Practical knowledge (4)

Several problems have been identified with Ryle's position. The logical behaviorist framework itself: knowing whether someone knows a rule cannot be reduced to observing his or her behavior; following a rule cannot be so easily reduced to a set of dispositions (see Wittgenstein and Kripke); delimiting the domain of know-how is not so simple: there are clear cases of practical skills, others that are less so (being intelligent, scrupulous) or that seem little different from propositional knowledge, such as knowing how to speak a language, repair a computer, find one's way around a city, play chess or the violin. Many of these skills can be acquired without verbal knowledge, but most presuppose at least some verbal knowledge and intellectual competence. The Ryléan presentation of theoretical knowledge through the "intellectualist legend" is also questionable: is the argument of regression a good one? Does intelligent action always presuppose prior consideration of a proposition? Is one obliged to adopt the representationalist conception underlying such a reading? Isn't the presentation of Lewis Carroll's argument dubious? Is it also certain that to know a rule of inference is not to know an additional fact or truth? Ryle also seems to assume that propositional knowledge is behaviorally inert. But why? Secondly, is Ryle's conception of practical knowledge correct? Finally, have we really exhausted all possibilities, as Ryle seems to think, by distinguishing things in a binary way, i.e. either by propositional contemplation or dispositionally? Couldn't intellectualism be defended on other grounds? These early "intellectualist" criticisms of Rylean anti-intellectualism have been generalized to any radically anti-intellectualist approach to practical knowledge. The argument of regression to infinity is not correct: it is not true that every manifestation of savoir faire must be accompanied by a distinct action of contemplating a proposition that is itself a manifestation of savoir faire; if this were the case, no savoir faire would ever manifest itself. "I exercise (or manifest) my knowledge that the door can be opened by turning the knob and pushing it (as well as my knowledge thatthere is a door there), performing this operation quite automatically when I leave the room, without formulating (either mentally or aloud) this or any other relevant proposition [2]." It's inaccurate to say that for any action we need to resort to practical knowledge: would we say that to digest, we need to know how to digest? That to win the lottery, we need to know how to win the lottery? This presupposes a restriction of the field to intentional actions. Ryle thus fails neither to challenge the thesis that savoir faire is a kind of propositional knowledge, nor to defend his anti-intellectualist thesis defining practical knowledge as the application of certainabilities. Attributions of know-how do not even imply the attribution of corresponding abilities. A ski instructor may know how to perform complex freestyle figures without being able to do so himself. A virtuoso pianist who loses the use of both arms in a car accident may well still know how to play the piano [3]. Similarly, we can deny that intelligent action must necessarily be preceded by the consideration of propositions ("unreasonable" intellectualism), without denying that intelligent action must in some way be guided by some form of theoretical or propositional knowledge ("reasonable" intellectualism [4] ).

On the other hand, certain models of propositional knowledge are close to Ryle's vision of savoir faire: for example, the functionalist conception of belief, where to manifest a propositional attitude such as a belief is to manifest a certain dispositional state. Ryle is therefore wrong to think that his own conception of action necessarily runs counter to the intellectualist conception. We can only conclude from the regression argument that knowing how to do something is not a species of propositional knowledge if we combine this argument with the erroneous thesis that there is an asymmetry between the conditions of manifestation of knowing how to do something and the conditions of manifestation of knowing that something is the case. An intellectualist can argue both that the knowledge on the basis of which we act, when we act intelligently, practical knowledge, is something that manifests itself directly, without prior mental action, and that intelligent action is guided by propositional knowledge. In fact, this is quite consistent with the way in which the very process of deliberation is most often described: when we deliberate, we incorporate into the deliberation beliefs and desires that are not, strictly speaking, part of the deliberation itself (cf. Aristotle). In other words, our behaviors can be non-deliberatively informed by other propositional attitudes [5].