Abstract

There is wide agreement that background infrastructure is unconsciously applied and is not formally representable, but views diverge as to whether this sort of skill should be considered knowledge in the proper sense. In this paper I attempt to show that background infrastructure is a type of skilled knowledge which serves as a precondition for the mind to be about things in the world. Contrary to the common understanding that background is primarily mechanical, the view presented here affirms that it as a totality of knowing taken up by the body and converted into an implicit ‘know-how’. It appears as a mode of mind’s ‘enworldment’, as well as an organ of potentiality