Abstract
Anti-intellectualists claim that knowledge-how requires at least a corresponding ability or performance success that includes non-intellectual components. They argue that an insistence on the close relationship between knowledge-how and performance success is needed to account for our intuitions on the practical aspects of knowledge-how. In this paper, we examine three main anti-intellectualist proposals for what constitutes performance success, those of Hawley (2003), Noë (2005), and Kumar (2011), and argue that all of them are non-informative in a practical manner. We further point out that the problem of non-informativeness is dominant in anti-intellectualism.
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Notes
This type of counterexample is presented in Stanley and Williamson (2001) as an immediate threat to the anti-intellectualist positions.
Hawley claims that a one-leg cyclist may be considered to know how to ride a bike under normal circumstances, given that normal circumstances exclude the condition that the cyclist has only one leg or has no legs. This exclusion actually needs to be expanded. In the end, the example encounters the triviality problem: everyone knows how to ride a bike under normal circumstances.
References
Hawley, K. (2003). Success and knowledge how. American Philosophical Quarterly, 40, 19–31.
Kumar, V. (2011). In support of anti-intellectualism. Philosophical Studies, 152, 135–154.
Noë, A. (2005). Against intellectualism. Analysis, 65, 278–290.
Stanley, J., & Williamson, T. (2001). Knowing how. Journal of Philosophy, 98, 411–444.
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Tu, CC., Hsiao, MY. & Wang, L. Knowledge-How and Performance Success. Philosophia 43, 1157–1170 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9657-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9657-8