Practical knowledge (1)

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The first lecture introduced these questions by recalling the origins and motivations of anti-intellectualism, present as far back as Antiquity (cf. the Thracian maid's mockery of philosophers lost in the heavens; Theaetetus, 174a-175a). More recent forms of this anti-intellectualism have been revisited in Pierre Bourdieu's accusations against "scholastic reason [1] " and the illusion of an independence or transcendence of knowledge and all reflective practice, where we must see a relationship of logical co-originarity between practices and structure, the "field", in short, a whole system of dispositions orhabitus that renders inconceivable any "point of view from nowhere". We've shown that this is less a matter of radical anti-intellectualism or deterministic sociologism, than of "a simple adherence, constitutive of scientific commitment, to the principle of reason" and, as Bourdieu puts it in Pascalian terms, of the desire to find "the reason for effects" - in this case, to find social reasons for social effects, and in particular "for effects that don't seem to be social but nevertheless are [2] ". For Bourdieu, the demands of science cannot be compromised, even for the most respectable political reasons. Simply, "to inscribe in theory the real principle of strategies, i.e., practical sense", is to show that "notions such as habitus (or system of dispositions), practical sense, strategy, are linked to the effort to emerge from structuralist objectivism without falling into subjectivism [3] ". Hence Bourdieu's proximity, already noted by Bouveresse, to authors such as Wittgenstein, but also to Gilbert Ryle. For all three, "learning a game can involve the formulation and explicit acquisition of the rules that govern the game". But "one can also acquire the kind of regular behavior that corresponds to the practical mastery of the game without the enunciation of any rules having to intervene in the process". This is why, in many cases, "a description of the practical knowledge that makes possible the practice concerned may not ultimately be very different from an appropriate description of the practice itself [4] ".

We then move on to examine what often underlies anti-intellectualism: the hierarchy established between two orders - theoretical and practical - of reason, but also of knowledge, and the privilege accorded to the former, leading to the restriction of the field of reason or knowledge to the latter. The risks of such a position are the exclusion from the very realm of knowledge of many achievements of the mind, which, while they may not fall within the realm of theoretical scientific knowledge, do bring into play devices, faculties, forms of intelligence and cognitive capacities. We mentioned the research being carried out on the idea of possible literary and artistic knowledge (the colloquium on "The Manufacture of Painting" sought to identify the sources of this knowledge), while raising the difficulties that arise in this context: what semantics should be applied to fictional statements? What kind of "knowledge" - propositional or not? - can we talk about in literature? Is it wise to think in terms of non-propositional knowledge, involving singular experiences, emotions, feelings, conflicts in the perception of values, rather than maxims, principles, universal truths or general laws of human character, which would then be closer to what Aristotle meant by practical knowledge, irreducible, at least in appearance, to theoretical knowledge, and which would involve a whole art of judgment, of discernment, in short a whole "savoir faire"? Hence the challenge of the lecture: is it certain that there is a gulf between two forms of intelligence, or between two forms that knowledge might take, or is it possible to reduce one to the other? Either in the sense that all knowledge, all "know that", would ultimately be non-propositional but practical knowledge, in a word "knowhow" or "savoir faire" (G. Ryle); or, conversely, in the sense that all practical knowledge would actually be reduced to propositional knowledge, to "know that", and would indeed concern facts and not dispositions or abilities (J. Stanley and T. Williamson). To demonstrate the difficulty of this kind of opposition, we've gone back to the Greeks, recalling the superiority of theoretical reason, the faculty of knowing - disinterestedly - according to principles, over practical reason(De anima III, 9, 432b27), but also the complexity of the Platonic position (cf. Meno 97b-98d, analyzed in our 2010-2011 lecture on "The value of knowledge"), and even more so the subtlety of the Aristotelian concept of phronesis (prudence or sagacity), that instance of guidance of reasonable action which no longer concerns the gods alone but humans in their contingency (EN X 10, 118 1b15), which we mustn't forget that although it concerns the particular, it is indeed an intellectual virtue[5]. Hence the need to rethink theoretical/practical dualism. If Aristotle is right, then practical knowledge might not require a different (non-intellectual) form of intelligence from that at work in theoretical knowledge. Secondly, intelligence itself, however intellectual, would not be incompatible with the idea of certain dispositions being exercised and trained. It's easy to understand why Gilbert Ryle's theses were seen as a revival of many Aristotelian themes.

The lecture ended with an introduction to the theses developed by Ryle in his two famous texts [6], in which he challenges the "intellectualist legend" and shows that, in reality, all knowledge is a savoir faire, and that knowledge is not primarily a matter of truths, facts and propositions, but of aptitudes, abilities and intelligent dispositions.

References

[1] Méditations pascaliennes, Paris, Seuil, 1997.

[2] J. Bouveresse, Pierre Bourdieu, savant et politique, Marseille, Agone, 2004, pp. 117-118.

[3] P. Bourdieu, Choses Dites, Paris, Minuit, 1987, p. 76-77.

[4] J. Bouveresse, op.cit. p. 46-47.

[5] Cf. Pierre Pellegrin and Michel Crubelier, Aristote, le philosophe et les savoirs, Paris, Seuil, 2002, p. 152-153; Richard Sorabji, " Aristotle on the role of intellect in virtue ", in Essays on Aristotle's ethics, Oxford University Press, 1980, p.. 201; Richard Bodeus, intr. to Ethique à Nicomaque, Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 2004, pp. 40-41; Pierre Aubenque, La prudence chez Aristote, Paris, PUF, reedit. 2014; Problèmes aristotéliciens, Paris, Vrin, 2011.

[6] The one taken from the plenary lecture given to theAristotelian Society in 1945: " Knowing How and Knowing that "(Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 46 (1945-1946), pp. 1-16), and the analyses carried out, by other arguments, notably in chapter 2 of the 1949 work, The Concept of Mind(La Notion d'esprit, for the French translation we owe, with Payot, to Suzanne Stern-Gilet).