Abstract

It is argued that knowing-how is an essential element in understanding the concept of intelligence. Yet, the question “What kind of knowledge is knowing-how?” has rarely been investigated thus far. This paper aims to respond to this question and it does so by suggesting that knowing-how can be analyzed by the concept of a disposition. The discussion begins by clarifying the condition for knowing-how by outlining some of its key characteristics. Then, it provides an account of knowing-how with a specific focus on the reciprocity of dispositions and the complex structure of a disposition’s conceptual relations. Previous studies of knowing-how have focused on controversy between the following two camps. One is an anti-intellectualist thesis, which was first made prominent by Gilbert Ryle, arguing that knowing-how entails abilities and dispositions. The intellectualist thesis, on the other hand, rejects this. With the claim made by anti-intellectualism in mind, a deep analysis provided in this paper shall lead to the argument that there is a strong relationship between knowing-how and abilities (dispositions). But, at the same time, it also claims that intellectualism’s requirement of an “epistemic dimension” of knowing-how can also be explained by the analysis of this paper. In other words, this paper is geared toward reconciling intellectualism’s epistemic requirement with anti-intellectualism's core ideas. In a nutshell, the above argument reveals the dual epistemic dimension of knowing-how: that is, the appropriate control over one's own abilities, and the practice of picking up and employing dispositions that are the reciprocal partner to one’s own abilities. This may explain why and how knowing-how is a kind of knowledge.