**3. Stanley's Intellectualism**

The backbone of Stanley's argumen<sup>t</sup> for intellectualism is his analysis of embedded questions: i.e., questions that appear in declarative statements or as part of another question. The details of his analysis are complex. To simplify somewhat, he argues that the semantic nature of "how" questions is similar to that of "wh" questions—i.e., who/where/why/when questions—because all conform to the same basic pattern. "Knowing-wh stands and falls together—either they are all species of propositional knowledge, or none of them are" [1] (p. 134). A unified semantic theory requires that *all* answers be propositional. Stanley writes that [1] (p. 141):

the kinds of philosophical and scientific considerations that would lead us to conclude that knowing how to Φ is not a species of propositional knowledge would also lead us to conclude that knowing where to Φ is not a species of propositional knowledge.

If "how" questions could be answered in a non-propositional way, as anti-intellectualists claim, that would necessarily *also* be true for "wh" questions, which Stanley finds unacceptable: according to him, the answers to these questions often clearly *are* propositional.

*Contra* Stanley, Devitt [17] argues that one should go ahead and accept that, in many cases, knowing-wh is *not* propositional ([17], as quoted in [1] (p. 134)):

<sup>2</sup> It is not our purpose here to give our own view of exactly what a proposition is. Suffice to say, pace Stanley, on our view, *S*'s acting on propositional knowledge requires a kind of knowledge that is not propositional. Propositional knowledge is clearly relevant to action, but we reject the intellectualist claim that *knowledge how* is reducible to *knowledge that*. It is no problem for our view if an agen<sup>t</sup> is unable to verbalize the knowledge she acts on when she acts with skill, but the intellectualist, who takes such knowledge to be propositional (i.e., *knowledge how* is defined as a relation to a proposition), must deliver a convincing account how S can fail to be able to express such knowledge or re-define the term "intellectualist" in an other-than-usual way. We return to this in Section 4 and we explain our own view in more detail in Section 8.

The foraging desert ant wanders all over the place until it finds food and then always heads straight back to its nest. ... On the strength of this competence, we feel no qualms about saying that it "knows where its nest is." But to attribute any propositional attitudes to the ant simply on the strength of that competence seems like soft-minded anthropomorphism.

Stanley replies [1] (p. 134):

It should be widely acknowledged that the philosophical and scientific motivations that motivate the view that knowing how is not a kind of propositional knowledge also would lead one to conclude that many ascriptions of knowing-wh, even ascriptions of knowing whether one of several options obtains, do not ascribe propositional knowledge.

"Knowing whether one of several options obtains" is a clear-cut case of propositional knowledge built on propositional descriptions of the world: either Bogota is the capital of Colombia or it is not. Stanley takes it as an unwelcome result if a semantic theory of questions says that knowledge-wh can be non-propositional in character because [1] (p. 134) "languages are remarkably uniform in their ascriptions of knowing where, knowing when, and knowing whether." He goes on to argue that *knowledge how* is likewise expressed in this uniform way cross-linguistically.

At this point, let us set aside further discussion of the details and refer the reader to Stanley. The bottom line is that he argues that embedded questions demand a unified semantic theory and that this points in the direction of a *propositional* theory, as many of the questions must be answered in the form of a proposition.

A possible objection, given Stanley's linguistic focus, is that communication of *knowledge how* does not work the way he seems to presuppose. In everyday life, "how" questions are not treated in the same manner as "wh" questions. Imagine what such communication would be like if they were. If one asks, "how do I swim?" the reply would need to be something like: "place yourself laterally in the water with your arms extended straight in front of you and your legs behind you. ... First, kick your legs behind you. Then you just glide for a bit and pull yourself forward with your arms." [18]. If one asks, "how do I ride a bike?" the reply would need to be something like: "start with one foot on the ground. Your other foot should be flat on a pedal pointed upwards. Push o ff, put that foot on the other pedal, and go! Keep going as long as you can maintain balance." [19].

These questions are common enough; what is rare is the propositionally structured reply: one does not normally answer these questions linguistically. Such replies seem odd and unhelpful. An exchange of this sort seldom happens; even when it does, it is of little use in transferring *knowledge how*.

Contrast this with "wh" questions and their replies. If one asks: "where is the nearest gas station?" the reply might well be something like, "just carry on down this road; there'll be a Texaco on your right-hand side after half a mile." "When did Susan leave the party?" "She left around ten." "Who is Barack Obama?" "He served as 44th president of the United States."

Questions and answers of this form are ubiquitous; answers of the "how" form are rare. In the age of Google and Wikipedia, one can always search the Internet for answers to such "how" questions; but they do not occur as often in everyday life as "wh" questions do. When—as may rarely happen—they are answered propositionally, the reply does not *really* answer the question; it cannot because it does not give the enquirer the *practical competence* she is seeking. Few people ever ask for the best description of the act of swimming; if one asks, "how do I swim?" that's not what one wants, anyway. The "how" question is posed with actual performance in mind. Experts typically impart *knowledge how* by demonstrating it, while the novice imitates what she is shown.<sup>3</sup> Stanley's analysis strikes us as

<sup>3</sup> We are simplifying, of course. In practice, there are multiple ways to learn and improve *knowledge how* without recourse to *knowledge that*. In addition to imitation, Johansson and Lynøe [20] (pp. 159–161) sugges<sup>t</sup> practicing on one's own, practicing with a tutor, and learning via "creative proficiency": a practical variation of creative thinking

contrived and not really addressing everyday life. To genuinely know how to do something—to gain that *knowledge how—*one must go ahead and *try* it.

Whereas questions and answers are generally sufficient to gather knowledge in the *wh* domain, they are of little help when it comes to knowledge how to perform a particular task—unless the task is truly simple, like "how do I start the coffee machine?" (to which the reply might be "push the red button"). Such simple questions are quite different from questions concerning how to ride a bike or swim, a point we will return to below. Indeed, we suppose that one could call them camouflaged *knowledge that* questions even though they seem to ask for *knowledge how*.<sup>4</sup> In any case, Stanley's interest is not in these simple cases but in complex activities like swimming or riding a bike.

Though Stanley puts a grea<sup>t</sup> deal of weight on answering questions about such activities, he does not claim that people ask and answer "how" questions in the way we have discussed. Instead, he has a special sense of answering questions in mind.
