Abstract
Roughly speaking, intellectualists contend that practical knowledge is always a matter of having the right kind of propositional knowledge. This article argues that intellectualism faces a serious explanatory challenge when practical knowledge crucially relies on ecological information, i.e. when know-how is scaffolded. More precisely, intellectualists struggle to provide a satisfactory explanation of seeming know-how contrasts in structurally similar cases of scaffolded ability manifestation. In contrast, even if anti-intellectualism is similarly challenged, at least some varieties of anti-intellectualism seemingly hold resources to account for the relevant contrasts.
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Notes
Note that here know-how does not comprise all knowledge ascribed by way of the “know how” expression. E.g. to know how Julius Caesar died does not constitute know-how in the practical sense relevant here (Rumfitt 2003: 166).
As Kathrine Hawley has also pointed out, at least for some skills which abilities warrant their ascription varies by context. E.g. in a British context a driver needs to be able to handle a stick transmission for her to be skilled at driving, whereas this is not the case in all American contexts (Hawley 2003: 5–8). More generally, Erasmus of Rotterdam’s famous dictum seems relevant: In regione caecorum rex est luscus (literally “In the region of the blind the sighted man is king” but traditionally rendered in English as: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” Knowles ed. 1999: 301). E.g. the lament is typically heard from older people that the range of abilities needed to count as skillful or practically knowledgeable at some traditional task is not as broad as it used to be or as difficult to manifest.
We owe this response to Mona Simion in conversation.
Examples in this style hark not least from Carr 1979. Carr memorably uses the example of a dancer, who is highly competent at performing a particular dance routine, which unbeknownst to him also constitutes a semaphoric rendition of Thomas Gray’s famous Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1979: 407). See also Fantl 2008: Sect. 2.
Here we do not want to commit to the controversial thesis that all explanations must be contrastive (famous sources of this thesis are Van Fraassen (1980) and Garfinkel (1981)). Rather, we simply maintain that when the explanatory value of an explanans crucially turns on the otherwise unexplained “inadequacy” of some variable value, only a contrast could satisfactorily account for the explanatory force of this inadequacy.
Of course, it does not follow from there being clear-cut contrasts in know-how that know-how is never gradable. Very plausibly, most types of know-how are indeed gradable (Pavese 2017).
We use the term “subjective nominalism” in accordance with the usage established by D.M. Armstrong (1978: Chapters 2–3), where conceptualists and traditional predicate nominalists equally count as subjective nominalists.
Note that this is not the kind of error-theory we deemed inappropriate in Sect. 3. The subjective nominalist recognizes the contrast in know-how between Chris and Berta/Will but prefers to account for this contrast in subjectivist terms: we ascribers are the measure of the contrast, not the inherent traits of the ascribees. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for this journal for urging us to point this out.
See, however, D’Almeida (2016).
This is not to say that holding Chris responsible is inconsistent with the Chris vignette, only that, unlike the Berta and Will vignettes, the Chris vignette does not afford the ascription of responsibility in any clear way. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for this journal for urging us to make this clear.
Notice that an anti-intellectualist may insist on a close tie (relevant to a context) between a skill and a range of abilities without thereby committing to any specific theoretical account of this relation. But it seems tempting to employ Ernest Sosa’s influential conception of competence as “the disposition (ability) to succeed when one tries” (2015: 95) and then understand skill as the inner seat of such a competence, i.e. that state in virtue of which the agent will ably succeed given favorable external conditions (2010: 465).
Several colleagues have contributed to this article with helpful comments and ideas. Special thanks extend to Kelly Becker, Mikkel Gerken, Chris Kelp, Simon Larsen, Mona Simion, the audience at the 2019 27th Bled Philosophical Conference, arranged by The Slovenian Society for Analytical Philosophy, and an anonymous referee for this journal.
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Nottelmann, N., Thorsson, K. Scaffolded practical knowledge: a problem for intellectualism. Philos Stud 178, 577–595 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01446-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01446-7