Practical knowledge (7)

After recalling the respective benefits and problems of each position, we returned to the difficulties peculiar to the linguistic arguments invoked by the intellectualists, noting, for example, the unnatural character of certain conjunctions, and then to the difficulties having to do with the nature of the "practical mode of presentation" that a correct analysis of practical knowledge presupposes, according to Stanley & Williamson: S knows ϕ-er in the only case where there is a way, m, such that S knows that m is a way of ϕ-er [2], and this, because she also knows two things, firstly, that m is a way for her to ϕ-er, and secondly, because m has been presented to her in the appropriate way. To know how to ride a bike knowing that m is a way for me to ride a bike, I need to know that m is a way for me to ride a bike under a "practical" mode of presentation. This mode is indeed necessary, because I could perfectly well move in the way described by a whole list of recommendations, know the list by heart, choose a way for me to ride a bike, and still not know that what I'm doing is a way for me to ride a bike, quite simply, because I could very well be unaware that the way I'm doing the movements is indeed the way described by the list in question. But there are two objections to this analysis.

Firstly, there's something at best circular and at worst implausible about this presentation: it's not "because I know that m is a way for me to ride a bike (in a practical mode of presentation)" that I know how to ride a bike. Rather, it should be said that I know that m is a way for me to ride a bike (under a practical mode of presentation), because I already know how to instantiate m. Maintaining the proposition that m is a way for someone to ϕ-er under a practical mode of presentation implies knowing how to instantiate m oneself. In short, knowing how to do things is ultimately an irreducible part of the analysis, because explaining the practical mode of presentation requires that I already have certain bits of knowing how to do things. In which case, the analysis appeals to the very notion that needs to be explained [3]. If the fact that m is presented to me in the practical mode requires knowing how to use m, then Stanley and Williamson are absolutely right to say that knowing how to ride a bike requires knowing (in the practical mode of presentation) that m is a way of riding a bike. But they are wrong to conclude that this makes knowing how to ride a kind of propositional knowledge.

Secondly, if we take a closer look at the very concept of "manner" and the role it is supposed to play, we see that it is problematic [4]. I can have a way of doing something I want to do, without knowing how to do it, for example by accessing a secure website whose security settings have been deactivated for a moment, after randomly typing in a password that is in fact the wrong one because I had forgotten it: I have indeed manifested a way of entering the website, but no real practical knowledge has intervened here (I didn 't know the right password). In the same way, it's not enough to know how to do something on such and such an occasion, in order to be credited with the mastery of a skill or practical knowledge. This is the difference between two individuals who both type the word "Afghanistan" (thus demonstrating the same "way of doing things"). One knows how to type, but is typing the word for the first time; the other is a beginner, and this is the only word he knows how to type. The difference between the typist and the beginner is a difference in what they know how to do, which is not manifest in the "singular events" in which they participate as they exercise their knowledge. We're in the presence of one and the same way of doing things (the way both have typed), but two different types of know-how are being exercised (one knows how to type, and the other knows how to type "Afghanistan"). In the same way, singular instances of savoir faire do not make it possible to determine what exactly constitutes the savoir faire that someone demonstrates when he or she manifests it, hic et nunc. We can say that someone "knows how to prune roses", either because we've seen him use his pruning shears properly, or because we've seen him think about how to proceed by examining the plant before pruning [5]. There is only one kind of skill involved here, but it is exercised in two very different ways. The obvious conclusion is that to know how to do something is not (or not only, as Stanley and Williamson think) to know a true proposition, exercised in such and such a way, on the occasion of such and such an activity or action; it is to be in a relation of knowing how to do with an activity or a type (not a token) of action. When you know how to do something, you maintain a link with your knowledge that has all the trappings of generality. This is also the reason why it is never events, but rather processes, that are put forward to identify practical knowledge when it is exercised, and why Ryle speaks of practical knowledge as a "disposition" "whose exercise is indefinitely heterogeneous [6] ". An adequate analysis of the type of agentivity at work in practical knowledge will therefore have to integrate the fact that to know in a practical way is necessarily to be engaged in processes, activities or a knowing how to act which, by the very fact of its generality, cannot be reduced to the mere knowledge of particular propositions. Of course, we shouldn't be too quick to conclude from the close links between practical knowledge and our intentions, reasons for acting and actions, that anti-intellectualism is well-founded, for the question always remains, at this stage, whether these are ultimately based on propositional attitudes rather than capacities, dispositions or aptitudes, whether intentional actions are the product of the former or actualizations of the latter. The exact nature of the type of agentivity at work, for example, when we act intentionally - practical knowledge of the kind Elisabeth Anscombe evokes in particular in Intention (1957) - is therefore not clear-cut [7]. But the fact remains that the intellectualist has at least as much to worry about at this stage as the anti-intellectualist, not to mention other difficulties to come.