With this in mind, in the ninth and final lecture we set out to put forward arguments of a more directly epistemological nature, better able to overcome the usual divisions and present practical knowledge in a different light. First of all, we questioned the idea that we should follow the conception inherent in Stanley and Williamson's analysis of propositional knowledge itself, namely the idea (defended in particular by Williamson) that what is primary is not, as in a traditional Gettier model, belief, but knowledge (understood as a mental state). However strong this position may be, it is not the one that will be followed here (see also the end of the 2010-2011 lecture). However, for the argument in favor of practical knowledge to work, a certain conception of propositional knowledge itself must also be admitted.
We then recalled the issues facing anti-intellectualists and intellectualists. The anti-intellectualist will have to show that knowing how to do something is not necessarily reduced to having an aptitude or a disposition to do something; envisage that there may be "degrees" in knowing how to do something; show where the difference lies between behaviors that clearly manifest intelligence and others (there are also cases where knowing how to do something and abilities do not go hand in hand); to show, perhaps without totally denying the link, that savoir faire and other stages of intelligence are founded in a certain type of power; to read savoir faire as something based on success, interpreted in a counterfactual way, endowed with guarantees [1], or in the wake of the work inherited from the pragmatist Frank Ramsey. Finally, he or she will also need to be able to distinguish between expert knowledge and mere "trickery", and thus endeavor to determine the properly cognitive character of practical activity, without making it something mysterious, magical, metaphorical or "primitive", but rather elaborating the notions of learning and education that distinguish practical knowledge from mere habit, or highlighting certain themes from or inspired by phenomenology. As for the intellectualist, he or she will have to avoid the pitfalls clearly identified by Ryle, but also those identified in the linguistic approach of Stanley and Williamson; stop thinking that practical knowledge can be reduced purely and simply to propositional knowledge, and propose a new approach. In all cases, we'll have to find a way between reductive anti-intellectualism, without reducing know-how to a set of aptitudes or abilities, and preserving the intuitive distinction, dear to intellectualists, between practical knowledge (oriented towards action) and mere theoretical knowledge (oriented simply towards facts or truth). This is what we set out to do in the final stage, by proposing a new model of practical knowledge.
