Is knowing-how reducible to knowing-that?
This question came up in Rich's Epistemology survey which I'm auditing this semester. One suggestion, the one I'm *inclined* to endorse--for various reasons that may be revealed--is that all knowledge-how *can* be reduced to knowing-that.
Since we shouldn't postulate kinds of knowledge without necessity, we shouldn't endorse irreducible knowledge-how unless there are cases of putative knowing-how which we can't reduce to knowing-that.
A common objection to the reduction is something about ineffability. Knowing-how often seems incommunicable.
I think this objection can largely be handled by the use of demonstratives. For example, by daughter, who just went off training-wheels this past weekend, knows that [When I move like this, the bike goes like that.] The referents of the demonstratives will be very hard to articulate, but this doesn't stop the knowledge from being propositional knowledge.
Furthermore, it should be remembered that many of our beliefs are automatic and yet still "propositional beliefs".
I don't have a clear conception of what information is, but I think it's surely intimately related to propositional content. Minimally, I think any item of information will entail some proposition (it would be nice if information just were propositions, but I haven't thought about it hard enough to make that assertion).
There's little doubt that there is--to steal a phrase from Dretske--a "flow of information" going on in her cognitive system while she's riding her bike. Some of these will be hosted affirmatively or negatively, so I think we've got propositional knowledge here and I see no reason yet to think anything else is necessary.
Since we shouldn't postulate kinds of knowledge without necessity, we shouldn't endorse irreducible knowledge-how unless there are cases of putative knowing-how which we can't reduce to knowing-that.
A common objection to the reduction is something about ineffability. Knowing-how often seems incommunicable.
I think this objection can largely be handled by the use of demonstratives. For example, by daughter, who just went off training-wheels this past weekend, knows that [When I move like this, the bike goes like that.] The referents of the demonstratives will be very hard to articulate, but this doesn't stop the knowledge from being propositional knowledge.
Furthermore, it should be remembered that many of our beliefs are automatic and yet still "propositional beliefs".
I don't have a clear conception of what information is, but I think it's surely intimately related to propositional content. Minimally, I think any item of information will entail some proposition (it would be nice if information just were propositions, but I haven't thought about it hard enough to make that assertion).
There's little doubt that there is--to steal a phrase from Dretske--a "flow of information" going on in her cognitive system while she's riding her bike. Some of these will be hosted affirmatively or negatively, so I think we've got propositional knowledge here and I see no reason yet to think anything else is necessary.
posted by Trent_Dougherty at
1:57 PM
6 Comment(s):
I feel a little torn. On the one hand I can see a lot of 'know how' being propositional but ineffable - like trying to describe one's experience of yellow. The propositions, like the experience, are there yet they are difficult to express.
On the other hand, I have a hard time attributing propositional knowledge to some animals when they are behaving solely by instinct. It seems perfectly fine to say that a bird knows how to build a nest and a snail knows how to protect itself. I don't think these are anthropomorphisms, and I am very hesitant to attribute propositional knowledge in such cases.
I am also not sure that this irreducible 'know how' would be a species of the same genus as propositional knowledge.
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jon, at 9/11/2006 6:23 PM
1. re: Yellow
Though I'd also like to reduce qualia-involving phenomenal knowledge to demonstrative-involving propositional knowledge, I think we're in the minority. Still I think that knowledge of qualia is plausibly knowledge that it's like *this* (while mentally ostending yellowish) to experience yellow.
2. re: Animals
What's the problem with attributing propositional knowledge to animals? When they hear your car, your cats know that you are home. When they catch a whiff of their food, they know that they are about to be fed. That seems common sense. Granted, it might be "animal" knowledge in the sense of being unreflective, but I see no reason to think it's non-propositional. There is information being processed in their cognitive system in a way not relevantly dissimilar to when we know that bacon is cooking when we smell it or know that our wife is calling when we hear a certain ring-tone.
3. re: Ordinary Language
A. In general, I see no reason to think ordinary usage is a reliable guide to analytic basicality.
B. Specifically I don't see warrant for the following inference:
"as long as such is the case in some cases, then that would be enough to demonstrate that there is know-how is distinct from know-that."
If I understand you, the antecedent of "such" is the following: "there [being] a distinct concept of "being able to do so and so" that clearly is distinct from what we mean by "having an item of propositional knowledge of how to do"?"
I'm not sure about this talk contrasting concepts with meanings, but let's pass over that. If I'm reading you correctly, you're tokening something like this type of inference pattern.
(*) If people use "S" without intending to mean "P" then S cannot be reduced to P.
That can't be right, for we'd have a too-easy refutation of reductionist theories of the mind, and mereological nihilism, and all kinds of revisionist views, not to mention accounts of such natural kind terms as "water".
Which concepts are in fact being applied when we make utterances and which are basic and which are derived are open questions even once usage of terms is fixed. We're looking under the hood.
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Trent_Dougherty, at 9/11/2006 10:36 PM
You were on an unstoppable recitation of undeniable truths until you got to this point:
"In my mind, to ask is know how a variety of know that is simply to ask, In the ways people commonly and acceptably use the phase "know how" does it semantically reduce to some relevant list of know thats?'
I'm not sure what kind of semantic reduction you have in mind here, but compare the following parallel:
To ask is INTENTIONALITY a variety of PHYSICAL PROCESS is simply to ask, In the ways people commonly and acceptably use the phase "THINKS ABOUT" does it semantically reduce to some relevant list of PHYSICAL PROCESSES?
Now I'm not a materialist, but I think it takes more work than *that* to refute materialism! :-)~
Analytic functionalism and psycho-functionalism have their problems, but the attempt to provide meaning-preserving functional charactarizations in a topic-neutral language is not doomed a priori because of what people intend in their use of different terms.
You were right on the money, though, when you said:
"So the question is, Is know-how and know-that like apple-red delicious and apple-fuji, or is it like ray-marine life and ray-Charles?"
You say more like the latter. Fair enough. But it doesn't seem so to me. So now we have a clash of intuitions. That's why I gave an argument from parsimony for reducing if possible and then replied to some common objections to reduction. So as I see it, the ball is in the court of the anti-reductionist to provide me with some concrete reason why the reduction isn't possible.
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Trent_Dougherty, at 9/12/2006 8:50 AM
I agree that many animals do have propositional knowledge with regard to some things. I do question whether this is true with regards to some instinctual behaviors. Or, there does seem to be some place down the evolutionary chain where creatures cease to have propositional knowledge. I would think that such creatures would still possess 'know how' of some things.
Another example: couldn't Joe know how to be charming without having any idea of what it is to be charming or any of the relevant steps in such an activity?
Final example: couldn't someone have a gettierized JTB with regards to the steps of some activity. As such, they would continually lack propositional knowledge of the relevant steps, but it would be a significant cost to deny that they know how to perform the activity.
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jon, at 9/12/2006 10:05 AM
I'm taking notes:
First you distinguish between acceptable use (not quite sure what that is, but OK) and whether a term does or does not refer, right? So some terms might be used acceptably even if they don't technically refer or at least not how the speaker intends. An example here would be like what people refer to by "chair" if mereological nihilists are correct. Is that what you have in mind here?
Next you point out that some matching phonemes have only phonetic properties in common and others represent different species of a natural kind.
Then it's stated that we had a list of things which were *at least* phonetic matches and we were wondering which ones also grouped into natural kinds. In particular this question arose for knowing-how. (By the way, I'm sanguine about reducing know-who as well: I know who you are when I know that *that* person is you.)
Then you say (again) that non-referring terms can be legitimately used in a language.
About all of this we have agreed all along, of course, and so having reviewed the common ground you consider my counterexample.
You say "there's nothing instrinsic to that conception itself that would be inconsistent with materialism." I have very little grasp on what this means. I probably disagree, but I don't think that's relevant because I can't see that the comment is relevant. It seemed to me that you were relying on the following inference rule in your original argument.
(*) If people use "S" without intending to mean "P" then S cannot be reduced to P.
I gave the materialism example as a counterexample to this principle, which I think it is. Lots of people clearly use mental talk--intentional explanation for example--without any intent to refer to anything purely physical, yet that doesn't entail that identity theories are false. If you can make your original argumetn without (*) then that's fair enough, but I'd have to see it.
Next you grant the antecedent of (*) for the materialism case and query the consequences. The first consequence you mention is that it is consistent with the negation of the consequent of (*) which is to reject (*) along with me. I'm all for that! :-)~
Then you say "that doesn't mean that that idiosyncratic usage, if it became commonplace, couldn't be considered a linguistic type of the linguistic category knowledge." which I truly don't understand at all.
Finally, you say "If it's clear that that concept is distinct from the concept of know-that (as I agree with Jon in thinking that it is; a jelly fish knows how to sting, but I highly doubt it has propositional knowledge of such), then know-how is a different type of knowledge (a linguistic type, that is, which is what, again, we were in part interested in in class last time)."
The conditional seems true but the antecedent does not. It is not clear to me that a jelly fish knows how to sting and it is not clear to me that it does not have propositional knowledge. Either the sting of a jelly fish is purely mechanical like a rake lying on the ground such that when you step on it you get whacked or else there is information processed. In the case of jelly fish though they have no brain they have a nervous system of interlocking neurons called a "nerve net" which runs through their skin. This is an information processing system and information consists in propositions. So I'm inclined to think they do have "animal knowledge" which is a kind of propositional knowledge.
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Trent_Dougherty, at 9/13/2006 9:44 AM
So I think the thing to say in Jon's case might be that having GJTB that p is consistent with knowing p because my warrant can be overdetermined. My conscious justification can be gettierized but I still know because I've got unreflective (or "animal" for Sosa) knowledge do to reliability considerations.
An alternative reply is simply to deny the presence of know-how in that case. As was mentioned today in class there are lots of abilities we have which do not constitute know-how. So here's a contentious suggestion for distinguishing between *mere* ability--like the ability to digest food--and know-how: the presence of propositional knowledge.
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Trent_Dougherty, at 9/13/2006 1:26 PM
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