Ryle's Lewis Carroll Argument
In his 1946 paper, "Knowing How and Knowing That," Ryle makes brief mention of Lewis Carroll's 1895 paper, "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles." (I discussed Carroll's argument and its relation to Ryle not so long ago .) Jason Stanley addresses the problem in his recent Know How (2011). He quotes Ryle's argument, which is not quite identical to Carroll's. Ryle writes: A pupil fails to follow an argument. He understands the premises and he understands the conclusion. But he fails to see that the conclusion follows from the premises. The teacher thinks him rather dull but tries to help. So he tells him that there is an ulterior proposition which he has not considered, namely, that if these premises are true, the conclusion is true. The pupil understands this and dutifully recites it alongside the premises, and still fails to see that the conclusion follows from the premises even when accompanied by the assertion that these premises entail this c...