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A dispositional account of practical knowledge

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Abstract

Is knowledge-how, or “practical” knowledge, a species of knowledge-that, or “theoretical” knowledge? There is no comfortable position to take in the debate around this question. On the one hand, there are counterexamples against the anti-intellectualist thesis that practical knowledge is best analysed as an ability. They show that having an ability to ϕ is not necessary for knowing how to ϕ. On the other hand, the intellectualist analysis of practical knowledge as a subspecies of theoretical knowledge is threatened by its own set of counterexamples, which convincingly establish that practical knowledge lacks many of the typical characteristics of theoretical knowledge. Most strikingly it does not even appear to require a belief. In this paper, I develop an account of practical knowledge that avoids these counterexamples. It also manages to preserve both the status of such knowledge as a cognitive achievement and its apparently close conceptual relation to abilities. I start with the counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge and show that they fail because they underestimate the cognitive demands of attempts. I then make use of the logic of dispositions to bridge the gap that counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge open. It is argued that, instead of the ability to ϕ, it is a specific disposition to have the ability to ϕ that constitutes practical knowledge about ϕ. The resulting theory is an anti-intellectualist position that preserves essential intellectualist motivations and thus should be satisfactory for proponents of both views.

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Notes

  1. For a contrary position, see Stanley (2011) and Bengson and Moffett (2007).

  2. Alternative versions of intellectualism that take a similar direction have been proposed (e.g. Bengson and Moffett 2007, 2011).

  3. For further discussion see Glick (2011).

  4. Of course, in one sense I am “able” to cry. That sense is different from the sense in which I am able to ride a bicycle, however (Honoré 1964; Mele 2003; Lihoreau 2008; Mayer 2014). It is more akin to the sense in which I am “able” to sweat or digest food, but those examples seem structurally analogous to mere dispositions, like the disposition to burst into flames when I get too close to the sun. I am willing to accept that they are only abilities in a metaphorical sense and that it is, strictly speaking, false that I am “able” to digest food or cry. This is a bigger bullet to bite than it appears, as it commits me to the same response for a number of similar cases, including apparent abilities to take part in absent-minded acitivities or perform component actions and creative feats (Vetter 2016; see also Löwenstein 2017: 78 ff). My worry (which I cannot defend extensively here) is that these cases appear to be structurally analogous to cases of mere dispositions and since I think that the distinction between abilities and mere dispositions is more important than the accommodation of the examples, I am inclined to accept this commitment. If one is unwilling to follow me in this, however, I am happy to propose instead that there are two senses of “ability”, where only the attempt-responsive sense is a candidate for the analysis of practical knowledge, in which case that is the sense in which I will use “ability” in the rest of this paper.

  5. Here, my view diverges from Löwenstein’s otherwise similar position (aside from a different understanding of abilities), which I understand to leave it open whether attempts are among the possible initiating conditions for an exercise of practical knowledge (Löwenstein 2017: 78–84). This leads him to postulate direct and indirect conceptions of normative guidance for action as conditions for such knowledge instead (Löwenstein 2017: 92–98). On my view, the idea behind such guidance is already captured by the nature of abilities and attempts.

  6. Compare “theory” in Cassam (2014).

  7. To back this up, one may look at Roderick Chisholm's theory of intentionality (Chisholm 1957). He argues that intentional states are intensional, which may not to be true for all intentional states (see e.g. Pierre 2014), but certainly for the kind of intention that is relevant in an attempt.

  8. Bengson and Moffett's (2011: 171) Irina-the-figureskater-case is similar in many relevant respects.

  9. This version of the example is slightly modified.

  10. Bengson and Moffett (2011) present a similar case which shows that it doesn’t help here to require that the subject at least held the relevant ability at some point.

  11. At least for the disposition involved in abilities. Note that I mean here only non-trivially intrinsic properties. I want to be silent on whether being such that 1 + 1=2 is intrinsic.

  12. DPK is inspired by Sydney Shoemaker's (1997) theory of properties. Shoemaker attempts to show that properties are essentially modal in that they necessitate a number of conditional powers in their bearer. The difference here is that I employ dispositions, instead of conditionals and that the relation between stimulus and manifestation is not causal.

  13. See also Mumford (1994).

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Acknowledgements

The account presented in this paper was inspired by Sydney Shoemaker’s theory of properties in “Causality and Properties” (1997). I finished the paper while working on the DFG-funded project “Disagreement in Philosophy” at the University of Cologne. Earlier versions were presented at GAP.9 in Osnabrück, Sept. 2015 and at the Cologne-Leuven Epistemology Meeting in Cologne, Oct. 2015. I am grateful to the audiences of those conferences for helpful questions and comments. Furthermore, I am particularly indebted to Thomas Grundmann and David Löwenstein for very stimulating and fruitful discussions. I also want to thank my colleagues who commented on earlier drafts of this paper: Dominik Balg and Steffen Koch.

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    Jan Constantin

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Constantin, J. A dispositional account of practical knowledge. Philos Stud 175, 2309–2329 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0960-z

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