Abstract
My main intention in this article is to settle the question whether having the ability to \(\Phi \) is, as Ryleans think, necessary for knowing how to \(\Phi \), and to determine the kind of role played by procedural knowledge in knowing how to \(\Phi \) and in acquiring and possessing the ability to \(\Phi \). I shall argue, in a seemingly anti-Rylean fashion, that when it comes to know-hows that are ordinarily categorised as physical skills, or—to be, for the moment, philosophically neutral—as enabling one to possess such skills, it is necessary to have procedural knowledge of how to \(\Phi \) in order to possess those know-hows. However, I shall contend that this knowledge cannot be acquired without acquiring the kind of ability to \(\Phi \) in which having the skill to \(\Phi \) consists. And that having acquired the ability to \(\Phi \) is not only necessary but also sufficient for having acquired procedural knowledge of how to succeed in \(\Phi \)-ing.
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Notes
The view of knowing how that Ryle seems to defend (or suggest) in The concept of mind (2002 [1949]) can be restated as follows:
(a) When knowing how to \(\Phi \) supposes having learned some true propositions stating that \(w, w', w''\), etc., are ways for one to \(\Phi \) in conditions C—and so supposes ‘some propositional competence’ to succeed in ‘intellectually grasping’ these truths or ‘prescriptions’—one does not know how to \(\Phi \) if one does not possess another ‘competence’, ‘ability’, or intellectual ‘skill’: the ability A to grasp these truths in such a way that one’s way of acting when one wants to \(\Phi \) is guided by one’s propositional procedural knowledge.
(b) As a consequence, knowing that w, \(w'\), \(w''\), etc., are ways for one to \(\Phi \) in conditions C, plus possessing the ability A, generally leads one to regularly succeed in \(\Phi \)-ing in C when one wants to do so. In other words, having the ability A generally results in having the skill or ability A* to \(\Phi \) in C.
(c) According to Ryle, on pain of regress, A cannot consist in possessing further propositional knowledge about how the known propositions stating how to succeed in \(\Phi \)-ing in C are to be understood and applied (or ‘put into practice’).
(d) Having A not only results in having A*; it seems that for Ryle A is nothing but A*. One’s ability to grasp one’s propositional procedural knowledge in a way that enables one to generally, or normally, meet success in C is not something that precedes or is distinct from one’s way of acting being guided by one’s procedural knowledge: ‘Knowing how [...] is a disposition [and...] its exercises are observances of rules or canons or the applications of criteria, but they are not tandem operations of theoretically avowing maxims and then putting them into practice’ (Ryle 2002, p. 46).
For other (different, or more detailed) ways of interpreting Ryle’s view, see for instance Hornsby (2011), Stanley (2011a, Chap. 1), or Weatherson (2016). According to Stanley and Krakauer (2013) Ryle’s position on knowing-how is, in short, that skilled action is ‘not merely the application of knowledge, whether explicit or implicit, but rather the manifestation of a non-propositional state that he labeled knowledge how’ (Stanley and Krakauer 2013, p. 2).
From now on, ‘ability to \(\Phi \)’ will specifically designate this kind of ability to \(\Phi \).
Correlatively, it would be intuitive to claim, as Fridland does, that ‘the level of skill that one possesses is in direct proportion to the amount of control that one exerts over the performance of one’s own actions’. Hence, ‘it is the controlled part of skilled action [...] which we must give an account of, if we are to have an adequate, philosophical account of skill’ (Fridland 2014, p. 2731).
Motor imagery, narrowly speaking, can be defined as a ‘covert activity’ consisting in ‘the cognitive rehearsal of a motor task in the absence of overt physical movement’ (Toussaint and Blandin 2010, p. 497); or as ‘the mental execution of a movement without any overt movement or muscle activation’ (Mizuguchi 2012, p. 103).
The usual function and result of this mental activity is to enhance one’s performance in motor tasks, and so to increase one’s motor skills—this result being explained by most cognitive neuroscientists by the fact that motor imagery and motor action ‘engage overlapping brain systems’ (Olsson et al. 2008, p. 5), or ‘share the same neural representations’ (Jeannerod and Pacherie 2004, p. 131). Correlatively, it has been empirically established that deficiency in motor imagery is often associated with developmental co-ordination disorder.
Thus, I agree with Will Small when he writes that a ‘skill is a rational practical capacity’, and that ‘what is being exercised’ when skill is exercised is ‘a form of knowledge’ (Small 2014, p. 26); so that neither the ‘anti-intellectualist’ should say that ‘skill is a non-rational practical capacity’, nor the ‘intellectualist’ that ‘skill is a complex state, comprising propositional knowledge and non-rational dispositions, capacities, and mechanisms implicated, informed, and harnessed by that propositional knowledge’ (ibid., p. 24).
Pace Small, I cannot see why that would make the ability or disposition thereby acquired ‘non-rational’ or ‘non-cognitive’ (Small 2014, p. 8).
On this notion, see for instance (Zardini 2013).
This point indicates a potentially misleading aspect of the concept of ‘motor image’ used in contemporary cognitive psychology, since what is designated by this concept is said to include kinaesthetic information.
From a slightly different perspective, Fridland also argues that ‘if intentional learning is always of knowledge’, and if ‘hours and hours of effortful, attentive, intentional practice are needed to refine the control exhibited in skillful action, then this control should qualify as a kind of knowledge’ (Fridland 2014, p. 2741). I am more inclined, however, to say that when one possesses this control and hence is a skilled \(\Phi \)-er, this is due to one’s having acquired, in the way I have indicated, the kind of procedural knowledge of how to \(\Phi \) that is the preserve of the skilled \(\Phi \)-er. Possessing this knowledge entails, when one wants to \(\Phi \), being able to control one’s movements in such a way that one (regularly enough) succeeds in \(\Phi \)-ing.
Here is one of Ted Poston’s illustrations of that line of reasoning: “Olavi wants to learn the Finnish tango, an established variation on the Argentine tango. He finds a website that aims to specialize in the Finnish tango. Olavi downloads the instructions and learns those instructions. Olavi, though, is very lucky to have what are in fact the correct instructions. The website is devoted to causing mass confusion about the Finnish tango by uploading different instructions each second” (Poston 2009, p. 746). In this situation, according to Poston, “Olavi doesn’t know that the instructions are correct, though he has a justified true belief that the instructions are correct”, but he “knows how to dance the Finnish tango” (ibid.). This shows, for Poston, that “[k]nowledge-how isn’t constrained by the same anti-luck intuitions as propositional knowledge (ibid.).
According to Carter and Pritchard (2015b), knowledge-how is a kind of cognitive achievement. Because ‘a success is no less because of ability if there is environmental luck in play’, cognitive achievements are not undermined by environmental epistemic luck. But this is not the case when it comes to knowledge-that. Correlatively, they argue that if knowledge-how is a kind of cognitive achievement, ‘it is not sufficient for knowledge-how that one merely has the ability to undertake the target activity. Instead, it is required that one’s cognitive success should be appropriately related to one’s cognitive ability, such that the former is because of the latter’ (Carter and Pritchard 2015b, p. 192). In other words, it is required that ‘one’s successful performance be not merely accidentally a product of such abilities, but rather because of their exercise’ (ibid., p. 193).
Glick (2011, p. 408) also has an interesting argument about the disparity between the epistemic properties of knowledge-how and those of propositional knowledge.
Thanks to an anonymous referee of Synthese for suggesting I clarify the raison d’être of this claim.
I think that this view also applies to social skills—like mastering the art of conversation, or having the (more specific) skill to pleasantly amuse one’s conversation partners. For reasons of space, I shall leave for another occasion a full defence of this claim. I shall merely indicate here that this is so because the process of acquisition of social skills is similar to that of motor skills: it is only through attempts to amuse one’s conversation partners, and through perceiving their feedback, that one can progressively acquire both knowledge of how to amuse people and the social skill in question. Correlatively, there is no hope in trying to become a conversational maestro by conscientiously learning, in one’s own room, the ‘37 Conversation Rules’ of the Gentleman’s Guide to Etiquette.
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Gaultier, B. Skills, procedural knowledge, and knowledge-how. Synthese 194, 4959–4981 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1184-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1184-z