[MD] Know-how

[Ian Glendinning]

Steve, Matt, n'all ...

Matt had said that it
"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."

I agree, but it's clear that it is an interesting distinction to work
with, to see if we can clarify some useful notions.

In fact this whole response from Steve, I sympathize with:

"I was hoping this distinction might be helpful in understanding
Pirsig's intellectual level from a different angle than symbol
manipulation, and I think it does help. For example, John has been
saying that intelligence is not only something that applies to
intellectual patterns but also to biological patterns as well. I
disagree, but I would at this point say that knowledge-how occurs at
all levels but knowledge-that is what we mean by Pirsig's intellect.
Of course knowledge-that is a sort of knowledge-how because it enables
new behaviors, so we don't need to distinguish between knowledge-how
and knowledge that within the intellectual level. But if we are taking
about knowledge-that we are definitely talking about the  intellectual
level. (As I've said many times before, if we are talking about
rationales for behavior rather than about a behavior itself, we are
also most definitely talking about intellect even though rationalizing
is itself a behavior.)"

It's that circularity in intellectual (rationalizing) actions actually
being behaviours that has always intrigued me (and prevented total
agreement with Bo on the "SO" level interpretation). It's my memetic
evolution (Hofstader & Dennett) angle - thinking behaviour needs
level-shifting circularity to evolve ... otherwise it's static. A
how-that cycle.

In fact the intellectual is about the behaviour of thinking "how we
know that" ... where know-how meets know-that. That is "how we know
that" as a question, not a rhetorical construction, with the emphasis
on the "do" .... very like the title of my blog, it occurs to me ..
spooky.

There is something in this, and I do believe that the radical
empiricist (cutting edge) has something to do with know-that ... in
this context.

Regards
Ian
PS, I'm interested again Steve ;-) Circularity is BETTER than logical
definitions.