[MD] Know-how

[Matt Kundert]

Ian said:
> 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.
...
> 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.

Matt:
Well, clear for you and others who do find it interesting.  I 
just don't get it, and haven't read anything that quite 
explains it to me, or been able to help me "get the hang of 
it" (one of those nice phrases Rorty liked for 
vocabulary-choice that refers to know-how).  

The part in ellipsis is everything where you sympathize with 
Steve and gloss it a little with memes and whatnot, all of 
which I think I have the hang of, but if that's the meat 
between the slices of "it's clear 'pre-intellectual experience' 
is an interesting notion" and radical empiricism, it still 
doesn't help me see what the relationship is between the 
meat and the bread.  In this metaphor, DMB has always 
thought that radical empricism is part of the meat.  And 
what I haven't understood is what the connection is 
between these different pieces that some people like DMB 
perceive as all meat, and I perceive as falling into two 
piles, meat (pragmatism) and optional packaging (radical 
empiricism).

Matt

> Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 10:01:30 +0200
> From: ian.glendinning at gmail.com
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] Know-how
> 
> Steve, Matt, n'all ...
> 

> 
> 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.
> 

> 
> Regards
> Ian
 		 	   		  
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