Know-how as Competence. A Rylean Responsibilist Account

Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann (2017)
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Abstract

What does it mean to know how to do something? This book develops a comprehensive account of know-how, a crucial epistemic goal for all who care about getting things right, not only with respect to the facts, but also with respect to practice. It proposes a novel interpretation of the seminal work of Gilbert Ryle, according to which know-how is a competence, a complex ability to do well in an activity in virtue of guidance by an understanding of what it takes to do so. This idea is developed into a full-fledged account, Rylean responsibilism, which understands know-how in terms of the normative guidance and responsible control of one's acts. Within the complex current debate about know-how, this view occupies a middle ground position between the intellectualist claim that know-how just is propositional or objectual knowledge and the anti-intellectualist claim that know-how just is ability. In genuine know-how, practical ability and guiding intellect are both necessary, but essentially intertwined.

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Author's Profile

David Löwenstein
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

Citations of this work

Agents’ Abilities.Romy Jaster - 2020 - Berlin, New York: De Gruyter.
Know-how, action, and luck.Carlotta Pavese - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 7):1595-1617.
Are abilities dispositions?Barbara Vetter - 2019 - Synthese 196 (196):201-220.
Knowledge-How, Abilities, and Questions.Joshua Habgood-Coote - 2019 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (1):86-104.

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References found in this work

Mind and World.John Henry McDowell - 1994 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
What is it like to be a bat?Thomas Nagel - 1974 - Philosophical Review 83 (October):435-50.
Studies in the way of words.Herbert Paul Grice - 1989 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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