On the Inconsistency of KNOWS-HOW

We have seen two functions for KNOWS-HOW: Pooling Skills, and Mutual Reliance. The question is: which function represents the function of our concept of knowledge-how? There are three options to consider:

i. Pooling Skills is the genuine function of KNOWS-HOW, and the connection

between knowledge-how and competence is illusory;

ii. Mutual Reliance is the genuine function of KNOWS-HOW, and the connection

between knowing-how and teaching is illusory;

iii. Our conceptual practice is confused; we use KNOWS-HOW to address our need

to pool information and our need to collaboration.141

Both the teacher-flagging and collaborator-flagging functions seem to have left their mark on the concept of knowledge-how. We use knowledge-how ascriptions to flag up potential teachers suggesting a connection with teaching, Pooling Skills can nicely explain the messy connection between knowledge-how and ability, and suggests an epistemic norm which meshes with an interesting picture of the normative role of knowledge, KNP. On the other hand, we also use knowledge-how ascriptions to flag people up as potential collaborators, and if knowledge-how didn’t play the role of picking out a standard of competence on intentions, we’d need to come up with some other concept to play this role. However, both views face problems. Pooling Skills faces problems due to the divergence between knowledge-how and the ability to teach, which point toward Mutual Reliance. Mutual Reliance also seems to predict the knowledge-how should entail some kind of reliable ability condition, and it is not clear that there is any plausible ability condition on knowledge-how (Bengson & Moffett, 2011a).

141 _{Note that option iii. remains on the table even if it is possible to reconstruct the perspective of}

the Apprentice from within the perspective of the Collaborator. Pooling Skills predicts that ’S knows how to V’ flags S as a good teacher, whereas version of the Apprentice’s perspective which we can construct from within the perspective of the Collaborator predicts that ’S knows how to

This points toward hypothesis iii..142 _{According to this hypothesis, KNOWS-HOW}

is a concept that has attracted two conceptual functions: Pooling Skills, and Mutual Reliance.143 _{In some contexts, we use knowledge-how ascriptions to pick out potential}

teachers, and in other cases we use it to pick out potential collaborators. This wouldn’t be a problem if the two conceptual functions meshed nicely or were confined to non-

overlapping contexts. But there is not good reason to think that either condition holds. There will be competent teachers who are poor collaborators, and competent collaborators who are poor teachers, and in these cases our judgements about knowledge-how will be torn.

We can get a nice illustration of this tension in by considering some passages in

which Snowdon and Noë discuss whether unable teachers possess knowledge-how:144

To construct such examples [i.e examples of unable knowers] we need to describe cases in which the subject can show, teach, or tell (or otherwise convey to) us how to do something, and hence must be credited with knowing how to do it, but is for some reason or other unable to do it. There is no assumption here that the presence of knowledge entails that it can be passed on by the knower, but it makes a denial of the

knowledge ascription very hard when the subject can, apparently, convey the relevant information to someone else. (Snowdon, 2004, pp. 9–10 italics added) As the date of the accident recedes in Maestra’s personal history, it becomes less and less plausible to think of her as retaining knowledge of how to play; what at first seemed like the failure of an enabling condition on her exercise comes to seem like a failure of ability itself. The fact that she remains an expert judge of play, or an expert teacher, or that she retains her knowledge of music, is irrelevant to this assessment of her practical knowledge. […] Teachers and critics, although very knowledgeable, do not, by that very fact, have the relevant practical knowledge. (Noë, 2005, pp. 283–4 italics added)

142 _{(Hawley, 2003; Kotzee, 2016) also suggest a two-function picture of KNOWS-HOW.} 143 _{For a parallel discussion of KNOWS-THAT see (Fassio & McKenna, 2015).}

Snowdon takes the fact that someone can teach other people how to do something via some mechanism or other to be a sufficient criteria for knowing how to do that thing: how else could they teach others how to V if they didn’t know how to V. By contrast, Noë wants to clearly distinguish skill at doing from skill at teaching, and takes it that of the two, we ought to associate knowing-how with skill at doing, or what he calls practical

knowledge.

Here’s a diagnosis of this disagreement. Snowdon is working with a concept of knowledge-how tied to our interests in pooling epistemic states, meaning that his concept realises Pooling Skills. It is obvious to him that someone who’s in a position to teach others how to V must themselves know how to V. By contrast, Noë is operating with a concept of knowledge-how which connects knowing how to competence at acting, meaning that his concept realises Mutual Reliance. It is obvious to him that someone who is not competent at performing the relevant activity cannot have knowledge-how, no matter how good a teacher they are. On this diagnosis, the disagreement between Snowdon and Noë is

metasemantic. They agree about the facts of Maestra’s case, but disagree about how we ought to employ the concept of knowledge-how.145

We should expect to find a similar disagreement about whether agents who are extremely competent at some activity, but inarticulate about how to engage in it have knowledge-how. Consider the following exchange from an interview with Kimberly Kim, the youngest person to win the US Women’s amateur golf tournament:

Q. You're 5 down going into the 16th hole this morning. You finish with three birdies. I mean they weren't even long birdie putts. What did you do to motivate yourself to win three holes in a row?

KIMBERLY KIM: I have no idea. I guess it was like God playing for me. I don't know how I did it. Thinking back, I don't know how I did it. I just hit the ball and it went good.146

145 _{On metasemantic disagreements in philosophy, see (Chalmers, 2011; Plunkett, 2015)}

146 _{Quoted in (Brownstein, 2014, p. 555). Original interview at (Kim, 2006). It’s worth noting that}

Does Kim know how to score birdies on the last three holes of the course she was playing on?147 _{We want to say that it was obvious that Kim knows how to score three}

birdies in a row on that course — after all she did it, and there was no luck involved.148 _But

there is a temptation to say that Kim doesn’t know how to score three birdies in a row: she didn’t know how to do it, she just did it, and everything worked out in the end. As with the disagreement between Noë and Snowdon, I want to suggests that this is a metasemantic disagreement about how to use the concept of knowledge-how.

We are faced with a choice. Should we continue to work with a concept of knowledge-how which serves two metasemantic functions, or should we choose one function? I think that we should plump for one function or other in the interests of

avoiding a concept of knowledge-how which gives indeterminate or conflicting judgements about whether unable teachers or inarticulate agents have knowledge-how. I will spend the next two chapters arguing that we should favour Mutual Reliance over Pooling Skills. The argument for this claim is somewhat indirect. I will argue that KNT gets into trouble with cases of agents who know how to teach but not how to do, undermining Pooling Skills. By contrast KNI can be developed in a way that it is defensible.

147 _{Note that this question is distinct from the question of whether she knows how she did it, which}

is a question about her memory, not about her practical knowledge.

148 _{This idea might be what lies behind Polyani’s claim that we ‘know more than we can tell’}