Having Know‐How: Intellect, Action, and Recent Work on Ryle's Distinction Between Knowledge‐How and Knowledge‐That

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (4):507-530 (2010)
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Abstract

Stanley and Williamson reject Ryle's knowing‐how/knowing‐that distinction charging that it obstructs our understanding of human action. Incorrectly interpreting the distinction to imply that knowledge‐how is non‐propositional, they object that Ryle's argument for it is unsound and linguistic theory contradicts it. I show that they (and their interlocutors) misconstrue the distinction and Ryle's argument. Consequently, their objections fail. On my reading, Ryle's distinction pertains to, not knowledge, but an explanatory gap between explicit and implicit content, and his argument for it is sound. I defend the distinction's necessity in explaining human action and show that it propels a fruitful explanatory program.

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Greg M. Sax
Universität Göttingen

Citations of this work

Knowledge How.Jeremy Fantl - 2012 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The Structure of Practical Expertise.Cheng-Hung Tsai - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (2):539-554.
Gilbert Ryle’s adverbialism.Gabrielle Benette Jackson - 2020 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (2):318-335.
Why Moral Principles?Joe Mintoff - 2016 - Mind 125 (500):1133-1159.

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