DRAFT

26/09/16.

Towards an Anti-Intellectualist Analysis of Knowledge-How
J. Adam Carter & Jess Navarro

Contemporary anti-intellectualists, much like Gilbert Ryle (1945; 1949) himself, have
focused to a greater extent on establishing a negative thesis, that knowledge-how is not
a species of knowledge-that, and to a lesser extent on constructively developing a
positive anti-intellectualist alternative, according to which abilities or dispositions are
supposed to be what grounds practical knowledge. Accordingly, contemporary antiintellectualismas a positive alternative to intellectualismis hardly in a more
developed state than Ryle left it in the middle of the 20th century. Contemporary
intellectualism (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; forthcoming; Stanley 2011; Brogaard
2009; 2010; 2011) by contrast, offers a clearly formulated account of knowledge-how
with straightforward relevance in epistemology.

We aim to change this trend, and to prepare the ground for a positive antiintellectualist epistemology of knowledge-how, one that goes beyond the inchoate
suggestion that knowledge-how is, or involves, ability or dispositions. Our primary goal
is a tentative tripartite analysis of knowledge-how that is broadly analogous to the JTB
analysis of knowledge-that. However, instead of being composed by the three classical
conditions of knowledge-that (belief, truth and justification), the proposal we advance
has three conditions that are related to agents powers and capacities (ability, success
and mastery).

We do not intend to solve the many problems that such an analysis would raise,
but rather to map those problems in such a way that anti-intellectualist epistemology
would prove to be as fruitful, engaging, and interestingly controversial as the
epistemology of knowledge-that is, even if it preserves the idea that knowledge-how is
not reducible to knowledge-that.

1. The need for an epistemology of knowledge-how

From Ryle (1945; 1949) onwarduntil the end of the 20th centuryit was more or less
taken for granted that knowing-how and knowing-that are fundamentally distinct.
Though the history here is often obscured. Ryles primary target in The Concept of Mind
was not any specific thesis about knowledge-how, intellectualist or otherwise. His target
was instead much larger: the dominant image of the mind as an inherently private and
secret placeone wherein genuine intelligence exclusively occurs. In particular, he
intended to challenge the Cartesian version of this image: a dualist picture where the
mind and the body are regarded as separable, and where action may only have
intelligence properties in virtue of being guided by deliberative acts of the mind. Ryle

himself referred to the general assumptions that motivate this Cartesian approach to
the philosophy of intelligence and intelligent action as The Intellectualist Legend. And,
allegedly, the alternative he proposed in its stead was a variety of behaviourism, the
most embarrassing part of which was the now universally rejected verificationist theory
of meaning1.
In light of Ryles own reflections on behaviourism and verificationism2, this
reading of his texts is controversial, and it has been contested by his interpreters ever
since3. But even if Ryles anti-intellectualism had these disputable burdens, the failure of
these positions in the philosophy of mind and language is compatible with the success
of other aspects of Ryles critique of the Cartesian approach to human intelligence.
One specific element of the Intellectualist Legend which Ryle sought to reject
was the thesis that a given state, S, counts as an intelligence state (i.e., a state with
intelligence properties) just in case S is, or involves, an internal state of considering a
proposition. This is a general thesis about intelligence states, which implies the more
specific thesisof particular interest in epistemologythat ones knowing how to do
something is, or involves, an internal state of considering a proposition. But such a
commitment, Ryle famously argued, leads to regresstwo separate regresses, in fact,
which he outlined in 1945 and 19494.

According to Ryle, those regresses could be sidestepped entirely once we
abandon the view that intelligence states such as knowing-how are rooted in some form
of intellectual engagement with propositions and accept instead that those states are
predicated of agents in so far as they are able to act in some particular waysthat is, in
virtue of manifesting the relevant abilities. Tacitly assuming this ability-based
alternative, epistemologistsfor the remainder of the 20th century, at leastby and
large took for granted that knowledge-how is not a species of propositional knowledge,
but something else entirely, something like ability-knowledge.

1 See Stanley (2011, Ch. 1) and Hornsby (2011) for discussion on the relationship between the project

Ryle originally undertook, and the anti-intellectualist approach to practical knowledge which hes
nowadays often attributed in epistemology. Cf., Navarro (forthcoming) for a critique of Stanleys reading
of Ryle.
2 See Ryle (1949, 300-3) on behaviourism, and different papers compiled in his (1971) and (1979), such
as Unverifiability-By-Me and The Verification Principle.
3 See for instance Crane (2017), Tanney (2007; 2009) and Hacker (2006) for some objections to the
reading of Ryle as a strict behaviourist, according to which claims attributing mental terms can be
translated without loss of meaning into (as Tanney (2007, 8) puts it) subjunctive conditionals that
specify what an individual would do under various circumstances.
4 As Ryle articulates his primary regress in The Concept of Mind, The consideration of a proposition is
itself an operation the execution of which can be more or less intelligent, less or more stupid. But if, for
any operation to be intelligently executed, a prior theoretical operation had first to be performed and
performed intelligently, it would be a logical impossibility for anyone ever to break into the cycle (Ryle
1949, 30). See, however, Stanley (2011, Ch. 2), Cath (2013) and Tanney (2009) for recent critical
discussion. Stanley has notably argued that Ryles regresses are ineffectual against contemporary
formulations of intellectualism. Cf., [OMITTED] for criticism of Stanleys reading of Ryle on this point.
Ryles alternate regress argument appeared earlier, in 1945 (6), and is an adaptation of the Carroll's
(1895) regress.


Although, prior to about the turn of the 21st century, there had been some
unstructured strands of challenge to Ryles anti-intellectualism about knowledge-how5,
no systematic expression of what a positive intellectualist alternative should be was
available. The situation changed drastically with Stanley and Williamson (2001)s
landmark paper, Knowing How, which offered a programmatic agenda for
intellectualists to pursue an epistemological account of knowledge how in propositional
terms. In the wake of Stanley and Williamsons proposal, many other intellectualist
approaches to knowledge-how have been proposed (e.g., Bengson and Moffet 2011;
Brogaard 2008; 2009; 2011; Snowdon 2004; Glick 2012, Stanley 2011; Stanley and
Williamson forthcoming).
Although anti-intellectualists have certainly put up a fight in these years6, it is
hard to deny thatmuch as Ryles own response to the Intellectualist Legend was
primarily negative rather than positive7contemporary anti-intellectualists have
engaged with more enthusiasm in attacking their adversaries views than building up
their own8. To the extent that contemporary anti-intellectualists have submitted
positive theses, these theses have (with the exception of Carr 1981 and Williams 2008,
whose views we will return to) been at best vagueviz., that knowledge-how must be
something like, or involve, or be grounded in, ability, or at least some relevant
counterfactual success by the part of the agent (e.g., Hawley 2003). Philosophers on
both sides of the dividing line between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism should
expect the anti-intellectualist epistemology of knowledge how to be prepared to go
beyond this preliminary point.
In light of this situation, there is a sense in which contemporary intellectualists
are entitled to claim an important meta-theoretical advantage over their antiintellectualist adversaries. In short, contemporary intellectualists are in fact putting

5 See, for example Ginet (1975) and Chomsky (1988).
6 E.g.,

Carter and Pritchard 2015b; 2015a; Cath 2011; Dreyfus 2005; Lewis 1990; Poston 2009;
Forthcoming; Jung and Newen 2009; No 2005; Toribio 2008; Wallis 2008; Young 2011.
7 Indeed, its not even obvious that Ryle himself held a positive account on knowledge-how, not even an
ability thesis about its natureeven though this is (under various descriptions) the view that is typically
attributed to him. In fact, although there is a short and quite undevelopped section in his 2009 (ch. 2
section 6) entitled The positive account of knowing how, claiming that there is such a thing as a Rylean
epistemology of knowledge-how would certainly sound presumptuous. Ryle was making predominantly
negative points on that topic, not proposing a positive account, or at least not an obvious one.
8 A prevailing contemporary strategy in response to intellectualism has been to defend some kind of
disanalogy thesis, meant to conflict with the intellectualists commitment to regarding knowledge-how
and knowledge-that as bearing the same kinds of properties [OMITTED]. Such objections are inspired by
Stanley and Williamsons (2001) insistence that we should expect the properties of knowledge-how and
propositional knowledge to align, rather than to expect that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that
with very different properties. For example, as they say:
If the special subclass of knowing-that which we call knowing-how is too dissimilar from other
kinds of knowing-that, then one might suspect that we have just recreated the traditional
distinction between knowing- how and knowing-that, but in other terms. So it must be that, on
our analysis, knowing-how possesses the characteristic features of other kinds of knowing-that
(2001, 434).
See here also Stanley (2011, 215) for similar remarks, to the effect that if Gettier cases can be constructed
for knowledge-that, then we should expect that they can be constructed no less for knowledge-how. Glick
(2011, 413) for the opposite view.

forward theoretically developed accounts of knowledge-howanalyses with

straightforward relevance in epistemologywhereas anti-intellectualists, adverting in
the main to the (at best, ambiguous) idea that knowledge-how involves or is (something
like) ability, are offering no theoretically comparable alternative.
The aim of this paper is to fill this lacuna in the literature on behalf of the antiintellectualist, by proposing a tentative positive analysis of knowledge-how that could
be the starting point for a fruitful positive development of an anti-intellectualist
epistemology of knowledge-how. Our proposal is Rylean in character, and so based on
abilities, capacities and powers, although it claims a rightful place within the field of
epistemology.

2. The structure of the analysis

The traditional so-called tripartite analysis of knowledge has three necessary
conditions: belief, justification and truth9:


Tripartite analysis of knowledge-that:
A subject, S, knows some proposition, p, if, and only if,
(1) S believes p,
(2) S is justified in believing p, and.
(3) p is true10.

Each of (1)-(3) specifies conditions which must hold with respect to the relation an
agent stands in to a proposition. Belief is a propositional attitude itself; justification is
traditionally understood as a logical relation between propositional contents; and truth
conditions are precisely what allow us to individuate those propositional contents.
Is the above analysis an analysis of knowledge tout court, and not particularly
knowledge that? To assume, ex ante, an affirmative answer would of course beg the
question in favour of intellectualism. What the intellectualist purports to show is that if
there is a possible analysis of knowledge-that, then it is an analysis of knowledge-how.
In contrast, anti-intellectualists are in a more precarious position: if they deny that the
traditional analysis is valid for knowledge-how, they may then opt for either of two
strategies, what we can call univocalism or non-univocalism.

9 Of course, since Gettier (1963), the prospects of putting forward a materially adequate JTB analysis of

knowledge have been appreciated as (at best) very difficult (see, for example, Shope (1983)). This insight
has led Williamson (2000) and others to recommend jettisoning entirely the project of providing a JTB
analysis of knowledge. However, mainstream epistemology has in the main not shared Williamsons
pessimism, as is evidenced by continued attempts (most recently, particularly by virtue-epistemologists,
(e.g., Turri 2011 and OMITTED) to provide a counterexample-free analyses of knowledge in terms of its
constitutive components. For an overview of the traditional project of analysing knowledge in terms of
constitutive components such as justification, truth and belief, see Ichikawa and Steup (2014).
10 The above analysis is one that Gettier himself attributed to Plato in the Theatetus, following Chisholm
(1957) and Ayer (1956), although the proposal is introduced in that dialog in order to be dismissed. For a
recent discussion on the matter of whether such a tripartite analysis was as historically prevalent as is
often indicated, see Dutant (2016).


(i)

(ii)

Univocalism: This strategy involves undertaking the task of formulating an

analysis of knowledge tout court in such a way that both knowledge-that and
knowledge-how could find their place; or
Non-univocalism: This strategy maintains that the tripartite analyse may be
valid for knowledge that, but not for knowledge how, and then propose an
alternative analysis for the latter.

The first strategy has been pursued by Stephen Hetherington (2006), who
proposes that the intellectualists reduction of knowledge-how to knowledge-that
should be reversed in such a way that knowledge-that is analysed as a kind of
knowledge-how.11 This choice has an advantage: it retains the theoretical elegance of
intellectualism, as a candidate analysis of knowledge tout court. However, it has an
important disadvantage: to defend anti-intellectualism in this way, one must propose a
compelling common analysans for both knowledge-how and knowledge that, while
preserving, in the analysis of knowledge-how, features which anti-intellectualists
traditionally have taken to be idiosyncratic of knowledge-how12. Interestingly, this
strategy, as Marcus Adams (2009) has argued, seems to subject anti-intellectualism to
some of the stock criticisms which anti-intellectualists often level against their
intellectualist opponents.
At any rate, the strategy type we want to explore is (ii) rather than (i): instead of
searching for a unified analysis of knowledge tout court, one that would purport to be
valid for both knowledge-that and knowledge-how (either in propositional terms or
not), our aim here is to focus on knowledge-how itself, and to find out which are the
necessary and perhaps sufficient conditions for the application of that concept, while
remaining neutral on the applicability of that same analysis to other forms of
knowledge. In particular, our strategy will be to put forward an analysis of knowledgehow that parallels the traditional JTB analysis of knowledge-that, in the sense that each
of the three proposed conditions accomplishes a similar function in the analysis to those
performed by the three classical conditions. In such a way, we purport that the
proposed analysis will have the virtue of allowing us to face the main epistemological
problems traditionally considered for knowledge-that.

Consider, in connection with this point, an analogy with the Aristotelian model of
13
causes . The first condition of the JTB analysis is, repositioned in Aristotles terms, a
material condition. A belief is the kind of thing or state that knowledge-that is, which
provides a metaphysical basis for all epistemological claims. Without that metaphysical

11 For similar anti-intellectualist approaches that embrace univocalism, see Hartland-Swann (1956) and

Roland 1958). Cf., Fantl (2016 4) for critical discussion of these approaches, which he calls radical antiintellectualism. See also Hyman (1999) for a move that is univocalist within the restricted class of
propositional knowledge that Hyman calls personal propositional knowledge.
12 As we noted in 1, anti-intellectualists have been predominantly negative, and generally this has
involved drawing attention to claimed cases where knowledge-how and knowledge-that (contra
intellectualism) come apart.
13 As outlined in Physics II 3 and Metaphysics V 2. For an overview, see Falcon (2015).

basis, knowledge-that attributions would be as they are understood by anti-realist

error-theorists and fictionalists14: there would not be something real there, in the
world, existing, making it true that the agent knows that pnamely, her state of belief
that p is the case15. With respect to the justification condition within the JTB account, it
is, in Aristotles terms, a formal condition, in the sense that it indicates the way the state
is held by the agent. It does not require the state to be any particular way in itself, but in
relation to other internal or external elements of the scene. At least when understood
along internalist lines, justification would result from the way the state is related to
other states of the same kind, in relations of logical dependence which may be more or
less determinant. And finally, the truth condition of the traditional JTB analysis is, to
continue the Aristotelian analogy, a final condition, since it indicates the goal or aim of
the state, what it aims to, what would fulfil it. The state of belief would be fulfilled if it
were true, becauseat least as the orthodox view has ittruth is the standard of
correctness for belief16.

One reason why the traditional tripartite analysis of knowledge-how has been so
influential in epistemology is that it enables us to understand different epistemically
relevant aspects of its analysans, namely its material condition (what it metaphysically
is), its formal condition (the way it ought to be held by the agent, in relation to her other
states of the same kind), and its final condition (what the state constitutively aims to,
and what its goal is)17. A meta-theoretical advantage of the account that we will defend
here is that, in contrast to precedent proposals, it accomplishes those same roles for
knowledge-how, which guarantees the epistemology of knowledge-how will have an
auspicious future.

Now, just like the three conditions of the traditional analysis have been generally
disputed, criticised, attacked, and are widely considered as jointly deficient in important
aspects (either because they are in need of refinements or because additional
conditions ought to be imposed), our three conditions for knowledge-how will certainly
be open to similar criticism. We will not claim our proposal will rate better by
epistemologists standards than any particular version of the tripartite analysis has for
knowledge-that. In the end, it may even be claimed that a knowledge-first approach
(e.g., Williamson 2000) to knowledge-how is preferable. But even in this were the case,
the search for an analysis of knowledge-how in its own terms would have proved to be
as fruitful and genuinely epistemological a project as the analysis of knowledge-that has
ever been.


14 We say anti-realist on the basis of the kind of rationale for distinguishing generic realism and anti-

realism as outlined by Alexander Miller (2014). Error-theorists and fictionalists are anti-realists
specifically because they reject the existence leg of realism. See, especially, Miller (2014, 2).
15 For some recent challenges to the orthodox belief requirement on propositional knowledge, see MyersSchulz and Schwitzgebel (2013) and Farkas (2015).
16 See, for example, Shah & Velleman 2005; Shah 2003; Wedgwood 2002. Cf., Williamson for the view that
knowledge is the standard of correctness for belief. For an overview of recent literature on the norms of
belief, see Benton (2014).
17 Perhaps such an analysis ought be complemented by a fourth requirement, related to its efficient cause
(its aetiology in the virtues and faculties of the agent).

3. The Analysis

We are not the first to propose an anti-intellectualist tripartite analysis for knowledgehow on par with the traditional one for knowledge-that. There are at least two
precedents. One is due to David Carr (1981) and the other to John N. Williams (2008).
These proposals can be summarised as follows:


Carrs (1981) account:
For all S, , S knows how to if, and only if
(i) S may entertain -ing as a purpose.
(ii) S is acquainted with a set of practical procedures necessary for successful ing.
(iii) S exhibits recognizable success at -ing.


Williams (2008) account:
For all S, , C, S knows how to in C only if18
(i) If S were to try to , under C, then S would usually succeed in -ing because
(ii) S has a reliable method of -ing, under C, that
(iii) S is entitled to believe will usually result in -ing.

Carrs and Williams analyses are not explicitly related to each otherthat is, Williams
(2008) does not make any reference to Carr (1981), but just to Carr (1979) wherein the
above analysis had not yet been proposed. Williams considers his own account as a
development of Hawley (2003)19. Interestingly enough, both of the above two analyses
are introduced as non-Rylean anti-intellectualist accounts of knowledge-how. They
purport to be non-Rylean because neither introduces abilities or dispositions in their
analysans.

By contrast, the proposal we will defend in what follows will be overtly neoRylean, in that it gives the notion of ability a central placespecifically, by locating
ability in the belief place of the JTB account. The structure of our proposed antiintellectualist parallel to the JTB accountthe mastery/success/ability (MSA) analysis,
takes the following shape:


MSA analysis of knowledge-how:
For all S, , S knows how to if, and only if,
(1) S has the ability to ,
(2) S has mastery of -ing, and
(3) S would be successful in -ing.


18 Williams

analysis aims to offer strong necessary conditions which he does not claim are jointly
sufficient, thus, he does not maintain if, and only if in his formulation.
19 We critically engage with Hawleys (2003) proposal in 4.

In the following sections, we will defend our account by contrasting it with Carrs and
Williams alternatives. Moreover, we will be throughout advancing a more general
thread of argument: our proposal mirrors in a better way than alternatives the
traditional JTB analysis, which is desirable not simply because we are assuming the
traditional analysis is right (a point that is of course controversial), but because it has
proved to be fruitful as a starting point for epistemological inquiry, by introducing
requirements that are very different in kind, and which have very different kinds of
epistemological relevance.

4. The material condition

In order to advance our proposed analysis as not just merely anti-intellectualist, but as
properly neo-Rylean, its important that the concept of ability plays the role that it
needs to in the analysisviz., as the material condition or metaphysical base of
knowledge-how, broadly analogous to the material condition that belief plays vis--vis
knowledge-that.

Over the past fifteen years this possibility has been widely contested in the
literature on knowledge-how, which is populated with disabled agents who allegedly
preserve their knowledge-how, despite having lost the related ability: Carl Ginet
(1975)s unfortunate pianist who lost her hand in a tragic car accident but still knows
how to play the piano, Paul Snowdon (2004)s chef who still knows how to cook his
famous omelette despite having lost his right arm and not being able anymore to
prepare it, Stanley and Williamson (2001)s aged skier who cannot ski anymore because
of his arthritis, but keeps his knowledge about skiing and is an excellent instructor,
etc20. In response to such cases, it has been claimed that abilities, just like all
dispositional states, are always related to some conditions of manifestation that may
differ from the conditions the agent is in at the moment the attribution is made. That is:
we may hold that a pianist has the ability to play the piano even if there is no piano
available, just as a chef has the ability to cook an omelette, even if there are no more
eggs in the fridge; and we may say that the skier is able to ski even if at the moment he
is sunbathing on a Caribbean island.

In short, abilities are related to conditions of manifestations that may differ from
the agents situation in the context of the attribution. What prevents our cases of
disabled agents from being treated that way? That is: the same disposition that is
attributed to the pianist, the chef and the skier when they are in good physical
conditions is still correct with respect to those same agents when they are amputated or
agedviz., it is still true about them that, if they were in the right situation, that is, if
they had their arms or limbs, or they were not affected by arthritis, they would then be
able to play the piano, cook the omelette or ski the mountain. That counterfactual claim

20 For a response to this sort of cases, see Carter and Pritchard (2015c 4). Note that cases of this sort are

importantly different from cases where the individual never had the ability in the first place, but can
teach the relevant activity. For example, see Bengson and Moffetts (2011a) case of Pat the ski instructor
who is unable to perform the complex stunts he teaches. For a reply, see Carter and Poston (2017, Ch. 2).

is perfectly true of each of those agents even in their disabling situation. In that sense,
not having a piano available, not having eggs in the fridge, or being in the middle of the
summer is not essentially different from having had ones hands amputated, or being
affected by arthritis21.

Of course, disabling conditions may have very different origins, and they may
affect the agent in very different ways. In connection with this point, it will be helpful to
review Ernest Sosas (e.g., 2015) triple S analysis of competences22:

Competences are a special case of dispositions, that in which the host is disposed
to succeed when she tries, or that in which the host seats a relevant skill, and is
in the proper shape and situation, such that she tries in close enough worlds, and
in the close enough worlds where she tries, she reliably enough succeeds. But
this must be so in the right way (Sosa 2015: 23).

Pianists with no piano available, chefs fresh out of ingredients, and skiers in the
Caribbean islands are not in the proper situation to manifest their abilities, but those
who are amputated or have arthritis cannot manifest them because they are notin
Sosas parlancein proper shape. Nevertheless, it may be argued that all of them
preserve the relevant skill provided its true that, if they were in proper shape and the
right situation, they would be able to manifest that skill. As Sosa (2015) puts it:

Drop the situation and you still have an inner SS competence. Drop both shape
and situation and you still have an innermost S competence: that is, the basic
driving skill retained even when asleep (in unfortunate shape) in bed (in an
inappropriate situation) (Sosa 2015: 26).

The limits between skill, shape and situation are anything but clear, and philosophers
working on situated cognition would have valuable input here. Perhaps the skill is
extended to the limbs of the agent (embodiment)23, or perhaps some aspects of the
situation are part of the agents cognitive system (extended cognition)24, but in any case
something is clear: attributions of abilities or competences are always made with the
idea of right circumstances of manifestation in mind, where SSS conditions are met.

In fact, we contend that the need to introduce dispositions in the account of
know-how is, at some point or another, a requirement of any coherent theory of it, even

21 Indeed, we could envisage scenarios where apparently disabling situations such as amputations or

arthritis were easily retrievable, so as we could imagine situations where impediments that seem to us
circumstantial and easily solvable were in fact irretrievable and irrecoverable. All of this depends on
technical developments that are not essential to the concepts at issue. If the pianist had her hands in
perfect working conditions but all pianos in the world had disappeared, all piano makers were dead, and
no instructions remained on how to produce pianos anymore, then she would be in a situation that is not
very different in kind from the one where Ginets unfortunate pianist is in, with respect to the possibility
to manifest her abilities.
22 A similar application of Sosas distinction may be found in Tsai (2011).
23 See No (2005) for similar claims.
24 For the classic defence of this view, see Clark and Chalmers (1998). Cf., Carter and Czarnecki (2015) for
a limited defence of extended abilities, as relevant to knowledge-how on an anti-intellectualist construal.

of the intellectualist kind (see Stanley 2011, ch.1; Cath 2015: 9). We propose those
dispositions, as the innermost seat of the agents skills, as the material condition of
knowledge-how, and we hold that the notion of ability is the one that better preserves
his idea25.

Now, we are aware that some authors, even some anti-intellectualists, have put
forward some additional reasons to be sceptical that the notion of ability could
satisfactorily play this role. An influential objection owes to Katherine Hawley (2003,
25). Hawleys argument draws from several connected ideas. Firstly, plausibly, abilities
are (or involve) dispositions26. Secondly, in some circumstances, dispositions can be
finkishviz., like an otherwise fragile vase that is caused to not be fragile just when
being dropped (this is why straight counterfactual analyses of dispositions are typically
thought to fail27). Thirdly, we neednt accept that knowledge-how is ever finkish.

Consider the following case, due to Hawley:

Sylvia: Silvia is ordinarily able to get home from the city centre, a journey she
has made hundreds of times. But, due to strange social and psychological
features of the city centres crowd which are currently present, if Sylvia were
actually to go to the city centre, she would have a panic attack and the panic
attack would cause her to forget how to get home28.


Does Sylvia know how to get home from the city centre? Hawley thinks her own
favoured accountwhich appeals to a counterfactual success condition but not a
disposition conditionis in a better position to answer the question without incurring
unwanted theoretical costs. The reason is that a counterfactual success account is
(unlike an ability or dispositional account) not at all pressured to diagnose Sylvia as
having finkish knowledge-how, which would plausibly be the case were dispositions or
abilities to be what is identified as the material condition of knowledge-how. As Hawley
(2003) writes:

It is uncontentious that ordinary dispositions may be finkish and thus that
straight counterfactual analyses of dispositions fail. But we need not accept that

25 Ability does not only imply being merely able, since one may succeed by sheer luck. On the contrary, it

requires success to be obtained in a safe way. However, abilities are not very demanding with respect to
that safety, or the standards according to which the agent must be able to perform (e.g., Turri
Forthcoming; Carter, Jarvis and Rubin 2015). For instance, most healthy young people have the ability to
play basketball, by which we mean that they would be able to play it if in they were in the right shape and
situation. However, many of them would also do it quite poorly, and wouldnt score a point but in the
easiest of cases. That sort of basic capacity to perform, which may be quite poorly reliable, but still is not
due to sheer luck, is what we mean by ability.
26 A straightforward defence of this claim is advanced by Michael Fara (2008, 848), who argues that S has
the ability to A in circumstances C iff she has the disposition to A when, in circumstances C, she tries to A.
Cf., Clarke (2009). This kind of view is sometimes called new dispositionalism (e.g., see Maier (2010
5.2)).
27 For the classic presentation of finkish dispositions, see (Maier 2010). The issues raised involving finks
apply mutatis mutandis for mimics and masks. See Choi (2008) for discussion.
28 This is an adapted version of Hawleys case, as outlined in Hawley (2003, 25).

10

knowledge how may be finkish. Sylvias knowledge-how matches her

counterfactual success. Sylvia does not know how to get home from the city
center under the circumstances of being prone to panic attacks. She does know
how to get home from the city center under circumstances which are normal for
most people, but she also satisfies the counterfactual success condition for this
task: if she were to try under such circumstances, she would succeed in getting
home (2003, 25)

Hawley then adds:

[] replacing the straight counterfactual success condition with a dispositional
success condition does not seem to offer any advantages, and it raises additional
questions about the nature of disposition (2003, 25).


Of course, if knowledge-how could really be under some circumstances finkish,
then it is no theoretical cost to be committed to this possibility. And furthermore, there
would be no reason to think, on the basis of cases such as that of Sylvia, that a straight
counterfactual success account fares better than one that identifies an ability or
disposition as the material condition of knowledge-how. We want to first suggest that it
is very plausibly a virtue, not a vice, to suppose that knowledge-how might be finkish.
Secondly, we want to suggest that even if it were a vice, it would be under closer
consideration a vice that would afflict an ability-based account of knowledge-how only
if also afflicting traditional belief-based accounts of knowledge-that.

Regarding the first point, it will be helpful to first consider a parallel to
knowledge-that. Given relatively uncontroversial assumptions about the mechanisms of
epistemic defeat, knowledge-that can be finkish29. Here is an example. Suppose Moddy
knows he is modest (he has, suppose, reliable testimony from many trusted peers on
this point, and no reason to think they are mistaken). But whenever Moddy thinks that
he is modest, this generates for him, at least temporarily, a psychological defeaterviz.,
suppose Moddy believe (whether rightly or wrongly) that modest people do not believe
they are modestand this defeater suffices to temporarily defeat his previous
knowledge that he is modest. The defeater can be neutralised however by Moddys
refraining from occurrently entertaining this thought.

The situation just described at least indicates that it would be a vice of a theory
of knowledge if it did not permit the possibility that knowledge-that might, at least in

29 One

initial reservation for thinking knowledge-how could ever be finkish proceeds as follows: (i)
knowledge cannot be lucky; (ii) if knowledge can be finkish, knowledge can be lucky; (iii) therefore
knowledge cannot be finkish. There are two problems with this line of reasoning. Firstly, even if
propositional knowledge cannot be lucky, in the sense that has been argued by Pritchard (2005), it
doesn't follow that knowledge-how could not be lucky. In fact, Poston (2009) and Carter and Pritchard
(2015b) have argued that it is precisely because knowledge-how is compatible with epistemic luck that is
incompatible with knowledge-that, that we should not regard the former as a species of the latter. The
second problem with the above line of reasoning is that even if we grant that knowledge-how cannot be
lucky, its false that if knowledge can be finkish, then this entails that knowledge can be lucky. A
counterexample to the inference from finkishness to luckiness is presented in what follows.

11

certain situations, be finkish. But if thats right, then the presumption should be in
favour of supposing that its a virtue of an account of knowledge how that it be open to
such an analogous possibility (i.e., as in the case of Sylvia) rather than to be, as Hawleys
straight counterfactual account is, closed to such a possibility.

Secondly, if we were to assume that it is a vice of an account of knowledge-how
that it avails itself to dispositions which can themselves be finkish (as well as subject to
mimics and masks30), then this objection overgeneralises so as to apply also to beliefs in
the epistemology of knowledge-that. President Obama knows (right now) that Paris is
the capital of France. Propositional knowledge requires belief. But, President Obama
may not be occurrently thinking anything about Paris or France (suppose, he is thinking
about Russia instead). Obama knows that Paris is the capital of France because of his
disposition to believe (in a suitably well-founded way) that this proposition is true.
Moreover, Obama has several other associated dispositions in light of his belief that
Paris is the capital of France. In the relevant conditions, he will act as if Paris is the
capital of France, he will take this as a reason to act, claim that it is the case, etc.

In short, either we embrace a kind of epistemic presentism and limit
knowledge-that to occurrent thoughts31which does not at all track our patterns of
attributing knowledge-thator we accept that (propositional) knowledge-apt beliefs
can be dispositional in nature32. Though, of course, once we go this routeas we
shouldsince all dispositions are subject to finks, masks and mimics, its hard to see
how knowledge-how, by adverting to dispositions as the material condition, is in any
relevantly different position than is the traditional epistemology of knowledge-that, by
locating beliefs as the material condition. We grant that finks and mimics and masks
create challenging problems for the articulation of any position that avails itself to
dispositions. Our point is simply that whatever such problems are, a standard
propositional approach to knowledge-that (at least if it does not embrace epistemic
presentism) would also have to face them. We should not expect the epistemology of
knowledge how to solve those issues before leaving the ground, given that the
epistemology of knowledge-that left the ground a long time ago without solving them33.

There is, however, a further problem with Hawleys attempt to excise talk of
dispositions in favour of a counterfactual success condition. In short, her proposal fails
to identify a material condition for knowledge-how that fulfils the role of the equivalent
one in the traditional analysis of knowledge-that. That is: belief is, so to speak, what
knowledge-that is made of, and the existence of the relevant psychological state is
what explains why the individual may occurrently think, or claim, that such and such is
the case. However, such a desideratum is not fulfilled at all by Hawleys notion of
success in the right conditions, a set of counterfactual possibilities that remain
unexplained unless one holds that those possibilities are manifestations of the relevant

30 See Choi and Fara (2016) for an overview.

31 For one defence of such a view, see Palermos (2016).

32 For a recent defence of the claim that knowledge entails dispositional belief, see Rose and Schaffer

(2012).
33 For an overview of some of these issues, see Schwitzgebel (2015), and a defence of a dispositional (and
phenomenal) account of belief see Schwitzgebel (2002).

12

ability. The set of relevant conditions would appear arbitrary unless its selection were
guided by the idea of an ability, which is a matter of the agents autonomy. Abilities
define the relevant range of success, which is the one that is sufficiently due to the agent
herself. That is why manifesting an ability is in general something that one does in so far
as one is able to perform the task by oneself. Abilities are a matter of DIY, in contrast to
having it done by somebody else. The exercise of an ability is the manifestation of a
power that one has to perform the deed, and the conditions that are relevant to
attribute an ability are those where an agent acts mostly on her own, whereas those
situations where others help is crucial would be ruled out as irrelevant for the
assessment. For instance: an infant may be able to finish some mathematical proofs only
with the help of her parents. She would succeed in some conditions, when helped, but
not in others, when on her own. In that case we would deny that the conditions where
she succeeds are the relevant ones. But why? Justly because the relevant set of success
conditions are those where the agents abilities are themselves manifested, which does
not happen when success is due to the intervention of others.

So our point with respect to Hawleys reluctance to accept dispositions is that
success under relevant conditions precisely is what assessment of abilities track.
Furthermore, ability is the property the agent has that explains that success: it is more
informative than the mere set of success conditions, precisely because it is what allows
us to understand why that set of success conditions is the relevant one. Only that way
could our first condition accomplish the material role we identified in the first condition
of the tripartite analyse of knowledge-that.

We have argued to this point that certain principled considerations against
positing ability as the material condition of knowledge-how can be dismissed. We now
want to suggest that ability fares better than what either Carr or Williams offer in its
stead in their respective tripartite analyses of knowledge-how.

Lets consider now Carrs (1981) first condition. Carrs account, recall, maintains
that one of the conditions for S to know how to is that S may entertain -ing as a
purpose. That condition faces (as a necessary requirement on knowledge-how) some
troubling counterexamples. In short, there are many things agents know how to do even
if they may never entertain them as purposes. Consider the following example:

Lockpicking: Alex is a master thief, who specialises in sophisticated lockpicking.
Alexs talent is such that hes only interested in picking locks that other thieves
regard as challenging. By common consensus, the simplest locks to pick are
warded locks, which amateur lockpickers can easily pick using a thin piece of
metal.

It seems apt to say that Alex knows how to pick a warded lock, even though he may
never entertain doing this as a purpose simply because it is too easy. If we denied that
Alex knows how to pick a warded lock, wed also be committed to denying that most
people know how to do very simple things which (given their purposes and interests)
theyve never happened to entertain as a purpose. This is tantamount to significantly

13

narrowing the scope of genuine knowledge-how so that it excludes much ordinarily

ascribed knowledge-how.

One reason it seems intuitive to regard Alex as able to pick a warded lock, even
though he may never entertain it as a purpose, is that so easily would he be able to if he
tried. What this indicates is that what matters for knowledge-how is not just that the
agent may actually intend to , but that -ing is something she would be able to do on
her own if she intended to, in the sense of having the relevant abilities. In our view,
knowledge-how is a power, but it does not require that one may entertain a related
purpose. We may have powers we may never exercise, but that does not mean that we
dont have them. Most everyone knows how to jump from a cliff, for instance, but few
would entertain that as a purpose. Or consider the possibility of a simple but morally
heinous act, such as killing an infant. Almost any normal adult would know how to do it,
in the relevant sense that they would have the related abilities, capacities and powers,
and would know how to put them in practice, but almost none of those adults may ever
entertain such a thing as a purpose. In short, lack of motivation or moral constraints
neednt limit our powers. Carrs first condition misses this point.

Lets consider now Williams (2008) first condition. Williams account, recall,
says that
S knows how to in circumstance C if, if S were to try to , under C, then S would
usually succeed in -ing. It might seem as though Williams first condition sounds a lot
like a standard ability condition. After all, Williams first condition bears close
similarities to some prominent variations on the conditional analyses of abilities (e.g.,
Davidson 1980; Peacocke 1999)34. Though Williams cautions us that we should avoid
positing an ability condition for two reasons.

The first reason is that, as Williams puts it, it is possible that s still knows how to
perform a task she is newly unable ever again to perform (2008, 109). The second
reason Williams adduces has to do with the opacity of knowledge-how. Neither of these
reasons is convincing. We turn now to evaluating them both.

To support the first line of argument, that the possibility that s still knows how to
perform a task she is newly unable ever again to perform, Williams offers the case of
Seth the cyclist, a case that bears some similarities to Paul Snowdons (2004) case of the
armless chef. Here is Williams case:

Seth: Consider Seth, a champion cyclist who has just lost his leg in an accident.
Evidence that he still knows how to ride a bike is that he has forgotten nothing
about riding a bike. Moreover, he could teach others how to ride a bike, and it is
plausible that just as you can only teach others propositional knowledge if you
have it yourself, so you can only teach others how to do something if you know
how to do it yourself (Williams 2008, 109).


34 The

conditional analysis probably owes, originally, to Hume. For discussion of this analysis, and
responses to objections, see Maier (2010 3).

14


To begin with, Williams argument relies on the assumption that knowledge in
general cannot be transmitted from one agent to another unless the former has it. But
this is point is highly controversial with respect to knowledge-that in the contemporary
testimony literature. If non-reductionist authors, such as Lackey (1999; 2008), are right,
knowledge-that may be transmitted to other agents from agents who do not actually
have it35. But even if one grants Williams tacit commitment to a reductivist
transmission principle, it remains unclear why this case shows what Williams thinks it
does, which is that knowledge-how does not require ability. Williams argument in this
point shares with the intellectualists the same problems we pointed out at the
beginning of this section. In order to bring this point into sharp relief, contrast the case
of Seth with a variation on the case, involving Seth*:

Seth*: Seth* is a championship cyclist who has contracted debilitating vascular
dementia, which is caused by reduced blood supply to the brain due to diseased
blood vessels. Seth*, like others afflicted with vascular dementia, now has severe
memory problems, concentration problems, planning and problem-solving
difficulty, andespecially problematic for competitive racingdifficulty
perceiving objects in three dimensions36.

Initially, it might seem as though we should regard both situations as cases where the
relevant ability (i.e., the ability ride the bike) is not present. However, we think that this
diagnosis is too quick, and that it glosses over an important distinction37. Consider, that
there is something further that Seth* loses which is not lost by Seth, and
correspondingly, something valuable that the Seth retains but Seth* does noteven
though, its also true that neither Seth nor Seth* can ride the bike anymore. We think the
right way to account for this is that, in Williams case of Seth, Seth clearly loses the
opportunity to manifest his ability, much in the way an pianist who is imprisoned for life
(or, who happens to be in a world where all pianos have disappeared forever) loses the
opportunity to manifest her ability. What Seth loses is the opportunity to be in the
proper situation, and/or the right shape to manifest the ability, in Sosas termsa loss
that may only be irretrievable due to technical limitations. For example, he could find
himself back in the right shape and situation if only he had a successful leg transplant,
or if he were fit with a suitable prosthesis. No matter how technically impossible these
situations may be, and even if they Seths shape and situation were absolutely
iretrievable in practice, to stress, all is not lost for him. Hes hardly in the same situation
as someone who has never cycled before. The conditional is still true of him: put Seth in
the right shape and situationviz., where a transplant or a prosthesis returns him to
normal levels of functioningand he can then ride in a way that manifests his ability.
(Compare Seth with South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who competed in the 2012

35 See, for example, Lackeys (e.g., 1999; 2008, passim) Creationist Teacher case.
36 https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=161
37 We have argued a similar point, in the context of discussing the defeasibility of knowledge-how, in

REFERENCE SUPRESSED.

15

Summer Olympics in London with prosthetic legs, after his biological legs were
amputated).

Seth*, by contrast, is in considerably worse shape than Seth. Plausibly, Seth*,
who has definitely forgotten basic facts and lost fundamental capacities related to bike
riding, and who can no longer perceive three-dimensionally as before, seems to have
lost not merely the opportunity to exercise his ability, but the ability itself. The
innermost seat of his ability is shattered. In order to ride again, it seems that Seth*
would need to completely re-learn what to do, whereas this is not the case for Seth. To
the extent that the foregoing is plausible, we have reason to resist Williams diagnosis of
cases like that of Seth. The lesson learned, in short, is that abilities can persist even in
conditions in which individuals are not in a position to manifest themand so does
their know-how.

Williams second line of reasoning for thinking abilities should be avoided in an
analysis of knowledge-how has to do with opacity. The argument proceeds as follows:


Williams Argument from Opacity
1. Knowledge-how is opaque.
2. Abilities are not opaque.
3. Therefore, knowledge-how is not ability.


Williams defends (1) by appealing to the case of Stan:

Stan: Stans job involves selecting three equal lengths of wood and then gluing
them together to make equilateral triangles. Stan, who is not very bright, has the
concept of equal length but has no clue what an angle is. He may know how to
make equilateral triangles (by following the method above) yet not know how to
make equiangular triangles (he has no idea what these are), despite the fact that
making equilateral triangles is necessarily making equiangular triangles (2008,
2).


Its at least controversial whether Stan does not know how to make equilateral
triangles. It could be argued, for instance, that what Stan lacks is knowledge that he
knows how to make them. And the requirement that one may only know how to if one
knows that one knows how to is anything but evident. But lets set this point aside.
The problem with (1) of the argument from opacity is that even if we grant Williams
diagnosis of the case of Stan, this is insufficient evidence for accepting (1). It might after
all be that some cases of knowledge-how are not opaque, even if others are, and thus
that knowledge-how is not uniform with respect to whether it is opaque. Consider,
again, our case of Alex the master locksmith. It seemed very plausible that there are
some kinds of warded locks which Alex has never encountered, but which would be
opened by exactly the same procedures he usually follows. If that were the case, he
would be perfectly able to pick those locks, and, by our lights it also seems plausible to
hold that Alex knows how to pick those locks. It is at any rate incumbent on Williams to

16

establish that if some cases of knowledge-how are opaque, then all must be.
Furthermore, its not clear why the anti-intellectualist cannot make a similar move in
the course of rejecting (2). Even if some abilities are not opaque, the burden remains
with Williams to account for why all abilities are not opaque.

In sum, Williams account has failed to establish that abilities cant play the role
of the material condition for knowledge-how, and if anything, has supported the
thought that they could. Firstly, as we noted, Williams preferred condition, that S
knows how to only if, if S were to try to , under C, then S would usually succeed in ing, is very close to what it is to have an abilityat least according to some prominent
conditional accounts of abilities (e.g., Davidson 1980; Peacocke 1999). Secondly, the
reasons offered by Williams for why abilities, as such, cannot function as the role of
material condition for knowledge-how were shown not to be persuasive, any more than
were Carrs, Hawleys or, in general, intellectualists ones (e.g. Ginet, Snowdon, Stanley &
Williamson).

5. The final condition

The final condition for knowledge-that is straightforward: truth. That means that belief
(its material condition) is a state that must have truth as its aim. If a psychological state
does not aim at truthviz., if truth is not its standard for correctnessthen it is not a
belief, and therefore it cannot be knowledge(-that)38.

What could play a similar role in our tripartite analysis of knowledge-how? In
other words, what is the essential point of a knowledge-how state? Alternatively: what
goals must our material conditionabilityhave (or, to be exact, what goal must we
agents have, when forming, holding or exercising such an ability) that could perhaps
make it a genuine case of knowledge-how, and not some deceptively similar cognate
(like, in the case of knowledge-that, true wishful thinking, self-accomplishing
prophecies, and so on)?

In epistemology it is almost a platitude that the primary epistemological goal is
achieving truth, truth for its own sake, and nothing but the truth (in contrast to, say,
fulfilling our desires, or our personal interests)a position Duncan Pritchard (2011)
has called epistemic value truth monism39. But, of course, if the claimed advanced were
that knowledge (in general) must have truth as it goal, and knowledge-how is a
particular case of knowledge, then we would be begging the question for
intellectualism. That is the reason why, as we advanced in the first section, we agree
with those who claim that the primary epistemological goal is not truth, but knowledge
(see, for example, Kappel 2010, Kelp 2011; 2014; Rysiew 2012; Engel 2009); that is,
what we search for when we are motivated by purely epistemic concerns is to reach

38 This

point is embraced by normativists about belief (e.g., Shah 2003; Velleman and Shah 2005;
Wedgwood 2002) though also more traditionally by those who are not committed to the normativists
constitutive claim but merely regard a truth aim as a necessary condition on belief.
39 See also, for expressions of this view, Goldman 1999; Sosa 2001. Cf., (eds.) Haddock, Millar and
Pritchard (2009).

17

knowledge (not necessarily to reach truth). Achieving the truth of our beliefsviz., in
the right waywould be just one way, of potentially multifarious ways, of achieving
knowledge. If such a pluralist view is correct, then we may conceive genuinely epistemic
goals for knowledge-how, even constitutive or, at least, necessary ones, other than truth.

For example, I may want to know how to without any particular interest in ing beyond attaining this knowledgeviz., with no interest in obtaining any benefits
from this knowledge: just for the sake of knowledge. In such a case, my goal is genuinely
epistemic not because I want to know how to just for the sake of truth, but because I
want to know how to just for the sake of knowledge (viz., I want to how to just
because I want to learn, for curiosity, but not for any particular non-epistemic benefit).

Conversely, non-genuinely epistemic goals ought to be distinguished from nontruth conducting motivations. For instance: we may be interested in a certain
propositions being true, without any corresponding interest in holding a corresponding
true belief (we would then have a practical, but not epistemological interest in p)40. By
the same token, for knowledge-how, it could be the case that one is interested in
obtaining the products or practical benefits of -ing without being really interested in
-ing oneself (we would have then a practical, but not particularly epistemological
interest in the activity in question). In such a circumstance, our desire could in fact be
satisfied simply by having the activity in question done by somebody else, since we really
have no interest in knowing how to do it ourselves.

Against this background, it will be helpful to consider following case:

Fighter Pilot: Will is an 80-year-old war pilot who flew a twin-engined torpedo
bomber in the Second World War. He has, in the twilight of his life, acquired a
keen interest in modern fighter aircrafts and wants to learn as much as he can
about them. Will develops not only an interest for facts related to those modern
aircrafts (i.e., size, manufacturer, capabilities, etc.) but for how one could actually
pilot them. For example, he wants to understand the differences between the
kinds of abilities he had to develop back in the 1940s and the ones he would
have to employ today, in order to pilot the brand new fighter planes. Will
appreciating his own limitationsdoes intend to become a pilot in the future,
and he could hardly have an interest to impress others with his abilities. At his
age, his interest is just in learning how to pilot those aircrafts for the sake of
knowledge, out of pure interest, even if he knows for sure that he will never have
again the opportunity to sit in a cockpit, or earn anything from this knowledge.

Just like the genuinely epistemological goal of knowledge-that is (arguably) knowledge
(for its own sake), the genuinely epistemological goal of knowledge-how is likewise
knowledge (for its own sake). When that goal is achieved for knowledge-that, the agent

40 For example, concern about the future suffering of a loved one is best articulated in terms of an interest

that the individuals suffering subside, not necessarily connected to any salient concern about ones own
epistemic standings, which is obvious because this sort of concern easily extends beyond the agents own
life.

18

who knows that her belief that p has reached the truth of p. Similarly, when that goal is
achieved for knowledge-how, the agent who learns how to has acquired the ability to
herself successfully, i.e. the power to achieve the occurrence of that act of -ingif
only she were in the right (in Sosas terms) shape and situation, even if those may be
absolutely inaccessible, and, what is more, even if she may never actually have the
desire to obtain that outcome. Put another way: the strictly epistemological goal of
knowledge-how is to acquire potentially reliasable creditable success for its own sake
viz., to learn how to in such a way as to have success at ones disposal, but just for the
sake of knowing how to succeed.

There is a prima facie a limitation in the analogy between our two final
conditions which can be expressed in the form of an objection: the idea of a false belief,
in the case of knowledge-that, is straightforward. However, the idea of an unsuccessful
ability is not so clear. Absent a clear articulation of what it is for the knowledge goal to
fail to be satisfied in the case of knowledge-how, our proposed analogy breaks down. Or
so this line of thought goes.

In response, lets begin with an observation: an agent may exercise an ability
without succeeding41. For instance, one may have the ability to play football, but to play
it so poorly that one may never ever win, not even against the weakest of the
adversaries. Or, one may have the ability to, say, produce wooden knifes, though useless
ones, which always bend and brake. Having an ability does not necessarily imply being
successful in performing in it.

Walking onto the football pitch and merely spinning in a circle is not exercising
an ability to playing football, badly or otherwise. Neither is making a spoon exercising
an ability to make a knife, badly or otherwise. Agents who have abilities and manifest
them must, granted, at least succeed in an attenuated sense: for example, no matter how
bad you are at football, you may succeed in that you manage to play a football match
(rather than to play something else), even if you played poorly. We accept that there is
this minimal sense of success implied here. But, it is not the sense germane to the final
condition for knowledge-how. This is because what we pursue when we have an interest
in knowledge-how goes beyond that mere participatory capacity.

Defending a Rylean view of knowledge-how implies at least that one must have
the related ability to when one knows how to , but there must be other conditions
beyond that. When one has an interest in knowing how to , and not just in acquiring
the mere ability to , one has an interest in obtaining something valuable out of the
exercise of our activity, or an interest in the capacity to exercise that ability in a valuable
way, not of merely doing something that qualifies as a performance of the relevant
activity type. This is why individuals who have the ability to play certain sports or do
certain activities (within the bounds of what counts as doing that activity) often wish to
know better.

What emerges is the analogue for our purposes to a false belief: an unsuccessful
abilityviz., something that one is able to do, but though not well, or not well enough,

41 For an alternative view point, in the case of perceptual-recognitional abilities, see Millar (2016).

19

according to certain standards. If one wants to improve, one should learn better how to
do it, one should acquire more knowledge-how, which is not a matter of going beyond
ones abilities and gaining something else, but of making those abilities better.

6. The formal condition

One of the most vexing questions in the epistemology of knowledge-that since Platos
Meno is why the value of knowledge should exceed that of mere true opinion, if both are
equally useful in practice42--viz., as Meno observed, knowing the way to Larisa and
merely truly believing how to get to Larisa will get you to Larisa all the same. Platos
own answer, articulated by analogy to the statues of Daedelus, is that justification is the
feature that is responsible for this increment of value: we would rather have
knowledge-that than mere true belief because knowledge-that is justified, and
justification makes that belief valuable43. When an agent knows that such and such is
the case, she has not merely a true belief, but a true belief tethered down with the help
of good justifications. Kvanvig (2003) and others have disputed the viability of Platos
tethering solution, though its typically taken for granted that whatever the
justification element of a theory of knowledge is identified as, that element should be
capable of, in some way, contributing additional value to a true belief.
We hold that a similar problem may be replicated in the epistemology of
knowledge-how. Why is knowledge-how more valuable than anything that falls short of
knowledge? What exactly is missing in the case of individuals successful manifestation
of their abilities, in circumstances under which they could have something more
valuable than mere success, viz. knowledge-how? Such questions show the need for a
formal condition on knowledge-how, that is: a condition that indicates the particular
way the material conditionviz., the abilityis held by the agent. The answer will be,
just like in the case of knowledge-that, in the sort of relations the material basis of the
knowledge-how state enters into, relations that are to be established with other states
of the same kind.
Toward this end, we want to re-emphasise that reducing of Ryles views on
knowledge-how to a flatfooted ability thesis is untenable. Ryle never claimed that
knowing how is just having an ability simpliciter, in the sense of a capacity to do
something44. In fact, what Ryle was particularly interested in was to understand what
makes it the case that at least some abilities are not merely mechanical, automatic,
mindless, hardwired, but on the contrary exercised in intelligent, judicious, astute or
canny ways. In particular, he was trying to give an account of knowledge-how and more
generally intelligence epithets that imply characteristics such as flexibility, sensibility to

42 For an overview, see Carter, Pritchard and Turri (2016).
43 Plato had in mind something akin to internalist justification. See however Olsson (2007) and Goldman

and Olsson (2009) for defences of externalist justification as capable of adding value to an already true
belief. Cf., Kvanvig (2003) and Zagzebski (2004) for some notable criticisms.
44 For further discussion, see Navarro (forthcoming).

20

changing circumstances, adaptability to new cases45. These way of holding the abilities
is what Ryle aspired to with his reflection on knowledge-how, claiming that all of this is
manifested in practice, not in the rear stage of a ghostly process accompanying that
practice46.
That implicates that the sort of activities where know-how becomes a thick
concept that is really making an important job in our conceptual economy are those that
are complex enough to allow for this sensibility and intelligence to be manifested. We
shall not focus then on abilities that are too simple and may perfectly be performed in a
purely mechanical way (e.g. to know how to open a door, or turn the light on). Our focus
in order to develop an epistemology of know-how should be on complex activities that
allow for manifestations that go beyond the nude obtaining of yes/no success (e.g.
knowing how to play the violin, knowing how to rule a company, knowing how to teach
a course, etc.), and are challenges that really allow the agent to manifest competence in
the sort of complex dispositions Ryle had in mind.
We want to synthetize all those properties of intelligence in the concept of
mastery. An agent masters an ability when she is the owner of her own abilities, in the
sense that her employment of those is flexible, adaptive, not being attached to the rules,
not resulting from mechanical habits or from the blind acceptance of some learnt
precepts. Mastery, on the proposal we are advancing, implies being able to innovate
beyond those rules, and to manifest intelligence beyond sheer success. Consider the
following case:

Jenny: has played tennis for years, though shes never received any formal
instruction. Jenny is not a bad player, but her method is chalk full of bad habits. Her
bad habits have
been habituated in a way that has prevented her from progressing.
Tired of her poor play, Jenny wants to know better how to play, and avails herself to
coaches, drills, and instruction.

Notice that what Jenny aspires to attain is not something different in kind from
the ability she already has to play tennis; what she wants is to improve her tennis
abilities according to certain standards, to take control of those abilities, to connect
some of her sub-abilities with others in such a way that her general competence gets
much better according to criteria she somehow already recognises. Before knowing
better she has a minimally successful ability; in order to know how to make it better she
will have to master it.

45 For some related discussion, see Carter and Poston (2017, Ch. 1).

46 Contrast this reading with Carlotta Paveses (forthcoming), where she argues against what she calls

dispositionalism, as a view shared by Ryle and Stanley & Williamson (forthcoming): the idea that skill is
just a matter of having dispositions. Against this, she argues for the claim that each skill is complexly
related to others in nested ways. Even if we agree with Paveses theoretical intention, in our view,
considering Ryle a dispositionalist, would be mistaken. Instead of identifying intelligence with
mechanical dispositions, what Ryle was putting forward was the need to understand expertise as being
manifested in complex and flexible in performances.

21

The gain achieved when moving from a minimally successful ability to attaining
knowledge-how is characteristically a gradual oneviz., one that requires practice and
the acquisition and application of rules and norms. And it requires being able to
integrate some particular actions with others (the serve, the drive, the capacity to calm
when facing a match point, etc.) as parts of wider activities, where each of those actions
makes sense (see, e.g., Hornsby 2012).
But, for a further clarification: although methods, recipes, advice, rules and
instruction are typically necessary in order to learn how to , together with much
practice, such factorsand this is one of Ryles most crucial pointsare not
constitutive of mastery. Mastery implicates a certain detachment from this kind of
scaffolding, and a capacity to innovate in disconcerting ways that go beyond learned
rules. Our Rylean approach thus recognises a crucial difference (albeit a gradual one, of
course) between the blind success of a mechanical performer and the intelligent
performance of a master. But the difference is not a matter of systematic rehearsing and
following regulatory propositions one internally preaches to oneself, even though doing
so allows us to move from one stage of development to the next, deepening our
understanding of the practice and our capacity to cope with it skilfully. The crucial
point is that this is a stage that is abandoned and overtaken by those who really attain
mastery, viz., who achieve the most valuable forms of knowledge-how. And,
disconcertingly, real geniuses do not even seem to have traversed stage of scaffolding
and apprenticeship. Their mastery is not the result of rules, either explicit or implicitly
followed: their mastery is the source of those rules that we, mortals, enunciate and
follow in order to attain something at least vaguely similar to the excellence of their
results. Rules and maxims are not what makes masters masters: they are just the way
we have to reproduce their mastery, and try to achieve it.
Putting this all together: in order to locate a formal condition for knowledgehow on par with knowledge-that, we hold that mastery should take the place of
justification. Consider now a further parallel, in terms of connectedness: Justification
concerns the way some beliefs are connected to others. One such concern is logical
connections but also of relevance for justification is the intelligence and sensibility with
which agents follow inferential rules, as is shown by Carroll (1995)s classic Achilles
and the Tortoise paradox. In an analogous way, mastery can be understood in terms of
connectedness: Mastery involves the interconnection of some abilities with others in
ways that are flexible and complex. Just like the particular belief of someone who knows
that p must be well connected to the network of beliefs of that person, the ability to
that some agent has mastered must be connected in the proper way to the other
abilities the agent may have, in ways that are not rigid or mechanical.
One final reflection on this topic: in traditional knowledge-that epistemology, we
may understand justification either as an internal or as an external property. In the
former sense, it would be a matter of cognitive states of the agent being connected in
the right way; in the latter sense, the focus is on the agents states being properly
produced by processes that are described as happening certain properties (e.g.,
reliability, safety, etc.) which neednt be reflectively accessible to us. Likewise, our

22

formal condition for knowledge-how may be understood in either of those two ways: in
the internalist sense, mastery may be understood as the way in which an ability is
connected to the other capacities and powers of the agent, either those capacities that
she pas to perform other actions, or her capacity to reflect on her own practice. Masters,
in this sense, are those whos abilities are connected in the right way, as a part of their
general practical capacities. But there is also room for an externalist understanding of
mastery, and we dont want to preclude it. In that case, the concept would be related to
standards of success, as described outside the agents system of abilities, capacities and
powers. Those standards, as criteria for appropriate excecution, are what allow us to
evaluate how knowledgeable the agents are with respect to some domain of practice.
Perhaps none of those perspectivesinternalist and externalistmay be constructed
independently of the other. In any case, our point is that the notion of mastery allows us
to reproduce in the epistemology of knowledge-how the same sort of debates (in this
case along the internalist/externalist divide) that have kept the epistemology of
knowledge-that alive in the last decades.


8. Concluding remarks

We do not purport to have established a definitive analysis of knowledge-how. Rather,
our aim has been more modest: just to show that an epistemology of knowledge-how
does not have to assume the traditional framework of knowledge-that in order furnish
us with genuinely epistemological problems, problems that mirror those that have
formed the basis of the epistemology of knowledge-that.
Indeed, as we noted at the outset, our motivation for defending a tripartite analysis
for knowledge-how doesnt rely on any illusion that the tripartite analysis, as defended
for knowledge-that, is simply correct. On the contrary: the tripartite analyse of
knowledge-that, though its taken centre stage in the latter-half of 20th century
epistemology, is increasingly controversial. Perhaps belief is not necessary for
knowledge-that, a point that has been defended in recent work by Myers-Schultz and
Schwitzgebel (2013). Or, perhaps, as Williamson (2000) has argued, the project of
defending a tripartite analysis for knowledge-that rests on an error in order of
explanation: that is, perhaps knowledge-that should be taken as a primitive and should
be used to define the components notions (justification, truth and belief) in terms of
which it has traditionally been analysed. Alternatively, as contemporary virtue
epistemologists (e.g., Greco 2010; Sosa 2009; 2011; 2015) have argued, perhaps the
three conditions are not sufficient and we need a kind of efficient condition (i.e., the
belief must be the effect of the cognitive virtues of the agent) in order to offset
knowledge-undermining luck or risk. In a similar vein, our tripartite analysis of
knowledge-how in terms of mastered, successful ability mayand hopefully willraise
new problems. These problems themselves, however, will be problems we envision as
on a par with some of their comparatively well-understood counterpart problems in the
epistemology of knowledge-that. And those problems, far from proving that the analysis

23

of epistemological concepts is a dead end, show that there is still much way to go for
fruitful philosophical discussion.

Summing up our three-fold proposal: instead of regarding beliefs as the material
condition of knowledge-how (i.e. the state the agent is in when she is said to know), we
maintain that that role is better fulfilled by abilities, which establishes our proposal
Rylean in spirit. Abilities have been understood here as dispositions that have success as
their constitutive goal. The final role played by truth in the traditional epistemology of
knowledge-that is thus articulated on our proposal in terms of success in action. And
finally, we have argued that the formal condition for knowledge-how (that is, the way
the state must be set in the agent) is better understood as a matter of mastery, as
opposed to justification. Justification increases the value of true beliefs, raising them (in
the right circumstances) to the status of knowledge. Correspondingly, what we value in
agents that know how to do something, over and above what we find in those who have
mere successful abilities, is that the former individuals have a kind of mastery lacked by
the latter. They are flexible and intelligent in their exercise, achieve excellence
according to certain standards, and have integrated those abilities with their other
powers in ways that empower them as genuine examples to be followed. This
orientation towards empowerment is what constitutes the normativity of knowledgehow.

24

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