Specter of Reason

Kent Bach has published  a review of Jason Stanley's  Know How .   It's a generally positive review, though with a strongly critical bent.  Bach is not sold on Stanley's variety of intellectualism, but he does not want to object prematurely.  He finds a lot worth taking seriously, but he also finds a lot of problems that need to be resolved. In pointing out one of these 'loose ends', as he charitably calls them, Bach suggests a small amount of sympathy for Ryle.  The concern relates to Stanley's claim that, while learning how to do something entails learning a fact, learning how to do something better does not entail learning a new fact.  Bach's fear is that Stanley might be inviting "a Ryle-style regress problem." Though I haven't read this part of Stanley's book yet (still don't have a copy), Bach's concern is plausibly justified, though not clearly expressed.  We might raise a general question against Stanley:  If knowing how...

Last September, I defended Gilbert Ryle against Stanley and Williamson's "Knowing How" (2001). After reviewing Ryle, reading a good many papers on the topic, discussing some issues with a few professional philosophers (including an in-depth and spirited email exchange with Jason Stanley about how to interpret Ryle), I've come to the following conclusions, which I divide into two parts. The first addresses S&W's misrepresentation of Ryle. In the second, I develop extensive, original arguments against S&W's formulation of knowing-how as a species of knowing-that. 1.0) Stanley and Williamson (S&W) profoundly misinterpret Ryle. I stand by my original critique of the way they present Ryle's regress argument. Similar critiques are found in Hetherington (2006) and Sheiber (2003). Others (Noe 2005; Wiggins 2009) point out other ways in which S&W get Ryle wrong, though I do not think anyone has yet to identify the full extent to which S&W ...

[ In July and August, 2010, I made some significant revisions and deleted some questionable portions of this post. ] In " Knowing How " (2001), Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson (S&W) defend intellectualism against Gilbert Ryle. Their paper was selected by The Philosopher's Annual as one of the ten best papers of 2001. Yet, as I will argue, they profoundly misrepresent Ryle (and so fail to make a sound critique of his project). This suggests that there has been a widespread and severe misunderstanding of Ryle among academic philosophers. Despite the problems with their response to Ryle, S&W's formulation of knowledge-how as a species of knowledge-that is a stand-alone argument and invites criticism of its own. As I aim to show, a clarification of some relevant issues makes it difficult to fully accept their analysis. In section I, I present intellectualism. In section II, I correct S&W's misrepresentation of Ryle's argument against intell...