Ryle’s regress defended

Jeremy Fantl

Published online: 30 August 2011

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

In his (2010) contribution to the Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy—an early draft

of the first chapter of his (2011a) Know How (at the time of this writing, still

forthcoming)—Jason Stanley explores in more depth the Rylean arguments for anti-

intellectualism that Stanley and Williamson consider and reject in their influential

(2001). In particular, he concentrates his efforts on versions of the regress argument

that appear in Ryle’s The Concept of Mind,1 arguing that there is no regress that

intellectualism is committed to that Rylean anti-intellectualism isn’t. I want to here

suggest that there might be.

Intellectualism is a view about the relation between what it is to know that

something is the case and what it is to know how to do something. According to

intellectualism, the second is a species of the first: what it is to know how to do

something just is to know that some relevant thing is the case. For example, for you

to know how to ride a bike is just for there to be a way for you to ride a bike and for

you to know, of that way, that it is a way for you to ride a bike (see, e.g., Stanley

(2011b, p. 209)). This makes know how no less propositional than your knowledge

of where you are; to know where you are is just for there to be a place that you are

located and for you to know, of that place, that you are located there (ibid). On

Ryle’s anti-intellectualist view, this is false. Know how is not a species of

knowledge-that. There is no set of propositions that constitutes what you know

when you know how to do something.

Stanley discusses most the anti-intellectualist argument he finds in Ryle (1949),

where Ryle says,

The crucial objection to the intellectualist legend is this. The consideration of

propositions is itself an operation the execution of which can be more or less

J. Fantl (&)

University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

e-mail: jfantl@ucalgary.ca

1 Ryle anticipates these arguments and provides additional ones in his (1971).

123

Philos Stud (2011) 156:121–130

DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9800-8

intelligent, more or less stupid. But if, for any operation to be intelligently

executed, a prior theoretical operation had first to be performed and performed

intelligently, it would be a logical impossibility for anyone ever to break into

the circle. (30)

According to the Stanley, this ‘‘crucial objection’’ depends on two premises:

Premise 1 The Intellectualist view entails that ‘‘for any operation to be

intelligently executed’’, there must be a prior consideration of a

proposition

Premise 2 ‘‘The consideration of propositions is itself an operation the execution

of which can be more or less intelligent, less or more stupid.’’

From these premises, Stanley has Ryle argue like this:

By the first premise, the Intellectualist is committed to the view that each

intelligent action is preceded by a prior action of considering a proposition.

Since considering a proposition is something that can be done intelligently or

stupidly, it is an intelligent action. So, acting intelligently requires a prior

action of considering a proposition, and considering a proposition intelligently

requires a prior action of considering a proposition intelligently. Presumably,

if any of these prior actions is performed stupidly, then the original action will

not be performed intelligently. But then acting intelligently requires the

performance of an infinite number of prior actions, which is a vicious regress.

If intellectualism is true, then intelligent action requires a prior intelligent

consideration of a proposition—itself an intelligent action that requires a prior

intelligent consideration of a proposition. This is a regress, and one that’s supposed

to be vicious. What makes it vicious? There are a number of possibilities. One

problem might be temporal. If we take ‘‘prior’’ literally, the worry is that each

intelligent action must have been preceded in time by an intelligent action. Because,

for all of us, there was a time before which we didn’t exist, there must be some

action that was preceded in time by no action (of ours) at all, let alone any

intelligent action. So, intelligence could never have gotten started (temporally).

Alternatively, ‘‘prior’’ could mean just metaphysically prior, where a contem-

plation is ‘‘prior’’ to an intelligent action just in case the status of the action as

intelligent depends on the contemplation occurring (and being intelligent). Here

there is no essential worry about our having finite histories, so no essential worry

about the amount of time required to complete an infinite regress of intelligent

actions.

The temporal and the metaphysical regresses can each be problematic for two

different reasons. First, it might just be that it is impossible for us to perform the

requisite number of acts or at least implausible that we do so. Again, on the

temporal interpretation, if we are temporally finite beings (in the past), then there

just isn’t enough time to execute the infinite number of temporally sequential acts.

On the metaphysical interpretation, it’s not plausible that we have at any moment

the infinite number of mental operations of the sort that the regress would require.

Second, the regress might be problematic because, whether the regress is temporal

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or metaphysical, if there is a regress, there is no place for the intelligence to come

from. The intelligence of the target action is always deferred to the prior act in the

regress, so that there is no way for the intelligence to enter into the picture.

Which is the problematic regress that Stanley is taking Ryle as committing the

intellectualist to? If the problematic regress is supposed to be temporal, then there is

a very simple argument available to Stanley that he doesn’t make. He could argue

this way:

Intellectualism says that when an action manifests your know-how, you

manifest a bit of knowledge-that. But your action occurs simultaneously with

your manifestation of know-how and simultaneously with the knowledge-that

that the intellectualist says is thereby manifested. Therefore, no temporal

regress is generated.���QED���

This is not how Stanley argues. I think he’s right not to, because I wouldn’t think

that a temporal regress is the central problem for intellectualism. That’s because I

wouldn’t think that an intellectualist is committed to the view that the status of your

act here and now—whether it’s intelligent or not—depends on the status of an act

temporally prior to it. There are of course views in epistemology that make this

claim—views that make the epistemic ancestry of beliefs and, I suppose, actions

essential to the evaluation of the beliefs and actions themselves. But this debate—

whether epistemic ancestry is relevant to the evaluation of current states—seems

like it should be distinct from the debate over whether to manifest know-how is to

manifest some bit of knowledge-that.

That leaves the metaphysical regress. Is it so problematic to require for know-

how (or any other state) an infinite number of mental acts? It doesn’t seem so in

principle. It depends on how the mental acts relate to each other. If the acts lower

down on the regress constitute the acts higher up in the regress, then commitment to

an infinite number of such acts is not obviously a difficulty. Any act it seems admits

of an infinite number of specifications. I open the door by turning the doorknob. I

turn the doorknob by grasping the doorknob and rotating my hand. I grasp the

doorknob by contracting certain muscles and rotate my hand by contracting others.

There seems no principled way to limit this regress to a finite length. Similar

considerations can be invoked when it comes to mental acts as well. Do we have

here an infinity of acts? Or an infinity of specifications of the same act? Whatever

you want to say about this, it hardly seems problematic if a view is committed to an

infinite list of this sort.

That leaves the deferral problem, suggested in any case by Ryle’s talk of it being

‘‘a logical impossibility for anyone ever to break into’’ the regress: if a regress is

generated, then the intelligence of the act—or its status as know-how—is infinitely

deferred. If Stanley’s objection to Ryle is successful, however, the intellectualist

need not worry about this consequence any more than the anti-intellectualist does.

That’s because the intellectualist gets to end the regress if the anti-intellectualist

does. Stanley rightly construes the intellectualist not as claiming (as Ryle contends)

that all intelligent acts require prior acts of mental contemplation, but as claiming

that all intelligent acts are manifestations of some bit of knowledge-that. That this is

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the right interpretation of intellectualism is demonstrated by Carl Ginet’s (1975)

observation that

…all that [Ryle] actually brings out, as far as I can see, is that the exercise (or

manifestation) of one’s knowledge of how to do a certain sort of thing need

not, and often does not, involve any separate mental operation of considering

propositions and inferring from them instructions to oneself. But the same

thing is as clearly true of one’s manifestations of knowledge that certain

propositions are true, especially one’s knowledge of truths that answer

questions of the form ‘How can one…?’ or ‘How should one…?’ I exercise (or

manifest) my knowledge that one can get the door open by turning the knob

and pushing it (as well as my knowledge that there is a door there) by

performing that operation quite automatically as I leave the room; and I may

do this, of course, without formulating (in my mind or out loud) that

proposition or any other relevant proposition. (7)

Whereas prior acts of mental contemplation are very plausibly either intelligent

or stupid, manifestations of knowledge-that are not. But, and this I take it Stanley’s

crucial point, even if manifestations of knowledge-that are either intelligent or

stupid, so too must manifestations of knowledge-how be. If you must know how to

manifest your knowledge-that, so too must you know how to manifest your

knowledge-how. To say otherwise is to unfairly load the dice against the

intellectualist. What’s needed is a principled argument that there is such a

difference between knowledge-how and knowledge-that. But that principled

argument is exactly what the regress argument is supposed to be. So, Stanley

concludes, the regress argument fails:

In order to draw a conclusion about knowing how, Ryle draws an unwarranted

distinction between manifesting propositional knowledge and manifesting

knowing how. He assumes that manifesting propositional knowledge requires

a prior mental act, like the prior triggering of a maxim or a rule (this is the first

premise of his regress argument). Secondly, he assumes that knowing how in

contrast can be manifested without there being any prior mental act whatever.

It is only because of this second assumption that he is able to conclude that

knowing how is not a species of knowing that. The problem is that these

assumptions draw an unwarranted asymmetry between manifesting proposi-

tional knowledge and manifesting knowledge-how.

Does Stanley succeed in blocking the regress—that is, in showing that the

intellectualist is no more committed to an infinity of manifestations than is the anti-

intellectualist? Or is there, in fact, a relevant disanalogy between knowledge-that

and knowledge-how?

Return to Ginet’s example of knowing that you can open a door by turning the

doorknob. Suppose that you manifest your knowledge how to open a door by

manifesting your knowledge that you can open a door by turning the doorknob.

Manifesting this bit of knowledge-that, of course, does not require a prior act of

contemplation: ‘‘Hmmm, how can I open this door? Hey, I know! By turning the

doorknob. Here I go!’’ So, it might seem, manifesting this bit of knowledge-that

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need not be done intelligently or stupidly; it’s not a prior act. But does this mean it

can’t be done intelligently or stupidly? You might, after all, not know how to turn a

doorknob. So, you might fumble with the doorknob, try to push it up or down, etc.

You might even, by luck, manage to get it turned. But this wouldn’t be an intelligent

turning of the doorknob. In general, if you know that you can open the door by

turning the doorknob, it does not follow that you know how to turn the doorknob.

But, plausibly, in order to know how to open the door by turning the doorknob, you

must know how to turn the doorknob. If so, it is not sufficient to know how to open

the door that you know that you can open the door by turning the doorknob.

If this is right, then the simplest way for the anti-intellectualist to block her own

regress while committing the intellectualist to a regress is to insist on two claims:

1. any intellectualist account of know-how must say that manifestation of

knowing-how to open the door is manifestation of some propositional

knowledge of a proposition consisting of at least two terms: opening the door

and a way to open the door. An intellectualist might say that to manifest

knowledge how to open the door is to manifest knowledge that turning the

doorknob is a way for her to open the door or knowledge that she can open the

door by turning the doorknob. But the crucial point here is that, if this claim is

right, the knowledge-that that is manifested is always knowledge of a

proposition in which a way to open the door essentially figures.

2. anti-intellectualist accounts of know-how need not make essential reference to a

way. There are some things you can know how to do full stop, without knowing

how to do them a certain way.

If 1 is true, and if you don’t know how to open the door by turning the doorknob

unless you know how to turn the doorknob, then any intellectualist account of know-

how is going to require that, to manifest know-how, you’ll have to manifest an

infinite series of distinct bits of knowledge-that. For the intellectualist, to manifest

knowledge-how to open the door, you’ll have to manifest knowledge that you can

open the door by turning the doorknob. But your manifestation of knowledge that

you can open the door by turning the doorknob will only count as manifestation of

know-how, if you know how to turn the doorknob. But, then, on the intellectualist

account, there has to be a way to turn the doorknob—say, by grasping it and rotating

your hand—such that you know that you can turn the doorknob that way. And that

means you have to know how to grasp the doorknob and rotate your hand. Which

means there has to be a way for you to grasp the doorknob and rotate your hand such

that you know how to do that. Etc.

On the other hand, on the current anti-intellectualist account, the regress never

gets going. You can just know how to do certain things full stop. It’s not required

that there be a way of, say, grasping the doorknob and rotating your hand, such that

you know how to do it. So, the intellectualist is committed to a regress that the anti-

intellectualist is not committed to.

However, it may not be plausible, even for an anti-intellectualist, to claim that

there are any acts that you can know how to do full stop. Can you know how to do

something if there is no way such that you know how to do it that way? Plausibly

not. Plausibly, whenever you know how to do something, there is a way such that

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you know how to do it that way. And, if this is true, it might seem that a regress is

generated for the anti-intellectualist as well: to know how to open the door is for

there to be a way of opening the door—say, turning the doorknob—such that you

know how to open the door that way—by turning the doorknob. But, if you know

how to open the door by turning the doorknob, you’d better know how to turn the

doorknob. Therefore, there is going to be a way of turning the doorknob—say,

grasping the doorknob and rotating your hand—such that you know how to turn the

doorknob by grasping it and rotating your hand. So you’d better know how to grasp

the doorknob and rotate your hand. Etc. A regress is generated for the anti-

intellectualist just as much as for the intellectualist.

However, there is still this crucial difference: that you know how to open the door

by turning the doorknob entails that you know how to turn the doorknob. But that

you know that you can open the door by turning the doorknob does not entail that

you know how to turn the doorknob. And this means that it seems perfectly

consistent with failing to know how to open the door, that you know that you can

open the door by turning the doorknob. You might know that you can open the door

by turning the doorknob and even that you can turn the doorknob by grasping the

doorknob and rotating your hand. But if you fail to know how to grasp the doorknob

and rotate your hand, then you fail to know how to turn the doorknob and, thus, fail

to know how to open the door. Does it help to just keep adding more ways, so that

you now know the way you can grasp the doorknob and rotate your hand? What if

you add infinite iterations? It still doesn’t seem that the know-how becomes

generated at any point. There is no way, as Ryle might say, to ‘‘break into’’ the

regress. In contrast, it doesn’t seem consistent with failing to know how to turn the

doorknob that you know how to open the door by turning the doorknob; once you

know how to open the door by turning the doorknob, it is guaranteed that you know

how to turn the doorknob (again, in contrast with knowing that you can open the

door by turning the doorknob).

Notice that this also provides us with a disanalogy between know-how and other

attitudes expressed by ‘‘know-wh’’ expressions, like knowledge-where and knowl-

edge-when. If I know how to open the door, we are supposing, then there is a way

such that I know how to open the door that way. And if you there is a way such that

you know how to open the door that way, it follows that you know how to perform

that way. That is, it follows from

(1) I know how to open a door

that

(2) I know how to open a door in some way (say, by turning the knob).

And it follows from 2 that

(3) I know how to turn the knob.

Hence our disanalogy. For it doesn’t follow from

(2a) I know that turning the knob is a way I can open a door

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that

(3a) I know how to turn the knob.

But now consider knowledge-where. On the account favored by Stanley, if you

know where to open a door, then there is a place such that you know you can open a

door at that place. So, according to Stanley, it follows from

(1b) I know where to open a door

that

(2b) I know, of a place (say, my sister’s house), that I can open a door there.

If our disanalogy is to survive when it comes to knowledge-where, it can’t follow

from 2b that

(3b) I know where my sister’s house is.

Grant that 3b fails to follow from 2b, though it doesn’t seem as obvious as the

failure of 3a to follow from 2a. That half of the disanalogy is preserved. What of the

first half? In the case of know-how, because knowing how to open the door entails

knowing how to open a door by, say, turning the knob, and because knowing that

entails knowing how to turn the knob, knowing how to open the door entails

knowing how to turn the knob. Analogous reasoning in the case of knowledge-

where would have to look like this:

(1c) I know where to open a door.

Therefore,

(2c) I know where to open a door at some place (say, my sister’s house).

Therefore,

(3c) I know where my sister’s house is.

The difficulty with figuring out whether this line of reasoning is valid is that 2c

isn’t even obviously grammatical, let alone true if 1c is. Note that 2c doesn’t say

that I know where to open a door in my sister’s house—that I know where in my

sister’s house I might go to open a door. It says that I know where to open a door at

my sister’s house. If this is not even grammatical, let alone true, then I lack

resources for deciding whether it follows from 1c or entails 3c.

The point is even more obvious when it comes to knowledge-who. Here it is even

less obvious that

(2d) I know, of some time, t, that I can open a door at t.

does not entail

(3d) I know at what time t occurs.

But even if we grant that 3d does not follow from 2d, it’s completely unclear

whether it follows from

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(1e) I know when to open a door

that

(2e) I know, of some time, t, when to open a door at t

and likewise whether it follows from 2e that

(3e) I know at what time t occurs,

because it is not at all clear whether 2e is even grammatical, let alone true.

Know-how seems distinctive then in clearly involving the following disanalogy:

On the one hand,

(A) Necessarily, if S knows how to phi, then there is a way, w, for S to phi such

that S knows how to instantiate w.

But,

(B) It is not the case that, necessarily, if S knows that w is a way for her to phi,

then S knows how to instantiate w.

The reason is that know-how is distinctive in licensing the inferences from 1 to 2 to

3, above.

If that’s right, then it is open to the anti-intellectualist to claim this: it is because you

know how to turn the doorknob by grasping the doorknob and rotating your hand that

you know how to grasp the doorknob and rotate your hand. But it’s not open to the

intellectualist to say that it is because you know that you can turn the doorknob by

grasping the doorknob and rotating your hand that you know how to grasp the

doorknob and rotate your hand. And that’s because you could perfectly well know that

you can turn the doorknob by grasping it and rotating your hand and yet not know how

to grasp the doorknob and rotate your hand. So, the anti-intellectualist has a way to stop

the regress or, rather, make the regress less vicious: once you know how to turn the

doorknob, or even just open the door by turning the doorknob, you automatically know

how to perform all the other ways that are relevant. But this isn’t the case for the

intellectualist. The intellectualist needs a way to get all the other relevant knowledge-

that, because such knowledge is not guaranteed just by the knowledge that you can

open the door by turning the doorknob. And even if all that relevant knowledge-that

were in place, it would still be possible for know-how to be lacking.

Consider how you might learn how to dice onions. First, you might be told ways

of doing it—rocking the knife, holding the tip on the counter, cutting slices in the

onions up to the base, etc. You learn how to dice onions by learning to dice them a

certain way. And you know how to perform the acts that constitute that way of

dicing onions as well. But the way you really learn how to perform these ways of

dicing onions is by repetition: taking a knife and dicing 1,000 onions. At a certain

point, the ways just come along for the ride. You learn to chop and the way you

chop is explanatorily secondary—that is, you know how to perform the acts that

constitute that way of chopping because you know how to chop, and that just

happened to be the way you learned it. Your know-how of some higher acts can be

explanatorily prior to your know-how of the deeper ways.

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Not so for the intellectualist. It is consistent with knowing that you can chop by

keeping the point of the knife on the table that you fail to know how to chop because

you fail to know how to keep the point of the knife on the table. If the intellectualist

makes knowing how to chop by keeping the point of the knife on the table a matter of

knowing that you can chop by keeping the point of the knife on the table, then the

intellectualist requires that you first know how to keep the point of the knife on the

table and that this explains how you know how to chop. The intellectualist, then, is

forced to keep pushing the explanation of how you know how to chop further and

further back in the regress. Intellectualist know-how requires a bottom up guarantee

that can never come; your knowing how to open the door by turning the doorknob does

not entail that you know how to turn the doorknob, so whether you know how to open

the door, even when you know that you open the door by turning the doorknob, waits

on a guarantee that you know how to turn the doorknob. Anti-intellectualist know-how

provides a top-down guarantee that is there at the beginning; if you know how to open

the door by turning the doorknob, you of course must know how to turn the doorknob in

order to know how to open the door. But, fortunately, that you know how to open the

door by turning the doorknob entails that you know how to turn the doorknob.

It’s possible that a mechanism that Stanley and Williamson invoke can make

things work out better for the intellectualist. According to Stanley and Williamson,

you know how to open the door just in case there is a way for you to open the door,

w, such that you know that w is a way for you to open the door and for you to know

this under the practical mode of presentation. Perhaps it’s the case that one of the

things that distinguishes the practical mode of presentation from other modes is that,

when you know that w is a way for you to open the door under the practical mode of

presentation, you know how to instantiate w. Some have worried that this amounts

to Stanley and Williamson smuggling in a notion of anti-intellectualist know-how in

their intellectualist account. As John Koethe (2002) says, ‘‘It appears, then, that

entertaining the proposition that w is a way for one to F under a practical mode of

presentation involves knowing how to instantiate w one’s self. But, if so, then

Stanley and Williamson’s account of knowing how appeals to the very notion it

seeks to explicate’’ (327).

I’m not so worried by this. It seems to me that even if knowing that w is a way for

you to F under the practical mode entails that you know how to instantiate w, there

is no worrisome circularity here. That’s because, it seems to me, even if it’s both the

case that w is a way for you to F and that you know how to instantiate w, you might

fail to know how to F, if you fail to know that w is a way for you to F. What is more,

even if you know that w is a way for you to F and know how to instantiate w, you

might still fail to know how to F, if your knowledge that w is a way for you to F is

not under the right mode of presentation. So, though knowing how to instantiate w

might come along for the ride when you know that w is a way for you to F under the

practical mode of presentation, it does seem to me that knowing that w is a way for

you to F under the practical mode is a different sort of thing from knowing how to

instantiate w. So it’s not at all clear to me that Stanley and Williamson’s account

‘‘appeals to’’ the notion of knowing how.2

2 See also Fantl (2009, pp. 460–462).

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What I find less plausible, though, is the claim that knowing that w is a way to F

under the practical mode of presentation entails that you know how to instantiate w.

For one thing, you might have gotten knowledge that w is a way to F (under the

practical mode of presentation) by opening the door by instantiating w, but simply

forgotten how to instantiate w. So, Salieri might have thought after briefly

glimpsing, with Mozart’s help, the sort of cognitive act required to compose the

Requiem, ‘‘That’s it! That’s how you compose music like that!’’ Once the moment

is gone, he might no longer know how to compose music like that. He might still

remember the kind of cognitive act required and know, under the practical mode,

because he did it, that performing that cognitive act is the way to compose music

like that. But he no longer knows how to compose music like that because he no

longer knows how to perform that cognitive act.

If knowing that w is a way for you to F under the practical mode of presentation

doesn’t entail knowing how to F, because it doesn’t entail knowing how to

instantiate w, then knowing how to F isn’t equivalent to knowing that w is a way for

you to F under the practical mode of presentation. What is needed is a way of

knowing that w is a way for you to F that guarantees that you know how to

instantiate w. The intellectualist, though, is limited to only one kind of knowing:

propositional. So, to guarantee that you know how to instantiate w when you know

how to F by knowing that w is a way for you to F, the intellectualist can only invoke

another bit of knowledge-that—knowledge that y is a way to instantiate w, for

example. But why do you have that knowledge? It’s not simply because you know

that w is a way for you to F. For knowing that w is a way for you to F doesn’t entail

that you know that y is a way to instantiate w—doesn’t entail, even, that you know

how to instantiate w. The problem isn’t that intellectualism is committed to a regress

while anti-intellectualism isn’t. It’s that intellectualism’s regress defers know-how

to the next step in the regress while anti-intellectualism’s regress need not. Of

course, this doesn’t mean that anti-intellectualism isn’t committed to an infinite

number of acts (or infinite ways performed in performing an act). But, again, mere

commitment to the existence of infinite such ways doesn’t itself present a problem.

The problem is that the target property is infinitely deferred. Barring a regress-

stopper, for intellectualism, it is. For anti-intellectualism, it perhaps isn’t.

References

Fantl, J. (2009). Knowing-how and knowing-that. Philosophy Compass, 3, 451–470.

Ginet, C. (1975). Knowledge, perception, and memory. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.

Koethe, J. (2002). Stanley and Williamson on knowing how. The Journal of Philosophy, 99, 325–328.

Ryle, G. (1949). The concept of mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Ryle, G. (1971). Knowing how and knowing that. Collected papers (pp. 212–225). New York: Barnes and

Noble.

Stanley, J. (2010). Ryle on knowing how. Oberlin colloquium in philosophy. Oberlin, OH.

Stanley, J. (2011a). Know how. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stanley, J. (2011b). Knowing (How). Nous, 45, 207–238.

Stanley, J., & Williamson, T. (2001). Knowing how. The Journal of Philosophy, 98, 411–444.

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