Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Fall Philosophy Lecture!


The Department of Philosophy, AU Philosophy Club, and phi sigma tau proudly sponsor the following presentation:



Understanding Knowing How

Dr. Evan Riley
Department of Philosophy
College of Wooster

Friday, September 25, 2015 at 3 pm
                   in the Ronk Lecture Hall (138), COE

In recent years, the philosopher Jason Stanley has been defending a doctrine of intellectualism about knowledge how. The basic thought is that knowing how to f is fundamentally knowing a proposition; it is as propositional as any other kind of knowledge that. This doctrine is of course contrary to Gilbert Ryle’s view (with which many still have sympathy) that there is a basic distinction of kind: knowing how to f (on the one hand) and knowing that p (on the other). Here, I consider an argument against Stanley’s intellectualism. The argument hinges on appeal to the nature of skilled performance, and comes in two stages. Stage one is an elementary objection, which I expect Stanley’s defender to answer by appeal to the concept of a practical mode of presentation (or practical way of thinking). In stage two, I submit this appeal to critical scrutiny and find it wanting. The lesson I draw is that knowing how to f should not be construed as the Stanley-style intellectualist would have it.





Evan Riley is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The College of Wooster, where he teaches such subjects as ethical theory, logic, political philosophy, biomedical ethics, and the philosophy of mind. He is a generalist by temperament and was educated at the Universities of Louisville and of Pittsburgh. Evan has published on the self-defeating character of libertarianism and on the poverty of Amartya Sen’s criticisms of Rawls.



If you have a mind, you should attend!  Please join us for an enlightening discussion!

No comments:

Post a Comment