Habgood-Coote, Joshua Timothy (2013) Knowing How to φ and Philosophical Methodology. MPhil thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract
The question of the nature of knowledge-how is philosophically puzzling, because alongside the substantive disagreement about whether knowledge-how is a kind of propositional knowledge or not, there is methodological disagreement about how to answer this question. Since it would be undesirable for this debate to disintegrate into a methodological stand-off, in which opposing sides of the question could not agree on how to resolve the issue, it is important to take stock of the methodologies which are in play in the debate, and consider how to reconcile them. This is my project in this thesis. To achieve this aim I will consider the use of results from linguistics to argue that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that, and the use of counterexamples against the view that it is not. I will argue that neither source of evidence is philosophically decisive. The appeal to linguistics relies on various controversial philosophical theses, and ignores relevant philosophical issues. Using counterexamples to show that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that is problematic; firstly because there are several distinct positions which contend that knowledge-how is not a kind of knowledge-that, and secondly because counterexamples are not the final word, dialectically speaking, on any analysis. I will not attempt to argue that these sources of evidence are irrelevant, but that they are useful tools only when used alongside other considerations, especially from the philosophy of mind. In order to show how considerations from the philosophy of mind can be relevant to inquiry into the nature of knowledge-how, I will consider the connection of knowledge-how to intentional action, and argue that this offers a picture of knowing how which can be used to assess accounts of knowledge how.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 13 May 2014 10:51 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2023 12:01 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40051 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00040051 |
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