"Non-propositional Intellectualism" [pdf]
In Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action, Oxford University Press, forthcoming (with Marc Moffett)
This essay articulates and defends a non-standard form of intellectualism about knowing how. The question of the grounds of knowledge how can be distinguished from the question of the nature of knowledge how. We provide an intellectualist answer to the former and an objectualist (non-propositionalist, non-dispositionalist) answer to the latter. The central idea is that to know how to A is to stand in an objectual understanding relation to a way of A-ing. We then propose a theory of the relevant type of understanding in terms of conceptions of ways of acting, grounded in propositional attitudes. The resulting view -- an objectualist intellectualism -- preserves all three of the following attractive theses: (i) knowing how is not merely a kind of knowing that; (ii) knowing how is practical (it bears a substantive connection to action); (iii) knowing how is a cognitive achievement (it is a form of practical knowledge).
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