Abstract
The intellectualist strategy of appealing to the notion of a practical mode of presentation to explain the practical component of know-how faces two standard objections. According to the first, the notion of a practical mode of presentation is mysterious; according to the second, intellectualists get the order of explanation wrong when they use the practical mode of presentation to explain know-how. In the first section, after reviewing recent literature on defusing the first objection, I employ some phenomenological insights to develop four lines of argument which do show that the objection does not work. In the second section, I maintain that although the current version of the second objection is not conclusive, a restricted version of it is tenable. According to this restricted version, intellectualists do indeed get the order of explanation wrong at the level of basic action. The upshot is twofold: a challenge for anti-intellectualism to make room for the well-defined notion of the practical mode of presentation, and a challenge for intellectualism to explain the practical component of know-how at the basic level.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
To my knowledge, the weakest version of the intellectualist account of the practical component of know-how is the one proposed by Bengson and Moffett (2011, 177), according to which one can know how to F without having any kind of ability or disposition to do it. However, as Cath (2015, 14) shows, from an intellectualist point of view, their suggestion “is too weak to capture the intuitive sense in which knowledge-how is an action-guiding state”. For further discussion, see Cath 2015, footnote 13. See, also, Khalaj (2021) for a new account of the practical component of know-how.
I don’t discuss practical meaning (Pavese, 2017), I address practical concepts (Pavese, 2021) in passing in fn.14. While the line of Pavese’s argument that I discuss is applicable to both practical representations and practical senses, my focus is on practical representation as introduced in Pavese 2019, 2020d don’t examine further arguments in favor of practical sense presented in Pavese 2015a. Moreover, I don’t consider the scientific bases for practical representation borrowed from the theory of motor behavior, or for practical sense taken from computer science. Thus I emphasize that this is a selective examination of Pavese’s ideas regarding the practical component of know-how.
In contrast to Pavese’s assumption in the first argument, Toribio (2015) suggests that know-how states are not compositional in a way that is necessary for conceptual and propositional contents. I examine these two opposite views in another work (Khalaj Unpublished Manuscript).
In her 2015a, Pavese proposes a different line of development for the notion of practical mode of presentation conceived as practical sense, according to which “practical senses have a distinctive cognitive significance qua inferential ways of thinking of how to perform a task” (19). She supports this idea by appealing to an account of Lewis Carroll’s famous regress. Unfortunately, I don’t have space to discuss this line of thought.
The same line of argument can be developed by focusing on the notion of ‘practical sense’. See fn.6 for a relevant discussion.
It is worth noting that in Pavese’s 2015a paper, which is the source of the above example, she does not directly address the intensional context; she does so in her 2019 and 2020. However, even in her 2015a, the idea that a practical mode of presentation requires breaking down a task into a set of subtasks which can be exercised through systems’ elementary abilities is a central theme. In fact, according to Pavese 2015a, the paradigm of a practical mode of presentation is a practical sense, and each of these programs in the above example can be thought of as a distinct practical sense of executing the same algorithm of multiplication since they provide their systems with different methods for executing the same algorithm of multiplication.
This is Platts’s (1979: 257) criterion for a mind-to-world direction of fit.
A similar argument can proceed based on Humberstone’s 1992 account of the notion of a direction of fit. According to him, the direction of fit of a mental state is mind-to-world only if the possessor of the state (explicitly or implicitly) intends that the content of the state obtains. However, someone who has the above conditional command, like Alex, may not have this intention.
There are other criticisms of Pavese’s account in the literature which I don’t have space to address. To see just one example, Mosdell argues that: “our ability to discover, innovate, and invent solutions is also not well modeled with Pavese’s account” (2019, 460). However, this is not true. In a text which Mosdell does not address, focusing on the flexibility of know-how, Pavese 2016 clearly argues that her view can explain innovation just as programs can be used in innovative tasks.
For another account which considers the content of know-how as instructions that seem to have a mind-to-world direction of fit, see Santorio 2016.
Perhaps she can meet the challenge by preferring one criterion of the idea of the direction of fit over others. For a review and criticism of different criteria of the idea of the direction of fit, see Frost 2014.
Admittedly, Dreyfus resists considering the practical mode of presentation as a way of thinking. However, here I am not committed to this part of his thought. What is relevant to my argument is that he shows that the practical way of experiencing is irreducible. That said, it is noticeable that he is in agreement with considering this mode of presentation as a way of understanding.
Pavese (2021) invokes analogous pieces of evidence from cognitive science to develop an intellectualist account of practical concepts and productive reasoning. To motivate these new kinds of concepts and reasoning, she appeals to a neurological deficit known as ‘ideo-motor apraxia’. “What is distinctive about ideo-apractic agents is that they are able to perform the same movement skillfully in some conditions but not in others. … For example, an apractic patient might not be able to perform tasks such as ‘make the sign of the cross’ but might perform the sign with no problem when entering a church” (11). Obviously, this is similar to the case of the brain-damaged patient I borrow from Merleau-Ponty. However, Pavese writes: “I have not tried to argue that practical concepts are always needed for skilled behavior. As we have seen, productive reasoning plays a crucial role in skilled deliberative behavior but might be dispensed with when the task is familiar and environmentally triggered” (26) (emphasis added). While I suggest, following Stanley’s interpretation of the case of the pianist, that the practical mode of presentation is present in unreflective, environmentally triggered actions, Pavese thinks that productive reasoning based on practical concepts is absent in them. Thus it would be doubtful that practical concepts can be employed in explaining the practical mode of presentation (at least in unreflective actions).
In Williamson’s terms: “The standard reason for being unable to ride a bicycle is not knowing how to ride a bicycle” (2018: 245).
This rough version of the idea fits with central, normal cases. To accommodate the marginal, non-normal cases which are counterexamples to this rough version—for example, someone who does not know how to do F might do it by sheer chance or in a gettierized way (see Bengson and Moffett, 2011: 171–72)—we need to add some qualifications. To handle such marginal cases, we should restrict the ability to the non-accidental and non-gettierized ability. In what follows, I put these complications aside and proceed with the rough version of the above thesis.
Notice that ROE is plausible even if we consider the qualified sense of ability. For example, it is intuitive to say that I could ride a bicycle under normal circumstances because I know how to ride a bicycle.
The regress argument I considered in this section is similar in spirit to Koethe’s 2002 regress argument against Stanley and Williamson. He writes:
“Suppose that to F is to perform an intentional action. Then, as Stanley and Williamson acknowledge (442–43) one must know how to F in order to F. If knowing how to F is to know, of some way w, that w is a way for one to F and to know how instantiate w one’s self, then either knowing how to instantiate one’s self requires knowing, of some way w′, that w′ is a way instantiate w one’s self and knowing how to instantiate w′ one’s self; or it does not. If it does, then we move on to the next step of a regress. If it does not, then we have an instance of knowing how which is not, contrary to Stanley and Williamson’s account, an instance of knowing that.” (326).
While Koethe’s argument is similar to the present argument, there is a crucial difference that deserves attention. Unlike Koethe’s version, the present regress arises because knowing how to do F requires an ability to execute a way W in virtue of knowing how to do more simple tasks. The regress, on Koethe’s view, is generated because knowing how to instantiate w differs from knowing how to instantiate w′. However, he does not describe w′ as a set of more simple tasks than w. Thus Koethe does not consider the option suggested by Stanley and Krakauer that the regress stops at the simplest level of tasks which requires mere disposition rather than knowing how. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this journal for encouraging me to clarify the difference between these two regress arguments.
Stanley (2011: 30) invokes a similar strategy to show that the ability to draw an inference is not a state of knowing how.
Developing an intellectualist account of skill, Pavese and Bedor (2022: 8) have recently chosen this option, but emphasize that:
“The relevant knowledge is not simply the (trivial) knowledge that φ is a means for φ-ing; rather, it is the knowledge that [φ] is a means for φ-ing, where the bracket stands for a practical way of identifying the action by which a subject can perform the action when they intend to do so.”
According to this suggestion, it seems that a practical mode of presentation of the basic action plays the main explanatory role in accounting for the basic know-how. In what follows, I examine whether Pavese’s account of practical mode of presentation can resist the restricted version of the second objection or not. See, also, (Khalaj and Shirazi 2022) for a criticism of intellectualist accounts of skill.
In addition, the line of argument against the third option developed in what follows can pose a problem for intellectualists if they choose the second option. See fn. 26.
As said above, when Stanley claims that knowledge-how requires ability, he uses the term ‘ability’ in a qualified sense, that is, the counterfactual success under normal conditions.
An extra argument for this claim is that it seems that one can know how to do basic actions without having the propositional knowledge of the ability to do them. For example, Setiya (2012: 289–95) considers someone who has a false belief that her arm has been paralyzed: she does not know that she can clench her fist, whereas in fact she knows how to do it and would be successful should she try. Therefore, she has knowledge-how of a basic action without having propositional knowledge of the ability to do it. Of course, based on a dispositional account of belief, Stanley might respond that, despite her false non-practical belief, the person has the true practical belief that she could clench her fist because she has the disposition to do it. (For a distinction between practical belief and non-practical belief, see Cath (2020)). In response, it is worth noting that my argument (which is based on the order of explanation) is distinct from Setiya’s (which is based on the counterexample). If Setiya’s argument works, this provides additional support to my position; but there is no cost for my view if it does not work.
If intellectualists choose the second option, that is, the demonstrative propositional knowledge that ‘Hannah knows that she could raise her hand via this way of raising her hand’, they face a similar problem. It is plausible to think that the practical mode of presentation of a specific instance of raising a hand is explained in terms of a specific ability to do it. However, as philosophers who work on the kinds of ability show (Clarke, 2015: 893–94), having a specific ability to do an action requires having a general ability to do it, and the general ability itself is explained in terms of knowing how to do the action. Therefore, again, the practical mode of presentation is explained in terms of knowing-how, meaning intellectualists get the order of explanation wrong if they choose the second option and explain the knowledge-how of basic action in terms of the demonstrative knowledge of ability.
It is worth noting that taking non-intentional, intelligent ability as the ability which is relevant to know-how is a familiar move in the anti-intellectualist camp. To defend Ryle’s regress against objections, for example, Fridland (2015: 7) suggests that anti-intellectualists “can admit that contemplating a proposition is not intentional, but insist that it is still intelligent.”
Very roughly, the case is that Miriam has never heard of ordinary chess whereas she knows how to play BRAINIAC whose rules can be perfectly isomorphic with the rules of chess. In a reasonable scenario, Miriam acquires an ability to play chess before encountering a real instance of playing chess. While having this ability, she does not have even de re know-how of playing chess “for she has neither encountered the game before nor seen it played” (2015b: 177). In reply, dependent on two different readings of the case, I think, opponents of Pavese have two options for response. Either, following Carter and Czarnecki (2017: 74), they can argue that Miriam’s ability is not a relevant ability. It is a matter of sheer chance that she plays chess instead of chess*. As said in fn.17, this kind of accidental, non-reliable ability is not relevant to know-how. Or, in an alternative option, opponents of Pavese can admit that Miriam has a relevant ability but argue that the fact that “she has neither encountered the game before nor seen it played” does not entail that she does not have de re know-how. What Miriam has been previously familiar with is the abstract way of playing chess. While she has never encountered the game in the real world, she could think of the abstract way of playing chess as that way in her thought. Given this previous familiarity with the way of playing chess, there is no problem in ascribing de re know-how of playing chess to Miriam. Of course, I confess that the case is creative and sophisticated, deserving more careful examination. But unfortunately, I don’t have space to do so.
Of course, there are alternative intellectualist accounts of the practical component of know-how that I didn’t have space to discuss them in the present paper. For example, an alternative intellectualist strategy is to appeal to a dispositional account of belief (Stanley, 2011; Cath, 2020). Another alternative is to consider knowing how to do F as knowing a rule for doing F in an executive way, where the executive way of knowing a proposition should be thought of as a distinct propositional attitude (Waights Hickman, 2019). An examination of these alternative strategies requires an independent essay.
References
Bengson, J., & Moffett, M. A. (2011). Non-propositional intellectualism. In J. Bengson, & M. Moffett (Eds.), Knowing how: essays on knowledge, mind, and action (pp. 161–195). Oxford University Press.
Carter, J. A., & Czarnecki, B. (2017). (ANTI)-Anti-Intellectualism and the Sufficiency Thesis. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 98, 374–397
Cath, Y. (2015). Revisionary intellectualism and Gettier. Philosophical Studies, 172(1), 7–27.
Cath, Y. (2020). Know-how and skill: the puzzles of priority and equivalence. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise (pp. 157–167). Routledge.
Clarke, R. (2015). Abilities to act. Philosophy Compass, 10(12), 893–904.
Dreyfus, H. L. (2007). The return of the myth of the Mental. Inquiry : A Journal Of Medical Care Organization, Provision And Financing, 50(4), 352–365.
Evans, G. (1982). Varieties of reference. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Farkas, K. (2017). Practical know-Wh. Noûs, 51, 855–870.
Frost, K. (2014). On the very idea of direction of fit. Philosophical Review, 123(4), 429–484.
Glick, E. (2015). Practical Modes of Presentation. Nouˆs, 49, no. 3: 1–22
Habgood-Coote, J. (2019). Knowledge-how, abilities, and questions. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 97(1), 86–104.
Hawley, K. (2003). Success and knowledge-how. American philosophical quarterly, 40(1), 19–31.
Humberstone, I. L. (1992). Direction of fit. Mind, 101, 59–83.
Khalaj, M. H. M. (2021). Knowledge-how and the problems of masking and finkishness. Synthese, 198(2), 1623-1641.
Khalaj, M. H. M., & Shirazi, S. H. A. (2022). Is Skill a Kind of Disposition to Action-Guiding Knowledge?. Erkenntnis, 87(4), 1907-1930.
Khalaj, M. H. M. (2022). Know-how-first anti-intellectualism: Williamson against Williamson. Synthese, 200(4), 340.
Khalaj, M.H.M (Unpublished Manuscript) Compositional Know-how
Kelly, S. D. (2005). Closing the gap: Phenomenology and logical analysis. The Harvard Review of Philosophy, 13(2), 4–24.
Koethe, J. (2002). Stanley and Williamson on knowing how. The Journal of Philosophy, 99, 325–328.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1966). Phenomenology of perception translated from the French by Colin Smith.
Mosdell, M. (2019). Modeling practical thinking. Mind & Language, 34(4), 445–464.
Noë, A. (2005). Against intellectualism. Analysis, 65(4), 278–290.
Pavese, C. (2015a). Practical Senses. Philosopher’s Imprint, 15(29).
Pavese, C. (2015b). Knowing a rule. Philosophical Issues, 25, 165–188.
Pavese, C. (2016). Comments on Knowledge-How, Abilities, and Questions, by Joshua Habgood-Coote. Published as a blogpost at http://mindsonline.philosophyofbrains.com
Pavese, C. (2017). A theory of practical meaning. Philosophical Topics, 45(2), 65–96.
Pavese, C. (2019). The psychological reality of practical representation. Philosophical Psychology, 32(5), 784–821.
Pavese, C. (2020). Practical representation. The Routledge handbook of philosophy of skill and expertise (pp. 226–244). Routledge.
Pavese, C. (2021). Practical concepts and productive reasoning.Synthese,1–30.
Peacocke, C. (1986). Thoughts: an essay on content. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Platts, M. (1979). Ways of meaning (1st ed.). Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Santorio, P. (2016). Nonfactual Know-How and the boundaries of semantics. Philosophical Review, 125(1), 35–82.
Searle, J. (1983). Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Setiya, K. (2012, October). XIV—Knowing how. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback) (Vol. 112, No. 3, pp. 285–307). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Siegel, S. (2021). The Contents of Perception, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/perception-contents/>.
Small, W. (2019). Basic Action and Practical Knowledge.Philosopher’s Imprint, 19(19)
Snowdon, P. (2004). Knowing How and Knowing That: A Distinction Reconsidered. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104: 1–29.
Stanley, J. (2011). Know how. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stanley, J., & Krakauer, J. W. (2013). Motor skill depends on knowledge of facts. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 7, 503.
Stanley, J., & Williamson, T. (2001). Knowing How, Journal of Philosophy 98: 411 – 44
Stanley, J., & Williamson, T. (2017).Skill. Nous, 51(4),713–726.
Toribio, J. (2015). Opacity, know-how states, and their content. Disputatio, 2015, vol. 7, num. 40, p. 61–83.
Waights Hickman, N. (2019). Knowing in the “executive way”: knowing how, rules, methods, principles and criteria. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 99(2), 311–335.
Williamson, T. (2018). Hyman on knowledge and ability. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 97(1), 243–248.
Acknowledgements
I am so thankful to Seyed Mahmoud Yarandi, Mahmoud Morvarid, Mahmoud Vahidnia, Ebrahim Azadegan, Aboutorab Yaghmaei, Ben Young, Seyed Hassan Ayatollahzadeh Shirazi, and Haj Ghasem Shojaie.
I am also grateful to an anonymous reviewr of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences who offerd very helpful comments that signficantly improved an earlier version of the paper.
Funding
The research for this article was funded by Center for Science and Theology, Institute for Science and Technology Studies, Shahid Beheshti University, (No: ص/960/112).
Conflict of interestThe author declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
M.A. Khalaj, M. The practical mode of presentation revisited. Phenom Cogn Sci (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-023-09894-2
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-023-09894-2