[MD] Know-how

[Matt Kundert]

I think if we follow the Turner letter definition of intellectual 
patterns as manipulation of symbols, then that's pretty 
much coextensive with propositional knowing-that.  And 
that, I think, would mean that bio and social are 
know-how--you can't articulate what you are doing, but 
you get things done successfully nevertheless.  The trouble, 
as always, in the schematic is how to describe DQ's place.

I remember reading a transcript of a lecture Pirsig gave 
once where (if memory serves) he used Bertrand Russell's 
distinction between knowledge by appearance and 
knowledge by description to catch hold of the same thing.  
To illustrate the existence of the former he described 
knowing our grandmother's face before consciously 
knowing it was our grandmother.  There's a TV show with 
Tim Roth out right now (instant on Netflix!) called Lie to 
Me that's all about the turning of a know-how--the 
detection of deception and emotions in the face and 
body--into a propositional knowing-that (well, it's not at 
all _about_ that, but is what the premise of the show 
embodies).

While there's nothing in Sellarsian pragmatism that has to 
deny any of this (Rorty's and Sellars' students have in fact 
become better and better at capturing it), it also isn't clear 
to me how the distinction between know-how and 
knowing-that gets what some people seem to want out of 
the notion of "pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality."  For 
example, Russell absolutely did _not_ mean the distinction 
between know-how and knowing-that.  He meant more like 
"direct experience of reality," and once we have an 
awareness of know-how and knowing-that it either A) takes 
away all the analogies with know-how in explicating what 
"language doesn't capture" or B) makes it even more unclear 
how language (knowing-that) gets in the way of "direct 
experience" (know-how)--because on the analysis being 
offered, knowing-that is just one kind of know-how.

Matt

> Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 08:07:37 -0400
> From: peterson.steve at gmail.com
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: [MD]  Know-how
> 
> Hi Matt, All
> 
> I like this distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how and
> not just because it has to do with beavers. Do you think that
> knowledge-that versus knowledge-how can be used to distinquish between
> intellectual patterns and other types of patterns? Is knowledge-how
> ever intellectual or always biological or social? Is knowledge-that
> ever other than intellectual?
> 
> Best,
> Steve
 		 	   		  
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