) Hannah knows how to ride a bicycle. (2) a. Hannah knows where to find a nickel. b. Hannah knows whom to call for help in a fire. c. Hannah knows which prize to look for. d. Hannah knows why to vote for Gore The key syntactic premise that S&W appeal to is that (1) shares a common syntactic structure with (2a-d). Most notably, in all of these sentences the complement of 'knows' is an embedded question (i.e. an embedded clause headed by a question word, 'how', 'where', 'whom', 'which', and 'why' respectively.) which contains a covert pronoun 'PRO', a trace 't' (showing the place where the question word moved from), and an infinitive 'to Φ' (e.g. 'to find a nickel'). S&W represent these syntactic features of (1) and (2a-d) as (3a-e) (where the brackets represent clausal boundaries): (3) a. Hannah knows [how PRO to ride a bicycle t] b. Hannah knows [where PRO to find a nickel t] c. Hannah knows [whom PRO to call t for help in a fire] d. Hannah knows [which prize PRO to look for t] e. Hannah knows [why PRO to vote for Gore t] The key semantic premise that S&W appeal to is that each of (2a-d) is an ascription of knowledge-that. And, more generally, that any knowledge-wh ascription-i.e. any ascription where the complement of 'knows' is an embedded question-is an ascription of knowledgethat. In supporting this premise, S&W appeal to what they take to be the standard accounts of embedded questions in formal semantics. To illustrate the general form of such accounts, S&W use Karttunen's (1977) view on which embedded questions denote the set of their true answers. For example, take the following knowledge-wh ascription: (4) Hannah knows whom Bill likes 3 On Kartunnen's view the embedded question in (4) 'whom Bill likes' denotes the set of true propositions expressed by sentences of the form 'Bill likes x' and (4) is true iff Hannah knows all of the propositions in that set. More precisely, an utterance of (4) will be true relative to a given context of use iff Hannah knows all of the propositions denoted by the 'whom Bill likes' in that context. This kind of semantics can then be extended to other knowledge-wh ascriptions like (2a-d) once one assigns interpretations to the occurrences of 'PRO' and the infinitive in these sentences. On the basis of the premise that (1) shares a common syntactic structure with (2a-d), and the premise that the right semantics of (2a-d) is one on which they are ascriptions of knowledgethat, S&W submit that the default position should be that knowledge-how ascriptions are also ascriptions of knowledge-that. In particular, S&W claim that on its most salient interpretation (1) 2 should be assigned the following truth-conditions: (5) 'Hannah knows how to ride a bike' is true iff for some way w, Hannah knows that w is a way for her to ride a bike. More generally, S&W endorse a view on which the truth conditions of knowledge-how ascriptions conform to something like the following schema: (6) 'S knows how to F' is true iff for some way w, S knows that w is a way for S to F 3 Importantly, S&W not only endorse this conclusion about the semantics of knowledge-how ascriptions but they also assume that this linguistic argument supports the metaphysical conclusion that knowledge-how itself is a kind of knowledge-that. 2. Johnson's critique 2 This is an interpretation on which 'PRO' gets its interpretation from the subject of the main clause (i.e. 'Hannah') rather than the arbitrary interpretation where it is interpreted as 'one', the infinitive 'to ride a bike' is interpreted as expressing a 'can'-like force rather than an 'ought'-like force, and the embedded question is interpreted on the "mention-some" rather than the "mention-all" reading (i.e. Hannah only needs to know, of some way w, that w is a way for her to ride a bike, rather than possessing such knowledge with respect to all of the ways for her to ride a bike). 3 For ease of exposition, I am ignoring S&W's qualification that their account of the truth-conditions of knowledge-how ascriptions will either: (i) need to be modified so that it includes the requirement that S knows, under a practical mode of presentation, that w is a way for S to Ф, or (ii) that it will need to be supplemented with an account of the pragmatics of knowledge-how ascriptions on which the use of a knowledge-how ascription pragmatically conveys that S possesses this knowledge under a practical mode of presentation. 4 Johnson (2006) critiques S&W's argument on the grounds that "there appears to be no plausible bridge from the linguistic structure of knowledge-how reports to knowledge-how itself". To support this objection Johnson makes a distinction between what he calls the metaphysical structure of an external thing denoted by a linguistic expression versus the linguistic structure of that expression, which includes both its syntactic and semantic structure. Crucially, Johnson claims that the linguistic structure of an expression can always misrepresent the metaphysical structure of what it denotes. For example, Johnson suggests that the "semantic representation associated with the noun water is plausibly of a continuous, nonparticulate substance" (2006. p.21) even though water itself "is (primarily) composed of a discrete number of molecules of H2O" (2006. p.22). With these ideas in hand, Johnson goes on to grant, for the sake of argument, that S&W's account of the linguistic structure of knowledge-how ascriptions is correct. In particular, he grants that the meaning of (7) has a semantic form similar to (8): (7) Mary knows how to juggle. (8) There is a way w such that Mary knows that w is a way that she can juggle. Johnson takes himself to have thereby granted that knowledge-how ascriptions represent knowledge-how as being a kind of knowledge-that. But, given that linguistic expressions can always misrepresent the things they denote, this claim does not establish intellectualism: S&W hold that knowing how to do something is tantamount to standing in a certain relation to a proposition. So they're not primarily defending a claim about the structure of the language used to report the existence of such states. Rather their thesis concerns what knowledge-how itself is. But their evidence only concerns the structure of the language. Since their semantic theory represents knowledge-how as propositional, they maintain that knowledge-how must really be propositional. In other words, at best SW infer the metaphysical structure of the nature of knowledge-how from the linguistic structure of ascriptions of knowledge-how. But we've seen that an expression's linguistic structure needn't always mirror the metaphysical structure of its denotation. So we can't infer the structure of knowledge-how from the structure of knowledge-how ascriptions. (Johnson 2006, pp. 2728) But S&W could point out in response to Johnson that he misconstrues the linguistic claim about knowledge-how ascriptions that they rely on. S&W take the standard accounts of the 5 syntax and semantics of embedded questions to support a conclusion about the truthconditions of knowledge-how ascriptions, namely, that they conform to something like the schema given in (6). And, if that linguistic claim is correct, then one can simply use disquotation to support a conclusion about knowledge-how itself, as follows: (9) "Mary knows how to juggle" is true if and only if there is a way w such that Mary knows that w is a way for her to juggle. (10) "Mary knows how to juggle" is true if and only if Mary knows how to juggle. Therefore, (11) Mary knows how to juggle if and only if there is a way w such that Mary knows that w is a way for her to juggle The first premise above is just an instance of S&W's truth-conditions for knowledge-how ascriptions and the second is a plausible instance of the truth-schema. 4 But together these premises entail a conclusion in the material mode about the conditions in which Mary knows how to juggle. In which case, there appears to be no mistake made by S&W when they infer the truth of intellectualism from their linguistic claims about the semantics of knowledgehow ascriptions. I suspect what Johnson would want to say here is that semantic theories are not in the business of associating truth-conditions with sentences. In which case, if standard accounts of the syntax and semantics of sentences of embedded questions really do support a conclusion about the truth-conditions of sentences like (7) then those theories should either be abandoned or, more plausibly, reinterpreted so that they do not have the consequence that we can infer conclusions about the truth-conditions of knowledge-how ascriptions from mere claims about their semantic structure. One way of distancing meaning from truth-conditions in the way Johnson requires would be to adopt an "internalist" view of semantics on which meanings are intrinsic properties of linguistic expressions (see e.g. Chomsky 2000, McGilvray 1988 and Pietroski 2005, 2003), as opposed to "externalist" views on which meanings are understood in terms of symbol-to- 4 There are problematic instances of the truth-schema, most notably, cases involving self-reference and contextsensitivity. But see Stanley (2011a, p. 144-46) for arguments that we should not expect similar problems to arise for instances of the truth-schema like (10) above. 6 world relations (like the reference of words and the truth values and conditions of sentences). Pietroski (2005) provides a nice statement of the core features of the internalist view of meaning: Chomsky offers a plausible though often ignored conception of linguistic meaning and its relation to truth: the meaning of a natural language sentence S is an internalistic property of S, determined by the human language faculty and the relevant lexical items; the semantic properties of sentences, which reflect how human beings understand natural language, are theoretically tractable; but if an utterance of S is true or false, its truth or falsity is typically a massive interaction effect due to the meaning of S and many factors not indicated by elements of S. In my view, this conception is preferable to more standard alternatives, which either (i) burden theories of meaning with implausible predictions, or (ii) abandon good explanations. (2005, pp. 253-254) On this internalist view the meaning of a sentence does not determine its truth-conditions, not even relative to a context. Rather, the meaning of a declarative sentence S is "a compositionally determined intrinsic property of S that constrains and guides without determining how S can be used to make true or false assertions in various conversational situations" (2005, p. 254). In which case, on this view a correct theory of the meaning of knowledge-how ascriptions would not be a theory that could serve as a direct guide to the truth-conditions of such ascriptions. Johnson himself expresses sympathy with internalism at various points and a natural way of understanding his critique of S&W is to interpret it as relying on an internalist view of meaning, or at least on the idea that meanings do not determine truth-conditions. But then the debate between Johnson and S&W threatens to become embroiled in much larger issues about how to interpret the commitments of semantic theories and the notions of truth and reference/denotation as they appear in such theories. This is not the place to examine those difficult matters in any detail. However, two restricted points are worth making. The first is that Johnson's critique of S&W is dialectically problematic. This is because, on the one hand, S&W are clearly assuming a more standard view of semantics on which meaning is closely tied to truth-conditions; while on the other hand, Johnson's critique appears to rely on the 7 assumption that such a view is mistaken but without providing any detailed arguments in support of that assumption. 5 The second and more substantive point is that S&W's linguistic argument can be reformulated to make it compatible with the assumption that the meaning of a sentence merely constrains but does not determine its truth-conditions. For example, suppose that internalism is true. To reformulate S&W's argument in a way that is consistent with this assumption we need three premises. The first premise is that the semantic content of a sentence is at least a determinate of the truth-conditions of (utterances of) that sentence, even if there is nothing systematic one can say about how its meaning combines with a host of other factors to determine those truth-conditions. The second premise is that knowledge-how ascriptions like (1) and knowledge-wh ascriptions like (2a-d) share a common syntactic and internalist semantic structure that represents each of these relevant forms of knowledge as being kinds of knowledge-that (where this representation claim would be filled in using some internalist-friendly interpretation of the standard semantics for embedded questions). 6 Finally, the third premise is that (2a-d) (or at least that typical utterances of these sentences) do in fact have the kinds of intellectualist truth-conditions which S&W assume them to have. As indicated, even a strong internalist like Pietroski will accept the first premise, and the second premise should be granted, for the sake of argument, because what we are trying to assess are the consequences of an internalistic interpretation of S&W's linguistic premises. Finally, the third premise is plausible independently of both any particular theories of the syntax or compositional semantics of such ascriptions and also of one's stance on the internalist versus externalist issue. As Stanley (2011b) discusses, it is very intuitive that there 5 Johnson does cite a couple of examples (from Reid and Chomsky) that are tricky to account for on the standard or externalist view of semantics but he does not develop any detailed arguments against the standard view on the basis of those examples. Relatedly, it is worth noting that in other work Stanley has defended the standard view against one of Chomsky's more prominent arguments against it, see Kennedy and Stanley (2009) who describe the standard view like so: "According to the standard conception of natural language semantics, its purpose is to give an account of the relation between a sentence, on the one hand, and the information about the world communicated by an utterance of it, on the other. In constructing a semantic theory for a language L, we gather intuitions from native speakers of L about the truth or falsity of sentences of L with respect to various possible situations. We use their reactions to form hypotheses about the meanings of the words in L, and the ways in which, together with information from the context of use, their meanings compose to yield the truth-conditions of different utterances of sentences of L." (2009, p. 583) 6 If one adopted a mentalistic form of internalism on which meanings are mental representations then one could straightforwardly make sense of Johnson's suggestion that knowledge-how ascriptions can represent knowledge-how as being a kind of knowledge-that even if intellectualism is false. For example, one might suggest that the meaning of (7) above is given by some kind of mental representation of the right-hand side of the truth-conditions stated in (8), as opposed to being constituted by or determining those truth-conditions themselves. 8 is a reading of a sentence like (2a) on which it is true iff, for some place p, Hannah knows that p is where she can find a nickel. Or, switching to the material mode, that knowing where to find a nickel is a matter of possessing this kind of knowledge-that. And, importantly, these kinds of truth-conditions for (2a-d) become no less plausible if one agrees with the internalist that it is not the job of a theory of meaning to associate (2a-d) with these or any other truthconditions. For these reasons, I submit that even a committed internalist can and should accept these premises and that, other things being equal, these premises support the conclusion that knowledge-how ascriptions like (1) have the same kind of truth-conditions as ascriptions like (2a-d). In which case, we now have a version of S&W's linguistic argument which is compatible with the idea that a theory of the meaning of knowledge-how ascriptions will not provide us with the truth-conditions of those ascriptions. 7 However, one might worry that this revised argument should be of little comfort to the intellectualist because other things are evidently not equal, given that there are many good reasons for rejecting intellectualism. Johnson himself anticipates a response to his critique of S&W that is somewhat similar to the revised version of S&W's argument I just gave, and he responds to it in exactly this way: SW's argument is incomplete as it stands. Could there nonetheless be some way to defend it? Could some general principles of the philosophy of science help here? Maybe, e.g., knowledge-how should be thought of as a species of knowledge-that simply because such a hypothesis presents a more unified, coherent, simpler story than the alternatives. That is, if our best linguistic theories assign knowledgehow reports a type of structure similar to sentences expressing knowledge-that, then, barring any further contravening considerations, perhaps we should conclude that the structure of the linguistic theory correctly mirrors the world. So maybe knowledge-how is a type of knowledge-that. This strategy appears to be how SW would choose to complete their argument. But it is compelling only if there aren't any significant reasons for distinguishing knowledge-how from knowledge-that. But there are. (2006, p. 28) 8 7 I think a broadly related reply can be made in response to some of the points made in recent critiques of S&W by Abbott (2013) and Santorio (MS) although I cannot make that case here. 8 It is worth noting that the reply to his critique that Johnson considers whilst similar to the one I just offered is also importantly different. The revised argument I gave does not merely rely on the premise that knowledge9 Johnson goes on to briefly provide reasons for thinking that knowledge-how is too dissimilar from knowledge-that for the former to be regarded as a species of the later, and any intellectualist will have to address the kinds of considerations he raises. But, for our purposes, it is sufficient to note that S&W do not simply rely on their linguistic argument when presenting their case for intellectualism. Rather, S&W also respond to various arguments against intellectualism, including Ryle's famous regress argument and numerous arguments one might offer for thinking that knowledge-how is too dissimilar from knowledge-that for intellectualism to be true. 9 S&W do not act then as if the linguistic considerations they appeal to will alone provide us with a compelling case for intellectualism. In summary, Johnson's critique fails because S&W's linguistic argument can be reformulated to accommodate the kind of "gap" Johnson sees between their conclusions about the linguistic structure of knowledge-how ascriptions and the nature of knowledge-how itself. Johnson does identify an important limitation of S&W's methodology, namely, that the linguistic considerations they appeal to have to be weighed against any other non-linguistic considerations which suggest that knowledge-how is not a kind of knowledge-that. But this point does not constitute an objection to S&W's methodology given that they try to address many such considerations. 3. Glick's critique Glick (2011) offers a rich and nuanced discussion of not only S&W's linguistic argument for intellectualism but also arguments for anti-intellectualism based on appeals to work done in the cognitive sciences. My concern here will just be with Glick's evaluation of S&W's linguistic methodology and even then I will have to leave out many interesting details of his discussion. To help introduce Glick's critique it will be useful to first set out his reconstruction of S&W's linguistic argument. Glick presents S&W's argument as proceeding how ascriptions represent knowledge-how as being a kind of knowledge-that and an inference to the best explanation of that premise. Rather, the argument I gave also appeals to the premises that the semantics of knowledge-wh ascriptions like (2a-d) represent the relevant forms of knowledge-wh as being kinds of knowledge-that and that these forms of knowledge-wh are in fact kinds of knowledge-that. And I think that these three premises provide us with a much stronger basis for inferring that knowledge-how is also a kind of knowledge-that. 9 Johnson's main argument for thinking that knowledge-how is too dissimilar from knowledge-that for intellectualism to be true is based on an appeal to work in neuroscience on the distinction between 'procedural' versus 'declarative' knowledge or memory. See Stanley (2011a, Ch. 7.) for a lengthy defence of intellectualism against similar arguments. 10 in two stages. In the first stage one argues that 'how to swim' in knowledge-how ascriptions of the form 'S knows how to swim' denotes a set of propositions as follows: (SW1) In 'S knows how Bill swims', 'how Bill swims' denotes a set of propositions (viz., {p | w such that p = that Bill swims in way w}). (SW2) In 'S knows where to swim', 'where to swim' denotes a set of propositions (viz., {p | y such that p = that y is a place for S to swim}). (SW3) 'S knows how to swim' has the same wh-complementizer, 'how', as in 'S knows how Bill swims', and contains the same infinitival clause in its whcomplement, 'to swim', as in 'S knows where to swim'. (SW4) So, in 'S knows how to swim', 'how to swim' denotes a set of propositions. In the second stage one extends a formal semantics for 'S knows how Bill swims' and 'S knows where to swim' to 'S knows how to swim': (SW5) In 'S knows how Bill swims' and in 'S knows where to swim', 'knows' denotes a relation satisfied by S and a set of propositions P iff for some proposition q that is a true member of P, S knows q. (SW6) So in 'S knows how to swim', 'knows' denotes a relation satisfied by S and a set of propositions P iff for some q that is a true member of P, S knows q. (SW7) So for someone to know how to do something is just for him or her to know a proposition of a certain sort. After giving this reconstruction of S&W's argument, Glick goes on to offer a diagnosis of what S&W's linguistic argument can, and cannot, establish. Glick's diagnosis relies on a distinction between the following two intellectualist theses: Weak Intellectualism (WI): Know-how is knowledge that has a proposition as a relatum Strong Intellectualism (SI): Know-how is theoretical knowledge The key point about (WI) is that this thesis is not committed to any substantive view of the nature of the knowledge relation that it identifies knowledge-how with, other than the 11 minimal claim that it is a relation that has a proposition as one of its relata. On the other hand, the key point about (SI) is that this thesis is committed to a substantive view of the nature of the knowledge relation that it identifies knowledge-how with. This is because Glick uses "theoretical knowledge" as a term for what he takes to be a familiar kind of knowledge which possessed in paradigmatic cases of "knowledge-that", is our standard object of study in epistemology, and which possesses at least some non-trivial subset of the properties that epistemologists have attributed to it. With this distinction in hand, Glick central claim is that S&W's linguistic argument can establish (WI) but not (SI). And if this conclusion is correct then this shows us that S&W's argument fails to establish its intended conclusion, as it is obvious that S&W seek to establish some form of (SI) and not merely (WI). As Glick reconstructs S&W's linguistic argument, it seems clear that it only establishes (WI) and not (SI). This is because the premises in this argument merely provide us with information about one of the relata of the relation denoted by 'knows' in various types of knowledge ascriptions (i.e. that it is a relation to a set of propositions) as opposed, that is, to also providing us with any further information about the properties of that relation itself. And, as Glick notes, while "(WI) is a thesis about the relata of know-how... (SI) is a thesis about the relation itself: the properties in question are properties of the relation, not properties of the relata" (2011, p. 412). But, at this point, I think a reasonable response to Glick would be that S&W's argument is best interpreted as being enthymematic, that is, it implicitly relies on further unstated premises which, together with the original premises, support not just (WI) but (SI). In particular, I think S&W rely not only on the linguistic premises that Glick identifies but also on unstated assumptions about the nature of the knowledge-that relation, including the assumptions that all knowledge-that is subject to an anti-luck condition and a justified true belief condition. After all, while there is no consensus view in epistemology of the exact nature of the knowledge-that relation, there is almost universal agreement that it is subject to these conditions and, hence, it would not be that surprising if S&W simply took these assumptions for granted and did not feel the need to make their endorsements of them explicit. Glick himself considers a response like this and replies to it like so: But why accept the argument's premise [that if S knows that p then S has a justified belief that p]? If it seems plausible, that is only because we usually (if not always) use 'knows that' to describe subjects 12 who have knowledge-that of the familiar sort that philosophers and ordinary speakers have traditionally focused on. In arguing from (WI) to (SI) one cannot simply assume that the traditional sort of knowledge-that is the only sort there is. Indeed, one might just as well argue in the opposite direction. Suppose that initially one has reason to think that knowledge-how lacks various requirements that we normally associate with knowledge-that, including belief and justification. And now suppose one is presented with some demonstration that know-how is a relation to a proposition. One now has two options. One can change one's view, concluding that it was a mistake to think that know-how did not require belief and justification since, after all, any knowledge with a proposition as a relatum requires belief and justification. Or one can maintain one's view, concluding that belief and justification are inessential to propositional knowledge after all, and are only features of the kind of propositional knowledge possessed in the cases we normally focus on under the heading 'knowledge-that'- theoretical knowledge. The challenge for the objector is to provide an argument for the former response-to my knowledge, none has ever been given. Independent of substantial further argument, (WI) should not be taken to entail (SI). (2011, p. 414-415) I think this passage contains some important insights but that it also mischaracterises the dialectical issues in certain ways that are worth identifying. One small point is that a proponent of a linguistic argument for (SI) need not endorse the claim that (WI) by itself entails (SI). For, as indicated above, a strong intellectualist can agree with Glick that S&W's explicit linguistic premises only establish (WI) whilst also maintaining that there are further plausible claims which, together with these premises, support some form of (SI). But now suppose that the relevant further premise is that all knowledge-that is subject to a justified belief condition. Glick suggests that appealing to a premise like this would be problematic because in "arguing from (WI) to (SI) one cannot simply assume that the traditional sort of knowledge-that is the only sort there is" (2009, p. 414). But what exactly would be problematic about relying on this assumption? The problem can't be that one is assuming the conclusion one is trying to establish. For the premise is that all knowledge-that requires justified belief, not that all knowledge-how (or all knowledge simpliciter) requires justified belief. And if we have good independent grounds for accepting this premise then what could the problem be in S&W's implicitly relying on it? 13 Glick's concerns about relying on this premise seem to be based on something like the following two claims: (i) any grounds we have for accepting this premise will be based on epistemological theories which have been constructed in response to our beliefs or intuitions about instances of the familiar kind of knowledge-that that we usually use 'S knows that p' ascriptions to describe; and (ii) we have at least good prima facie grounds for thinking that the kind of knowledge we usually use 'S knows how to Ф' ascriptions to describe does not require justified belief. Both (i) and (ii) are plausible but what follows from these claims? Starting with (i), if we accept this claim then it would be problematic to simply appeal to the standard epistemologist's assumption that all knowledge-that requires justified belief to support the claim that if knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that then it must require justified belief. For if (i) is true then our grounds for accepting this standard assumption would only clearly support the weaker premise that at least one kind of knowledge-that requires justified belief. However, I think a proponent of (SI) could appeal to this restricted justification condition together with a univocality claim about 'knows' to argue for an unrestricted justification condition, as follows: Semantic Uniformity (SU): 'knows' has one unique semantic value as it used in all knowledge-wh and knowledge-that ascriptions. 10 Restricted Justification (RJ): The semantic value of 'knows' in paradigmatic knowledge-that ascriptions is a relation to a proposition that is subject to a justified belief condition. Therefore, Unrestricted Justification (UJ): 'Knows' has one unique semantic value as it used in all knowledge-wh and knowledge-that ascriptions which is a relation to a proposition that is subject to an anti-luck condition. The idea here would be that a strong intellectualist could argue for their view in two steps. First, appeal to S&W's explicit linguistic premises to establish that knowledge-how 10 Or, more carefully, one might want to say that knowledge-wh and knowledge-that ascription strictly denote different relations but that the former relation can be analysed in terms of the latter. See S&W (2001, fn. 17) for discussion. 14 ascriptions are a kind of knowledge-wh ascription and, hence, that 'knows' in knowledgehow ascriptions denotes a relation between a subject and a proposition (or a set of propositions). Second, appeal to that conclusion together with (UJ) (as supported by the argument above) to support the further conclusion that 'knows' in knowledge-how ascriptions denotes not just any relation to a proposition but a relation that is subject to a justified belief condition. And, finally, from that linguistic conclusion one would then infer the object level claim that knowledge-how itself is a kind of knowledge-that that requires justified belief. I think it is clear that S&W would endorse (RJ) and there are also good reasons to think that they would endorse something like (SU). For example, after giving their linguistic argument S&W go on to consider an objection to their position based on the claim that 'knows' in knowledge-how ascriptions has a different sense from 'knows' in knowledge-that ascriptions. And, against this suggestion, S&W argue that cross-linguistic tests and language internal tests 11 for ambiguity together "demonstrate the nonexistence of the alleged ambiguity" (2001, p. 437). One could contest S&W's no-ambiguity claim (e.g. see Rumfitt 2003 for an argument that there is cross-linguistic data that supports an ambiguity claim), and the brief considerations S&W offer in support of this claim clearly fall short of constituting a "demonstration" of it (although see Stanley 2011a and 2011b for more detailed defences of the no-ambiguity claim). However, what matters here is that, in principle, S&W could plausibly appeal to independent considerations like this in support of (SU) and they could also support (RJ) by appealing to the standard kind of considerations that epistemologists offer for thinking that knowledge-that requires justified belief. In which case, I think the above argument for (UJ) illustrates one reasonable way that S&W could try to supplement their explicit linguistic premises in order to provide an argument for not merely (WI) but (SI). And, given these considerations, I find Glick's scepticism about the prospects of using S&W's linguistic methodology to make a case for (SI) to be overly strong. But what about point (ii), that is, Glick's claim that we have reasons to think that knowledgehow does not require justified true belief and, more generally, that knowledge-how lacks many of the properties standardly attributed to knowledge-that? Following Cath (2011) and others, I think that there are good reasons to think that knowledge-how is not subject to either 11 The classic source of these tests is Zwicky and Sadock (1975). 15 an anti-luck, justified belief, or even just a belief condition because there are cases where subjects appear to possess knowledge-how despite failing to satisfy these conditions. And Glick is right that it would be problematic to simply dismiss such putative counterexamples to (SI) on the grounds that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that and, hence, must be subject to such conditions. For, as Glick notes, one could just as reasonably argue in the opposite direction, arguing that there is at least one kind of knowledge-that is not subject to these standard conditions on the grounds that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that that does not require justified belief. This is an important point but I don't think it reveals any problems for S&W's linguistic argument per se. For note that the worry here is one about a way of defending (SI) against putative counterexamples, as opposed to a worry about a positive argument for (SI). It is right that one could appeal to such putative counterexamples to try and undermine the further premises that the argument for (SI) relies upon. In particular, one might assume that (WI) is true because one accept S&W's explicit linguistic premises but still resist (SI) by appealing to such cases to support the conclusion that (SU) and/or (RJ) is false. But this doesn't show us that there is some kind of methodological error involved in enlisting further linguistic premises like these in support of (UJ) and in turn for (SI). Rather, it just underlines the point that such further premises could always be contested in the light of all relevant considerations. As I see it then, the real value of Glick's insight that S&W's explicit linguistic premises can only establish (WI) is not that it shows us that their linguistic methodology could never plausibly be used to support a case for (SI). Rather, the value of Glick's insight is that it helps us to see two things: (i) S&W's linguistic argument is best interpreted as implicitly relying on further background assumptions, including (but perhaps not limited to) premises about the univocality of 'knows' and the nature of the relation denoted by 'knows' in paradigmatic knowledge-that ascriptions; and (ii) that the right response to apparent counterexamples to (SI) might be to reject one or more of these further assumptions whilst still endorsing the idea that knowledge-how is some kind of knowledge-that. Relatedly, if there is a problem with the linguistic methodology of S&W and Stanley I think it is a problem that arises in how these authors defend intellectualism against objections, rather than with their linguistic arguments for intellectualism per se. In particular, in the next section I will argue that Stanley's (2011a) response to putative Gettier-style counterexamples 16 is guilty of trying to defend a form of (SI) by appealing to linguistic considerations which merely support (WI). 4. Overgeneralisation, ambiguity, and knowledge kinds How should an intellectualist respond to cases where intuitively a subject knows how to Φ even though their relevant belief of the form 'w is a way for me to Φ' is 'Gettierized'? For example, consider the following case from Cath (2011): The Lucky Light Bulb: Charlie wants to learn how to change a light bulb, but he knows almost nothing about light fixtures or bulbs (as he has only ever seen light bulbs already installed and so he has never seen the end of a light bulb, nor the inside of a light fixture). To remedy this situation Charlie consults The Idiot's Guide to Everyday Jobs. Inside, he finds an accurate set of instructions describing the shape of a light fixture and bulb, and the way to change a bulb. Charlie grasps these instructions perfectly. And so there is a way, call it 'w1', such that Charlie now believes that w1 is a way for him to change a light bulb, namely, the way described in the book. However, unbeknownst to Charlie, he is extremely lucky to have read these instructions, for the disgruntled author of The Idiot's Guide filled her book with misleading instructions. Under every entry she intentionally misdescribed the objects involved in that job, and described a series of actions that would not constitute a way to do the job at all. However, at the printers, a computer error caused the text under the entry for 'Changing a Light Bulb', in just one copy of the book, to be randomly replaced by new text. By incredible coincidence, this new text provided the clear and accurate set of instructions that Charlie would later consult. As Cath (2011) discusses if the following two claims are true then this case is a counterexample to S&W's version of intellectualism (where 't1' refers to a moment just after Charlie has grasped the instructions): 17 (KH1) At t1 Charlie knows how to change a light bulb (NKT1) At t1 Charlie does not know that w1 is a way for him to change a light bulb. The case for (KH1) is that this knowledge-how claim is intuitively plausible, and it can also be supported by appealing to certain widely accepted links between intentional action and knowledge-how (see Cath 2011 and 2014 for discussion). The case for (NKT1) is that it follows from the standard assumption that all knowledge-that is incompatible with Gettierstyle luck. Stanley (2011a) grants that (KH1) is intuitively correct but argues that we should nonetheless deny this claim. Stanley offers two main considerations in support of this stance: (i) an overgeneralisation objection and (ii) a pragmatic explanation of the intuition that Charlie knows how to change a light bulb. Both of these considerations raise interesting issues concerning the role of linguistic claims in epistemology. In this section I will discuss the issues raised by Stanley's overgeneralisation objection and in the next I will consider the issues raised by his pragmatic explanation of our intuitions about knowledge-how in Gettierstyle scenarios. Stanley's overgeneralisation objection is based on the claim that if we accept that knowledgehow is compatible with Gettier-style luck then we will also have to accept that other forms of knowledge-wh are also compatible with such luck. In support of this claim Stanley offers a new case-the lucky light bulb II-that is just like Cath's original case except that now Charlie comes to possess a Gettierized true belief of the form 'p is a place for me to buy a light bulb' . Stanley claims that it is equally intuitive in this new case that Charlie possesses the relevant knowledge-wh, that is, that he knows where to buy a light bulb. But, Stanley claims, it would be absurd to deny that knowledge-where is a kind of knowledge-that. In which case, Stanley concludes that, whilst intuitive, the claim that Charlie knows where to find a light bulb must be false, and he takes this conclusion to support the parallel conclusion about (KH1). Let us grant that it would be absurd to deny that knowledge-where is a kind of knowledgethat. It follows that the lucky light bulb II is not a counterexample to an intellectualist account of knowledge-where. In particular, it follows that the following claims can't both be true (where t1 is now a time just after Charlie has read the instructions about where to buy a light bulb): 18 (KW1) At t1 Charlie knows where to buy a light bulb (NKT2) At t1 Charlie does not know that p is a place for him to buy a light bulb. Similarly, if we assume that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that then we cannot endorse both (KH1) and (NKT1). But, as Cath (2014) discusses, the problem for Stanley is that assuming that the relevant kind of knowledge-wh is a kind of knowledge-that does not tell us how to avoid these putative counterexamples to intellectualism about knowledge-wh. Perhaps the way to defuse the lucky light bulb II is to follow Stanley and reject (KW1) whilst accepting (NKT2) but the mere assumption that knowledge-where is a kind of knowledge-that could also be preserved by rejecting (NKT2) whilst accepting (KW1). Likewise, and most significantly, one could agree with Stanley that the lucky light bulb is not a counterexample to intellectualism but maintain this position by rejecting (NKT1) instead of (KH1). One worry that Stanley might raise here is that if we defuse these apparent counterexamples in this way then we will have to deny the standard assumption that all knowledge-that is subject to an anti-luck condition. And note that Stanley would thereby be appealing to the kind of further epistemological assumptions that I suggested we interpret S&W's linguistic argument as implicitly relying on in order that it be a genuine argument for (SI) and not merely (WI). If an intellectualist accepts (KH1) then they will have to deny a fully generalised version of this anti-luck condition. However, following Cath (2014) and related ideas in Glick (2011), one way of trying to make that consequence less unpalatable is to note that in denying (KH1) one need only commit oneself to the idea that there is at least one kind of knowledge-that which is compatible with Gettier-style luck-call this practical knowledge-that-and this idea is compatible with the assumption that there is another kind of knowledge-that-call this theoretical knowledge-that-which is incompatible with Gettier-style luck, and which is the kind of knowledge-that which epistemologists are normally concerned with. Cath (2014) develops a version of this distinction in some detail suggesting that S has practical knowledge that w is a way for S to Φ iff S has a true belief that w is a way for S to Φ and this state of belief is such that it can reliably guide S in intentionally Φ-ing. On this view then practical knowledge-that is a kind of true belief state which has this forwards-looking property of being able to guide action. On the other hand, theoretical knowledge-that is a true belief state that has some relevant subset of the kind of backwards-looking properties that 19 epistemologists appeal to when they try to distinguish mere true belief from genuine knowledge, including the property of not being the product of a Gettierized belief-forming process. The idea then, with respect to Charlie, is that he possesses practical, but not theoretical, knowledge that w is a way for him to change a light bulb because he is in a true belief state that can guide him in action but which is also the product of a Gettierized beliefforming process. At this point an intellectualist like Stanley might be tempted to criticise this distinction by appealing to some of the further premises attributed to S&W's linguistic argument in §3. In particular, I suspect Stanley might be sympathetic to the objection that in adopting the hypothesis about different kinds of knowledge-that one will be forced to deny (SU) (the assumption that 'knows' has one unique semantic value as it used in all knowledge-wh and knowledge-that ascriptions), as evidenced by his response to an account of knowledge-how discussed by Cath (2011). Cath (2011) considers a view on which knowledge-how is analysed in terms of a seeming relation to a true proposition, as follows: S knows how to F iff for some way to Φ w, it seems to S, under a practical mode of presentation, that w is a way for S to Φ. Stanley (2011a) suggests that if one endorsed this analysis one would be forced into adopting an ambiguity thesis about 'knows': To argue that a condition weaker than knowledge is sufficient for skilled action one must not only argue that knowledge is more demanding than is required for skill, but one must also make the case that we use the verb "know" to pick out both the more and the less demanding relation. For example, Cath (forthcoming) holds that the knowing how relation is like the seeming relation. So Cath holds that "know" is ambiguous. Furthermore, the ambiguity is not one that can plausibly be explained in terms of some kind of indexicality. The seeming relation and the propositional knowledge relation are not plausibly different values of the same context-invariant meaning or indexical character. In short, those who deny that skill requires propositional knowledge must endorse a genuine ambiguity claim. (Stanley 2011a, p. 176) What should we make of this ambiguity objection and can this objection be made against the suggestion that in the lucky light bulb case Charlie possesses a kind of practical knowledgethat? 20 One point worth noting is that the two relations at issue here could be closely related to each other. For example, on Cath's (2014) version of this distinction both practical and theoretical knowledge-that are true belief states that are subject to a certain kind of safety condition. In which case, it might be more plausible that these two relations could be the different values of one context-invariant meaning or indexical character. Furthermore, given the similarities between these two relations, if 'knows' were ambiguous between two different senses which pick out these different relations then it would be a case of polysemy (where the distinct meanings are closely related), rather than strict ambiguity or homonymy (where the distinct meaning are unrelated). This is important because, as Sgaravatti and Zardini (2008) and Abbott (2013) discuss, the kind of tests for non-ambiguity that S&W (2001) appeal to often generate false negatives when applied to cases of polysemy. 12 In which case, the assumed felicity of sentences like the following does not, contra what S&W claim (2001, p. 437) provide us with clear grounds for concluding that there is only one sense of 'knows' invoked in sentences like this: (12) John knows both how to twitch his ears and that his mother is sickened by facial tricks. Another problem with S&W's appeal to examples like (12) is that intuitions about the felicity/infelicity of sentences like this can vary across subjects, and an individual's intuitions about cases like this might also be weak or conflicted. For example, Rumfitt (2003, p. 165) claims that he is "not alone in finding [12] zeugmatic" and Abbott (2013, p. 8) reports that (12) "does not sound totally out to me, although it is awkward". If endorsing the practical/theoretical knowledge-that distinction did commit one to an ambiguity thesis about 'knows' then a proponent of this distinction could appeal to the above considerations 13 to resist S&W's arguments against ambiguity. However, the more fundamental response is to simply reject the suggestion that endorsing a metaphysical distinction between two kinds of knowledge commits one to a linguistic thesis about the 12 Abbott (2013, p. 8) provides a number of nice examples which illustrate this point with respect to the language internal tests. And Sgaravatti and Zardini (2008) also extend this false negatives point to the crosslinguistic tests. 13 Another kind of consideration one could appeal to is that there is a range of cross-linguistic data which suggests that the English 'knows' is ambiguous as it is used in knowledge-how and knowledge-that ascriptions. See Abbott (2013), Rumfitt (2003), and Wiggins (2012) for arguments in support of this ambiguity claim on the basis of such data and Stanley (2011a Ch. 6 and 2011b) for a reply to such arguments. 21 ambiguity of 'knows'. 14 As Glick discusses (2011, p. 431-32), it would be absurd to suggest that making a distinction between working and long-term memory commits one to an ambiguity claim about the word 'memory'. Similarly, Sosa (2007) in relation to his wellknown distinction between animal and reflective knowledge writes: This is not to say that the word ''knows'' is ambiguous. Maybe it is, but distinguishing a kind of knowledge as ''animal'' knowledge requires no commitment to that linguistic thesis. (2007, p. 24) Of course, if we assume that we can use a given class of knowledge ascriptions to communicate about two different kinds of knowledge then, ideally, it would be nice to be able to explain how we can use these ascriptions to do this job. But two related points are worth making about this theoretical desire. The first point is that there are many different explanations that one might potentially offer here other than simply the one that 'knows' is ambiguous between two senses which each denote one of these different relations. To identify just a few options one might: appeal to the idea that 'knows' has an indexical-like character (as alluded to earlier), or appeal to the supposed phenomena of "modulation" where a term has a single sense that can be modulated in indefinitely many ways in different contexts (see Antony 2001 for discussion), or explain how we communicate about one of these knowledge relations by appealing to the pragmatics of making such ascriptions (see §4 below for related ideas). The second point is that it would be implausible to require that whenever an epistemologist posits a distinction between two kinds of knowledge they must also provide an account of how ordinary knowledge ascriptions manage to pick out these two kinds of knowledge. Rather, for the distinction to be considered seriously it should suffice, at least in first instance, that one can make a good case for how this distinction has certain payoffs with respect to the aims of epistemological inquiry. 14 Philosophers love to make distinctions between different species of the things that interest them, and where one finds a philosopher making such distinctions one will often find that they also make an ambiguity claim about some relevant linguistic expression. For example, in the philosophy of mind it is common to both distinguish various kinds of consciousness (e.g. phenomenal versus access consciousness and state versus creature consciousness) and, at the same time, to claim that 'consciousness' is ambiguous between different meanings which pick out these different species of consciousness (see e.g. Block 1994). And, more closely to our present discussion, some epistemologists like to make a distinction between knowledge proper and "weak knowledge" or "minimal knowledge" (understood as mere true belief) and this distinction is usually combined with a corresponding ambiguity claim about 'knows' (see e.g. Goldman and Olsson 2009). This practice might suggest that there is widespread support for the idea that whenever we can distinguish two or more different species of some philosophically significant phenomena then any natural linguistic expression which can be used to refer to both of those species will have to be classified as an ambiguous term. But, widely held or not, this idea is dubious for the kind of reasons discussed above. See Antony (2001) for a detailed critique of the tendency in the philosophy of mind to posit that 'consciousness' is ambiguous. 22 Our discussion of the ambiguity issue serves to indicate two things: (i) the difficulties involved in showing that 'knows' is not ambiguous (at least in the sense of polysemy); and (ii) the difficulties involved in moving from the claim that there two different kinds of knowledge-that to the conclusion that 'knows' is ambiguous. But, for the sake of argument, suppose that the practical vs. theoretical knowledge-that distinction did commit one to an ambiguity thesis about 'knows' which was demonstrably false. It is important to note that this assumption would only support the conclusion that 'knows' denotes at most one of these two relations, and not Stanley's assumption that it denotes the theoretical knowledge-that relation. However, at this point Stanley might appeal to the following variation of the uniformity argument we saw in §3: Semantic Uniformity (SU): 'Knows' has one unique semantic value as it used in all knowledge-wh and knowledge-that ascriptions. Restricted Anti-Luck (RA): The semantic value of 'knows' in paradigmatic knowledge-that ascriptions is a relation to a proposition that is subject to an antiluck condition. Therefore, Unrestricted Anti-Luck (UA): 'Knows' has one unique semantic value as it used in all knowledge-wh and knowledge-that ascriptions which is a relation to a proposition that is subject to an anti-luck condition. In line with the discussion in §3, I see no principled problem with this kind of argument. But, as the earlier passage from Glick suggests, Stanley would still face an important challenge even if we grant him both that (SU) is true and that the practical/theoretical distinction is incompatible with (SU). The remaining challenge for Stanley would be to show that that the grounds he can offer for endorsing (RA) above outweigh or undermine the grounds one could offer in support of a claim like (RL): Restricted Luck-Compatibility (RL): 'Knows' in paradigmatic knowledge-how ascriptions denotes a relation that is not subject to an anti-luck condition. However, Stanley provides us with no such argument. In which case, even if we assume (implausibly) that the practical vs. theoretical knowledge-that distinction commits one to 23 denying (SU) it still would not follow that an intellectualist would be forced to deny (KH1) rather than (NKT1). In summary, I think our discussion of Stanley's overgeneralisation response shows that it is a clear example of the kind of problematic way of defending (SI) against putative counterexamples alluded to at the end of §3. The intellectualist truth-conditions for knowledge-wh ascriptions are intuitively very plausible which gives us good reason to think that the lucky light bulb II is not a genuine counterexample to intellectualism about knowledge-where. In which case, given the syntactic similarities between knowledge-wh ascriptions like (2a-d) and knowledge-how ascriptions, we have good grounds to think that intellectualism about knowledge-how is true and, hence, that the lucky light bulb is merely an apparent counterexample. But, echoing Glick's discussion, these considerations by themselves do not tell us whether we should adopt a "weak" or a "strong" form of intellectualism with respect to Charlie and the standard anti-luck condition on knowledge-that. That is, these considerations do not decide between the following two positions: (i) the lucky light bulb is not a counterexample because Charlie knows of how to change a light bulb but this knowledge is a kind of knowledge-that that is not subject to this anti-luck condition; or (ii) all knowledge-that is subject to this antiluck condition but the case is not a counterexample because the intuition that Charlie knows how to change a light bulb is mistaken. However, Stanley acts as if these considerations establish (ii) when at best they only establish the disjunction of (i) and (ii). 5. Defining our subject As well as his overgeneralisation objection, Stanley also tries to support his denial of (KH1) by offering an hypothesis about the source of the intuition that (KH1) is correct. Stanley suggests that intuitions that subjects possess knowledge-how in Gettier-style cases are due to our interests in making knowledge-how ascriptions. In particular, Stanley claims that when we ask whether a subject knows how to Φ we are often only interested in whether they possess a true belief that could guide them in successfully Φ-ing, and likewise when we ascribe knowledge-how to a subject we are often only interested in communicating that they are in a state of this kind: 24 Similarly, when we ask whether John knows how to ride a bicycle, we are typically only interested in whether, were John to set off on a bicycle guided by his belief about how to ride a bicycle, he would successfully be able to achieve his goal (perhaps of getting us chips).The reason we do not hear many ascriptions of knowledge-wh as Gettier susceptible is not because they are non-propositional. Rather, it is because the pragmatics of situations in which we ascribe knowledge-wh often places the focus on true belief, rather than justification. (Stanley 2011a, pp. 180–181) Stanley's hypothesis about our interests in making knowledge-wh ascriptions seems plausible but I think there are two problems with his appealing to this hypothesis to support his stance on the lucky light bulb case. The first problem, as Cath (2014) discusses, is that this hypothesis does not provide us with any reason to conclude that the intuition that Charlie knows how to change a light bulb merely reflects the pragmatics rather than the semantics of knowledge-how ascriptions. For this hypothesis is consistent both with Stanley's apparent assumption that knowledge-how ascriptions serve this interest by merely pragmatically conveying the proposition that a subject is in some relevant true belief state that can guide them in action and with the claim that they serve this interest by semantically expressing that proposition. Furthermore, other things being equal, it is good methodology to assume that such intuitions reflect the semantics rather than the pragmatics of such ascriptions. To help illustrate the second problem suppose Stanley's hypothesis is correct, that is, that (KH1) is false and that our intuition to the contrary arises from the fact that knowledge-how ascriptions are often used to pragmatically convey (somehow) that a subject is in some relevant true belief state. If that assumption were correct then it would follow that our intuitions about the truth-value of knowledge-how ascriptions are subject to a serious kind of "semantic blindness", that is, there would be systematic differences between the factors that we treat as being relevant to the truth-value of knowledge-how ascriptions and the factors that are actually so relevant. But, if that were the case, I think it would be far less clear that the semantics of knowledge-how ascriptions should play an important role in characterising what is at stake in debates about the nature of knowledge-how and its relationship to knowledgethat. Many philosophers have thought that the semantic properties of the language in which we ask metaphysical questions can play an important role in defining our subject when we try to 25 answer those questions (for a classic discussion see Jackson 1998, pp. 30-31). 15 And Stanley endorses a view in this neighbourhood when, in reference to a list of different knowledge-wh sentences, he writes that "Part of the task of epistemology is to explain the nature of the states ascribed by such sentences" (2011a, p.36) and to consider whether "they ascribe states of the same kind as ascriptions like ˹X knows that p˺" (2011a, p.36). On Stanley's view one of the most central tasks of epistemology is to explain the nature of the states ascribed by knowledge-wh and knowledge-that sentences. One might have thought that epistemologists should just be concerned simply with explaining the nature of knowledge-wh and knowledgethat. But for Stanley it seems that these are just different ways of describing one and the same project. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the former project helps us to define the latter because we can define, for example, knowledge-that states as the states semantically ascribed by 'S knows that p' sentences. There are many different issues one might raise with Stanley's view of the role of semantics in defining our subject in epistemology. But, in relation to our discussion, the most salient issue is that, as extended to knowledge-how, this view becomes questionable if we also endorse Stanley's idea that we are subject to a form of semantic blindness with respect to the truth-conditions of such sentences. This is because one might now suspect that when epistemologists ask questions like "What is the nature of knowledge-how?" the kind of mental state they are really interested in understanding is not the state that is semantically ascribed by sentences of the form 'S knows how to Φ'. Rather, it is this other kind of true belief state that we use knowledge-how ascriptions to communicate about even though it is not semantically ascribed by such ascriptions. This position could also be strengthened by appealing to the roles that epistemologists assign to knowledge-how states. Most notably, many intellectualist and anti-intellectualists alike have thought that knowledge-how plays an important role in the explanation of intentional action. In particular, it is often claimed that knowledge-how is a precondition of intentional 15 Jackson (1998) describes this idea like so: "When bounty hunters go searching, they are searching for a person and not a handbill. But they will not get very far if they fail to attend to the representational properties of the handbill on the wanted person. Those properties give them their target, or, if you like, define the subject of their search. Likewise, metaphysicians will not get very far with questions like: Are there Ks? Are Ks nothing over and above and above Js? ... in the absence of some conception of what counts as a K, and what counts as a J." (1998. pp. 30-31) Jackson goes on to argue that in philosophy we will normally be concerned with our ordinary conception of Ks and Js (or something close to it) and he assumes that the semantic properties of the language we use to talk about Ks and Js will reveal that ordinary conception. See Kingsbury and McKeownGreen (2009) for interesting criticisms of Jackson's tendency to equate conceptual analysis with semantic analysis. 26 action such that one Φs intentionally, or has the ability to Φ-intentionally, only if one knows how to Φ. 16 And what seems to lie behind such principles is the idea that knowledge-how states play an essential role in guiding intentional actions. However, one can plausibly have the ability to Φ intentionally even when one does not have any relevant non-Gettierized true belief of the form 'w is a way for me to Φ'. For example, it is very plausible that at t1 Charlie at least possesses the ability to change a light bulb intentionally (see Cath 2011 and 2014 for a defence of this claim). In which case, if we assume (with Stanley) that knowledge-how states are incompatible with Gettier-style luck (despite our intuitions to the contrary) then it follows that such states cannot be a prerequisite of intentional action. But then I think it would be reasonable for, say, a Rylean to simply concede that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that whilst insisting that their position is now best understood as being one about the nature of whatever state plays this role in guiding intentional actions. That is, the Rylean might restate their position as the view that the state that plays this role is not a state of knowledge-that but is instead some kind of multi-track disposition. The worry here is that Stanley's assumption that our intuitions about knowledge-how ascriptions are subject to this kind of semantic blindness threatens to undermine his assumption that the semantics of knowledge-how ascriptions can define what is at stake in the debates between intellectualists and anti-intellectualists. This is because the presence of such semantic blindness would give us reason to think that what is really at stake in such debates is not the nature of knowledge-how states (defined as those states semantically ascribed by 'S knows how to Φ' ascriptions) but is instead the nature of the states that play this role in explaining intentional action, and which we communicate about using the pragmatics of knowledge-how ascriptions. I think the moral of this point is that it would not be satisfactory for S&W to merely establish that our intuition that (KH1) is true is the mistaken product of the pragmatics of ascribing knowledge-how. Rather, if we accept that hypothesis Stanley would now need to go on and argue that this role of guiding intentional actions is actually played by a state that is incompatible with Gettier-style luck despite these appearances to the contrary. 17 16 Or, more weakly, the condition might be that one knows how to Φ only if one either knows how to Φ or one knows how to perform some other action which is a means of Φ-ing. See Cath (2014), Setiya (2008, 2012), and Stanley (2011a, Ch.8) for related discussion. 17 Stanley's (2011a, Ch. 8) brief discussion of the case of a "Gettiered pilot" (based on a case in S&W 2001) could be viewed as making a start on an argument of this kind but nothing more than a start (and see Cath 2014 for criticisms of this discussion). 27 6. Conclusions The evaluation I have offered of the linguistic methodology of S&W (2001) and Stanley (2011a, 2011b) has been mixed. On the one hand, I have defended their linguistic arguments for intellectualism from objections that the linguistic considerations they appeal to do not support intellectualism (Johnson 2006), or only support merely (WI) and not (SI) (Glick 2011). But, on the other hand, I have criticized Stanley's appeal to linguistic considerations in defending his preferred response to apparent Gettier-style counterexamples to intellectualism. And, finally, I have argued that Stanley's pragmatic explanation of our intuitions about such cases risks undermining his assumption that the semantics of knowledge-how ascriptions can define what is stake when we ask the question "Is knowledge-how a kind of knowledgethat?" 7. References Abbott, B. 2013. 'Linguistic Solutions to Philosophical Problems: The Case of Knowing How', Philosophical Perspectives 27 (1):1-21. Antony, M. V. 2001. 'Is 'Consciousness' Ambiguous?', Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2): 19-44. 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