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I raise some doubts about the plausibility of Stanley and Williamson's view that all knowledge-how is just a species of propositional knowledge. By tackling the question of what is involved in entertaining a proposition, I try to show that Stanley and Williamson's position leads to an uncomfortable dilemma. Depending on how we understand the notion of contemplating a proposition, either intuitively central cases of knowing-how cannot be thus classified or we lose our grip on the very idea of propositional knowledge, which then fails to demarcate any clear class of cases. I conclude with a brief discussion of the nature and role of knowledge-how, and its relation to the important, but less explored, notion of expertise.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Edinburgh, Hertfordshire, Barcelona (LOGOS), and at a workshop on Mind and Language in Madrid (Autónoma). Thanks to all those present for hard questions and helpful suggestions, in particular Manuel Garcı´a-Carpintero, Christopher Peacocke, and Jason Stanley. Thanks also to Alva Noë and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on a previous draft.
Notes
1. Russellian propositions are the preferred model in the paper but the authors claim their analysis does not depend on this particular choice. Any of the standard theories of the semantics of propositional-attitude ascriptions would do the job.
2. Regardless of any particular view concerning the semantic import of modes of presentation. If modes of presentations are semantically relevant – i.e. if they contribute to the truth conditions of a corresponding attitude ascription – the actual entertainment of a proposition under a practical mode of presentation is required. If modes of presentation are not semantically relevant, then entertaining a proposition under a practical mode of presentation is not required as such, but is shown to be present through pragmatic considerations. Stanley and Williamson remain neutral on this issue.
3. Karttunen's (1977) theory.
4. In fact, we only give up the requirement of connecting specifications of content to reasons for action, in this sense, when we adopt a view of propositions as functions from possible worlds to truth-values – as it is done in possible worlds semantics. On any other view – Fregean or Russellian – the content of propositions has to be connected to the way in which an agent represents the world. Otherwise, it would fail to have any explanatory role regarding the agent's behaviour.
5. Sometimes visual agnosics can actually recognise objects or even describe them through other senses, like sound or touch. Colours associated with certain objects can also help identification.
6. As we pointed out earlier, visual agnostics like DF can nevertheless perceive colours and textures. Inasmuch as colours could get associated to certain objects, it would be correct to say that DF has a certain residual visual experience of objects. But only in that indirect sense.
7. There has been a heated debate recently as to which exactly are the roles of the ventral and dorsal streams. In particular, Pisella et al. (2000), Rossetti, Pisella, and Vighetto (2003) and Rossetti et al. (2005) revisit the role of the ventral and the dorsal visual streams so as to question the assimilation of this anatomical distinction to the distinction between perception and action. They argue that there is indeed insufficient evidence to argue for this dissociation on the basis that optic ataxia (the ‘complimentary’ of DF's visual agnosia) appears to be a phenomenon that takes place only when subjects reach for an object into the periphery of their visual field or when there has to be some subtle correction of the reaching movement as a consequence of the target object having moved in some way. They also claim – against Milner and Goodale – that both the selection of action and the initial motor programming of heading may be carried out by the ventral stream. Milner and Goodale disagree about these results and provide further evidence to show that optic ataxics are indeed impaired at the level of initial motor behaviour, even though – they acknowledge – there may be two different subsystems operative within the dorsal stream (2006, 237–8). To be clear, we are presenting DF's case on the assumption that Milner and Goodale's interpretation is correct.
8. Although DF has actually gained confidence in such classes of actions over the years (Goodale and Milner 2004). We can now say that she herself feels that she knows how to perform the tasks – rather as we might feel we know how to perform a slip-catch in cricket: an action too fast, too dorsally dominated, for conscious perceptual guidance or monitoring.
9. Cf. Young (2004, 42–3).
10. We thus agree with Young (2004) that attributions of knowledge how to ϕ need not make reference to a subject's performance ‘feeling right’ as a consequence of her phenomenal experience while ϕ-ing.
11. Noë (2005) recommends a similar way of downplaying the success of Stanley and Williamson's criticisms of Ryle's view. Noë's suggestion in order to re-establish the grounds for Ryle's argument is to consider the act of contemplating a proposition intentional yet unconscious. Our suggestion is rather to locate the act of contemplating a proposition at the sub-personal level, thus making it unconscious, but making it intimately connected to the intentional sphere through processes of learning and/or training.
12. For a more detailed argument attempting to show that this line of response would not succeed, see Noë (2005).
13. Her lateral occipital cortex, in particular, shows bilateral necrosis as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning.
14. DF is not only good at posting letters, she can also reach for objects of all kind of shapes and is perfectly capable of e.g. catching a ball. Of course, DF's precision in real-time grasping tasks doesn't make her general sensorimotor behaviour indistinguishable from that of a normally sighted person. She completely fails when asked e.g. to simulate grasping an object to which she was exposed only two seconds earlier (cf. Goodale, Jackobson, and Keillor 1994).
15. DF can perceive colour and texture and thus recognise objects based just on these properties (Humphrey et al. 1994). However, these are not parameters that play any role in DF's success at posting a letter through a rectangular box, our central case.
16. Recent high-resolution functional MRI studies of brain functionality in DF have also come to support it (cf. James et al. 2003).
17. Even if DF became a normal subject, it would still be true that her posting the letter through the letter-box wouldn't probably be guided by her conscious visual attention, but by the unconscious processing of information that takes place at the dorsal stream.
18. Of course, some propositional knowledge can also be the result of having been exposed to a succession of experiences or having been trained in a particular subject (think of mathematics), but although training and/or exposure to experiences may have been involved in the knowledge of such facts, such an effort is not essential to our knowing them.
19. This is possibly a contingent fact about human brains and human learning (cf. Lewis 1990).