Constantin, Jan 
ORCID: 0000-0001-5384-9209
(2018).
A dispositional account of practical knowledge.
Philos. Stud., 175 (9).
S. 2309 - 2330.
DORDRECHT:
SPRINGER.
ISSN 1573-0883
Abstract
Is knowledge-how, or ''practical'' knowledge, a species of knowledge-that, or theoretical'' knowledge? There is no comfortable position to take in the debate around this question. On the one hand, there are counterexamples against the anti-intellectualist thesis that practical knowledge is best analysed as an ability. They show that having an ability to phi is not necessary for knowing how to phi. On the other hand, the intellectualist analysis of practical knowledge as a subspecies of theoretical knowledge is threatened by its own set of counterexamples, which convincingly establish that practical knowledge lacks many of the typical characteristics of theoretical knowledge. Most strikingly it does not even appear to require a belief. In this paper, I develop an account of practical knowledge that avoids these counterexamples. It also manages to preserve both the status of such knowledge as a cognitive achievement and its apparently close conceptual relation to abilities. I start with the counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge and show that they fail because they underestimate the cognitive demands of attempts. I then make use of the logic of dispositions to bridge the gap that counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge open. It is argued that, instead of the ability to phi, it is a specific disposition to have the ability to phi that constitutes practical knowledge about phi. The resulting theory is an anti-intellectualist position that preserves essential intellectualist motivations and thus should be satisfactory for proponents of both views.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
| Creators: |
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| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-175864 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11098-017-0960-z | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Philos. Stud. | ||||||||
| Volume: | 175 | ||||||||
| Number: | 9 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | S. 2309 - 2330 | ||||||||
| Date: | 2018 | ||||||||
| Publisher: | SPRINGER | ||||||||
| Place of Publication: | DORDRECHT | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 1573-0883 | ||||||||
| Language: | English | ||||||||
| Faculty: | Unspecified | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Unspecified | ||||||||
| Subjects: | no entry | ||||||||
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
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| Refereed: | Yes | ||||||||
| URI: | http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/17586 |
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