PROCEEDINGS OF THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY HOSTING AND PUBLISHING TALKS IN PHILOSOPHY SINCE 1880
Knowing How to Reason Deductively CORINE BESSON
2020–2021 141ST SESSION CHAIRED BY BILL BREWER SENATE HOUSE VOLUME CXXI EDITED BY GUY LONGWORTH UNIVERSITY OF LONDON proceedings of the aristotelian society 141st session
issue no. 3 volume cxxi 2020–2021
knowing how to reason deductively
corine besson university of sussex
monday, 7 june 2021
17.30–19.15
online via zoom Please visit our website for further details
contact [email protected] www.aristoteliansociety.org.uk
© 2021 the aristotelian society biography
Corine Besson is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sussex. She did her undergraduate degree in Philosophy and French Literature at the University of Geneva. She went to Oxford for her postgraduate studies, to first do a B.Phil, and then write a D.Phil. on the relation of second-order logic to the theory of meaning.
Her research interests are in the philosophy of logic, epistemology, the philosophy of language, and the history of analytic philosophy. Her current work focuses mostly on how logic relates to reasoning — from foundational, normative and epistemological perspectives. She has just finished writing a book for Oxford University Press on the relevance of Lewis Carroll’s regress argument (in his Mind 1895 paper ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’) to key debates in the philosophy of logic and reasoning. Its (working) title is: Logic, Reasoning and Regresses: A Defence of Logical Cognitivism.
Corine also runs the Centre for Logic and Language (CeLL) at the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, London, and, together with Anandi Hattiangadi (Stockholm), she holds a three year grant from the Bank of Sweden on The Foundations of Epistemic Normativity.
editorial note
The following paper is a draft version that can only be cited or quoted with the author’s permission. The final paper will be published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Issue No. 3, Volume CXXI (2021). Please visit the Society’s website for subscription information: aristoteliansociety.org.uk. Knowing how to reason deductively
Corine Besson
For the Aristotelian Society June 7 2021
Introduction
I have always wanted to write about Gilbert Ryle’s account of logic, in particular his claim that deductive reasoning is governed by knowledge how. What better venue than the Aristotelian Society where, over 75 years ago, he first offered his views on the matter!
That logical knowledge, or, at any rate, some aspect of it, is knowledge how has become common currency in the epistemology of logic. Many agree with Ryle that those who have a capacity for deductive reasoning but lack explicit recognition of logical rules possess knowledge how of these rules. Here is a representative statement in a recent paper by Crispin Wright (2018):
Any rational subject knows a lot of logic. But for those who have not taken courses in logic, or otherwise thought about it, this knowledge is for the most part practical knowledge. It is Rylean ‘knowledge how’.
A kind of two-tier picture is suggested here, according to which ordinary, unreflective, knowledge of logic is Rylean knowledge how, and further knowledge, gained through training or reflection, is theoretical, perhaps a kind of knowledge that. As we will see, Ryle endorses a version of this picture.
This kind of two-tier picture is well motivated: ordinary reasoners surely do not have explicit or propositional knowledge of logical rules. Two familiar reasons can be given here: first that it would require implausible conceptual sophistication from them; second that it would lead to Carroll’s Regress (Carroll 1895). Carroll’s Regress, on which I focus, is famously offered by Ryle as a key reason to articulate knowledge of logical rules as knowledge how in the first instance, to articulate the kind of competence with logical rules that does not require explicit recognition. Epistemologists of logic have tended to endorse Ryle’s diagnosis of Carroll’s Regress, or at any rate of his view that meeting the challenge posed by the Regress requires logical knowledge to have a non-explicit or non-propositional element.1
My concern in this paper is whether ordinary, non-explicit competence with logical rules is adequately articulated in terms of Rylean knowing how, in light of Carroll’s Regress. (I set aside the issue of conceptual sophistication.) I argue that, while it might be fit to articulate ordinary logical competence, Rylean knowing how does not in fact help solve Carroll’s Regress the way Ryle understands it. I offer an alternative account, still Rylean in spirit, which serves both aims better.
Wright adds a footnote to the passage quoted above:
I take no stand here on the question, revived by Stanley and Williamson (2001), whether knowledge how is invariably sourced in propositional knowledge.
1 See for instance Boghossian (2001), Phillie (2006), Field (2009) and Engel (2016). 2
Stanley and Williamson argue, against Ryle and contemporary Rylean ‘Anti-Intellectualists’, for ‘Intellectualism’, the view that knowledge how is a species of knowledge that.2 This paper follows Wright in remaining neutral on the Intellectualist-Anti-intellectualist debate. But it relies on contemporary discussions of knowing how, especially of the notion of a skill, which is central to Ryle’s account, and central to all accounts of knowing how that I am aware of. However, one upshot of my discussion is that Rylean Anti-Intellectualism is no better placed than Intellectualism to address Carroll’s Regress. This is a significant outcome, since my sense is that very few epistemologists of logic would bet that Intellectualism can avoid Carroll’s Regress.3
The paper contains two parts: Part I presents Ryle’s views on knowing how to reason deductively and how he takes them to be supported by Carroll’s Regress; I introduce some general elements of Ryle’s views on knowing how and what he calls ‘intelligent action’, as they apply to the specific case logical knowledge and deductive reasoning. Part II argues that, while Ryle’s conception of knowing how might provide a good basis for an account of basic, ordinary logical competence, which I further develop, it offers no quick way to solve Carroll’s Regress – and in particular no better way than that afforded by Intellectualism.
Before starting, I should note that Ryle, and Intellectualists and Anti-Intellectualists, offer general accounts of the nature of knowing how. I am here only concerned with the case of knowing how to reason deductively and will consider only these accounts as applied to this specific case, without aiming to generalise.
Part I. Ryle on Knowing how to Reason Deductively
(i) Ryle and the ‘prevailing doctrine’
Ryle opposes the ‘prevailing doctrine’ (1945: 222) or the ‘intellectualist legend’ (1945: 228) of intelligent action. An ‘intelligent’ action is one for which ‘intelligence-predicates’ can be applied, such as ‘intelligent’, ‘clever’, ‘stupid’, ‘attentive’, ‘wise’, ‘unwise’; ‘logical’, ‘illogical’; ‘sensible’, ‘silly; etc. (1945: 222-225).4 Of intelligent action, the prevailing doctrine holds:5
2 Intellectualism has for instance recently been defended by Ginet (1975), Stanley and Williamson (2001), Snowdon (2003), Brogaard (2011), Stanley (2011), and Pavese (2015a); cognate Intellectualist views are offered in Bengson and Moffet (2011b) and Cath (2011). Current defenses of Anti-Intellectutalism include for example Noë (2005), Rumfitt (2003), Dreyfus (2007), Fridland (2012), Wiggins (2012), Carter and Pritchard (2015), Löwenstein (2017) and Hagbood-Coote (2019). 3 The application of knowing how to logic – what I call in the text ‘knowing how to reason deductively’ – is one of Ryle’s paradigmatic examples of knowing how; yet, it remains somewhat underexplored in two ways. On the one hand, general discussions of knowing how tend not to focus on the case of logic (but see Rumfitt (2011), Hornsby (2011) and Pavese (2015b) for notable exceptions). On the other hand, philosophers of logic tend not to engage directly with the current Intellectualist-Anti-Intellectualist debate. I speculate that this is partly because Intellectualism is simply taken to be too unlikely in the case of logic, partly for the reasons cited in the text and partly because Rylean Intellectualism sits well with the widely endorsed Wittgensteinian picture that deductive reasoning is non-cognitive or ‘blind’ rule- following (see Wittgenstein 1953: §219). See my (ms) for further discussion. 4 Ryle uses ‘intelligent’ in two ways: when an action is intelligent as opposed to stupid; and when an action is apt to be described using epithets relating to intelligence, as opposed to an action which is the product of reflex or mere habit (1949: 25). It is the second way that is of interest here and it is assumed that all the examples of reasoning considered in the text are intelligent as opposed to stupid. 5 I use ‘prevailing doctrine’ to describe Ryle’s opponent as he characterizes it, and ‘Intellectualism’ to talk about contemporary views according to which knowing how is a species of knowing that. 3
… (1) that Intelligence is a special faculty, the exercises of which are those specific internal acts which are called acts of thinking, namely, the operations of considering propositions; (2) that practical activities merit their titles ‘intelligent’, ‘clever’, and the rest only because they are accompanied by some such internal acts of considering propositions (and particularly ‘regulative’ propositions). (1945: 222)
According to this doctrine, to count as intelligent an action has to be preceded by an intelligent act of thinking, where thinking is construed as considering regulative propositions. These are for Ryle normative propositions that ‘regulate behaviour’, that tell you what to do or how to act.
Deductive reasoning – for instance from the premises to the conclusion of a valid argument – is for Ryle a canonical example of intelligent action. The prevailing doctrine has it that for such reasoning to count as intelligent, it has to be preceded by an act of considering a regulative proposition. Consider the following example to fix ideas:
Suppose that from your beliefs that it is raining, and that if it is raining the streets are wet, you reason to the belief that the streets are wet. This bit of reasoning – call it REASONING – follows the rule of Modus Ponens.
We can suppose also that, couched as a regulative proposition, Modus Ponens would be stated as a directive; for instance as follows:6
(Regulative) If you accept both P and (if P, then Q), then you ought to reason to Q.
The prevailing doctrine would then have it that, in REASONING, you first perform the action of considering (Regulative), and then apply it in your reasoning; such consideration would explain why the reasoning counts as intelligent.
(ii) Carroll’s Regress
In contrast with the prevailing doctrine, Ryle thinks that intelligence is ‘directly exercised’ in an action of reasoning such as that described in REASONING. Intelligent action requires no ‘shadow-act’ of contemplating regulative propositions’ (1945: 223):
‘… there is no gap between intelligence and practice corresponding to the familiar gap between theory and practice.’ (1945: 223)
There has to be, for Ryle, direct exercise of intelligence in reasoning, such that there is no room for thinking, no gap for contemplating a proposition such as (Regulative) – on pain of falling foul of Carroll’s Regress, to which he takes the prevailing doctrine to be susceptible.
I briefly sketch Carroll’s Regress in a way that makes salient the kind of interpretation of the Regress that Ryle is pushing for, thus somewhat departing from aspects of its original formulation.7 I use as illustration the example given in REASONING and the regulative proposition (Regulative).
6 This is just an example to fix ideas, not a final characterization. This is further discussed in Section (vi). 7 Ryle first discusses Carroll’s Regress in his (1945) Aristotelian Society paper, where he offers a general ‘two directions’ regress concerning the relation of propositional knowledge to intelligent action. Carroll’s Regress specifically relates to the second direction (and is also illustrated by Ryle’s famous pupil example). This is what is paraphrased in the text. In the Concept of Mind (1949: 30-32), he discusses the 4
Suppose that you believe both that it is raining and that if it is raining the streets are wet.
Suppose also that in order to successfully perform the intelligent action of drawing the conclusion that the streets are wet from these premises, you first had to consider (Regulative) and apply it to them.
This would bring you no closer to action: considering (Regulative) cannot directly issue in your drawing the conclusion. As Ryle puts it, there is a ‘gap’ between ‘that consideration and the practical application of the regulation’.
What to do? In Carroll’s Regress, it is suggested that you consider further and further propositions along the lines of (Regulative) as an attempt to bridge that gap, for instance:
(Regulative2) If you accept both P and (if P, then Q), and you accept (Regulative), then you ought to reason to Q.
Considering (Regulative2) puts you no closer to action than considering (Regulative) did – no closer to closing that gap.
And so considering further such principles, as is suggested in Carroll’s original statement, only leads to a regress.
Ryle (1945: 246) puts the suggestion in the following way:
[T]he gap between that consideration and the practical application of the regulation has to be bridged by some go-between process which cannot by the pre-supposed definition itself be an exercise of intelligence and cannot, by definition, be the resultant deed. This go-between application-process has somehow to marry observance of a contemplated maxim with the enforcement of behaviour. So it has to unite in itself the allegedly incompatible properties of being kith to theory and kin to practice, else it could not be the applying of the one in the other. For, unlike theory, it must be able to influence action, and, unlike impulses, it must be amenable to regulative propositions.
If nothing can have both such practical and theoretical properties, the splitting of this schizophrenic broker never ends. We have a regress, and no intelligent action ever gets started.
So we are still looking for an explanation of how your acceptance of the facts that it is raining and that if it is raining then the streets are wet might lead you – without a gap – to conclude that the streets are wet.
first direction of this general regress, not mentioning Carroll’s Regress. He comes back to the latter in his (1950) paper ‘“If”, “So”, “Because”’, but talks not about knowing how but rather about the semantic differences between words such as “if” (hypothetical), “so” (inference) and “because” (explanation)). It should be stressed that Ryle’s interpretation of Carroll’s Regress is one amongst many. See Besson (2018) for a critical survey of the Regress’s central interpretations and (ms) for a comprehensive study of Carroll’s Regress and its significance for the philosophy of logic. 5
This is where knowing how comes in for Ryle: it can explain the action of reasoning deductively without appeal to this kind of schizophrenic broker. It explains how intelligence can be manifested directly in action.
(iii) Knowing how and performance rules
Deductive reasoning for Ryle does not require the application of a regulative proposition such as (Regulative); it rather requires applying one’s knowledge how to reason according to a rule. In general, Rylean knowing how is knowledge of ‘methods’, ‘ways’ ‘rules’, criteria’, ‘maxims’, ‘precepts’ or ‘imperatives’ (See e.g. 1949: 29-30), which are not propositions. For instance, in the case of deductive reasoning:
…the intelligent reasoner is knowing rules of inference whenever he reasons intelligently…, but knowing such a rule is not a case of knowing an extra fact or truth; it is knowing how to move from acknowledging some facts to acknowledging others. Knowing a rule of inference is not possessing a bit of extra information but being able to perform an intelligent operation. Knowing a rule is knowing how. It is realised in performances which conform to the rule, not in theoretical citations of it. (1945: 227)
We know rules of inference but such knowledge is not a relation between a state of mind (knowledge) and an object (a proposition). It is no relation at all, but a kind of ability to reason in conformity with such rules.
Rules themselves are in the imperative because they are ‘disciplinary’, and ‘the idiom of the mentor’:
But when we try to express these principles (of fishing, cooking and logic) we find that they cannot easily be put in the indicative mood. They fall automatically into the imperative mood. Hence comes the awkwardness for the intellectualist theories of stating what are the truths or facts which we acknowledge when we acknowledge a rule or maxim. We cannot call an imperative a truth or falsehood. The Moral Law refuses to behave like a fact. You cannot affirm or deny Mrs Beeton’s recipes. So, in the hope of having it both ways, they tend to speak guardedly of the ‘validity’ rather than the ‘truth’ of such regulative propositions, an idiom which itself betrays qualms about the reduction of knowing-how to knowing-that. (1945: 231)8
While Ryle offers no example of a rule of inference, a straightforward proposal for Modus Ponens is the following imperative:
(!) If you accept both P and (if P then Q): reason to Q!9
8 There is much more to say about this passage. Let me make just one brief remark, which I develop elsewhere (see my ms). Ryle’s favourite examples of knowing how are playing chess, fishing, performing military procedures, and cooking, which he uses indiscriminately as instances of the same phenomenon. However, the case of logic is strikingly singular: you can decide to learn chess, fishing, cooking, etc., but you cannot decide to become logically competent – an average human being has no choice, and cannot opt in or out of knowing some logic. To that extent, logic is a very atypical rule-bound activity (provided this is the proper way to characterise it), very different from other standard examples of knowing how. A natural comparison here is with knowing a language, which some have argued is a rule-bound activity best characterised as knowing how (see Devitt 2011). But equally, for exactly these reasons, it could be argued that logical and linguistic competence do not have enough of the hallmarks of knowledge how. 9 As the passage quoted below highlights, Ryle appears to think that Aristotelian Syllogistic is logic’s canon. This is slightly puzzling for someone who writes in the 1940s and makes abundant reference to 6
Another characteristic of such rules is that they are ‘performance rules’, ‘which enable us to grade a given performance as correct or incorrect, legitimate or illegitimate’ (1946: 240): they are norms of action. What this means for Ryle is that they only apply to performance – to behaviour – and do not describe anything; in particular they do not describe or apply to the world (1946: 241).10 Indeed they are abstractions from reasoners’ behaviour, i.e. from actual inferences:
When people can reason intelligently, logicians can then extract the nerve of a range of similar inferences and exhibit this nerve in a logician’s formula. And they can teach it in lessons to novices who first learn the formula by heart and later find out how to detect the presence of a common nerve in a variety of formally similar but materially different arguments. But arguing intelligently did not before Aristotle and does not after Aristotle require the separate acknowledgement of the truth or ‘validity’ of the formula. (1945: 227; see also 1945: 231; 1946: 243, and 1949: 30, 48.)
This passage offers a version of the two-tier picture of logical knowledge sketched in the Introduction: people know how to reason deductively through practice, trial and error, etc.; they apply performance rules in reasoning. Logicians identify patterns in materially different arguments and codify these into general rules, such as (!). These can then be taught to ‘novices’ with basic knowing how, who can then apply them better and eventually come to have explicit knowledge of these rules – come to have a more intellectual kind of knowing how, we might say.11
(iv) Reflexes, habits and skills
Knowing how is knowing a rule, where this is construed as having a kind of ability. Such abilities are for Ryle multi-track dispositions or ‘higher-grade dispositions [t]he exercise of which are indefinitely heterogeneous’ (1949: 44), which he calls ‘skills’:
[T]he intelligence of the action is the result of a skill… a disposition or complex of dispositions. (1949: 33).
A skill is contrasted with other kinds of dispositions (1949: 30), such as reflexes (knee-jerk reactions), physical dispositions (one’s proneness to headaches) and habits (the tendency to talk loudly, being a smoker, walking, the ability to slope arms, recite the alphabet or multiplication tables), which are typically single-track dispositions (‘one performance is a replica of its predecessors’).
Frege and Russell in other writings. However, it does not matter here which logic or which logical rules we focus on. My canonical example is Modus Ponens, since it is the basic logical principle typically used in contemporary discussions in the epistemology of logic, and most people agree that it is valid. 10 According to Ryle the adjective ‘logical’ is a ‘semi-dispositional, semi-episodic epithet’ (1949: 47), referring both to the dispositions and to the activity of reasoning deductively, but to nothing else. 11 Ryle’s picture of logical rules is problematic in several respects. For instance, logicians typically do not think of logical rules as generalisations over people’s reasoning behaviour (even if they do not think that logic describe a mind-independent reality). Also, while logic may be normative, it is unclear that this should be articulated in terms of imperatives (see Boghossian 2008: 474ff for effective criticism of the imperative view of rules and for the point that not all logical rules can be states as imperatives). Finally, it is unclear how to derive any normativity from performance for the familiar reason that there is no straightforward path from ‘people do F’ or ‘people tend to do F’, to ‘people ought to do F’ or ‘Do F!’. See Rumfitt (2011: 334-340) for discussion. 7
Looking at Ryle’s contrast between habits and skills helps us understand how he thinks of intelligent action: both are ‘second natures’ or acquired dispositions. But while having a habit to do something means doing it ‘automatically and without having to mind what [one] is doing’, i.e. ‘blindly’, and is simply the result of ‘drill’, skill is the result of ‘training’: some drilling, some trial and error, careful consideration, etc. (1949: 42). Having a skill, unlike having a habit, is a cognitive achievement, albeit one different from that of having propositional knowledge. For instance, the intelligent reasoner reasons logically, avoids fallacies, remains consistent, considers arguments carefully, is thoughtful in her thinking, responsive to arguments, etc. She is not this way as a result of luck or habit but because she has become, through such complex ‘exercise’, reliable in her application of a rule or method in action, which has become second nature.
A key feature of Rylean skill that is widely acknowledged in current debates over the nature of knowing how is that exercise of such skill is ‘indefinitely heterogeneous’, and in particular that skill can be seamlessly applied to ‘novel’ situations that have not yet been encountered. For instance, the skilled reasoner can seamlessly apply their knowledge of a rule in indefinitely many contexts, for many different purposes, and in reasoning situations that they have not encountered before. 12 Any account of knowing how has to underwrite such indefinite heterogeneity in application. However, one thing that is disputed in current debates is the extent to which such heterogeneity requires control on the part of the agent in the application of skill in action – the extent to which it requires manifestation of a skill to be a conscious, personal, voluntary process that demands attending to the action (see Fridland 2014 for discussion). I mention these issues here because Part II’s discussion of the skill involved in deductive reasoning speaks to them.
Part II. Rylean knowing how and avoiding Carroll’s Regress
(v) Inconsistent requirements
My discussion of the merits of Ryle’s account of knowing how to reason deductively focuses on two features highlighted in Part 1. The first is that it helps with avoiding Carroll’s Regress. For Ryle, this means that an account of knowing how to reason deductively has to meet the following requirement:
(1) There is no ‘gap’, no ‘go-between’ mental activity of considering the relevant rule/principle, between accepting the premises and drawing the conclusion.
The second requirement is that knowing how to reason deductively is a skill, a multi-track disposition whose manifestation is varied and open-ended:
(2) Knowing how is a skill, whose manifestation in intelligent action is ‘indefinitely heterogeneous’.
I show that (1) and (2) form inconsistent requirements. I explain why we should hold on to (2) and why it is necessary to abandon (1); (1) thus better not be required to meet the challenge posed by Carroll’s Regress.
Before proceeding, let me articulate a way in which (1) and (2) impose different requirements
12 In this connection, Dreyfus (1991, 2005) offers a ‘novelty challenge’ to Intellectualism, the challenge to explain how propositional knowledge could ever explain the fact that people can apply their knowledge how to situations that they have not yet encountered. See Stanley & Williamson (2017) for discussion. 8
that will be helpful for the following discussion. Consider again the passage discussed in Section (ii) in connection with Carroll’s Regress, here only partly quoted:
… knowing such a rule … is knowing how to move from acknowledging some facts to acknowledging others. (1945: 227)
Here, we might say that Ryle speaks not of reasoning but of inference: a mental action of going from ‘acknowledged’ facts to other ‘acknowledged’ facts that follow from the first. The sort of competence Ryle invokes to address Carroll’s Regress is simply one of having the skill to infer from acknowledged truth to acknowledged truth.13 By contrast, requirement (2) fits the idea of reasoning, the thoughtful, varied, open-ended application of a skill for various reasoning purposes or activities, that might sometimes involve going from acknowledged truths to acknowledged truths, but sometimes not: it might involve other mental states (e.g. suppositions, known falsehoods) and other manifestations than simply ‘inferring’ a conclusion. (1) demands that we think of knowing how to reason deductively as a competence for inference and (2) demands that we think of it as one for reasoning. In the case of Modus Ponens, the contrast could be stated as that between knowing how to infer following Modus Ponens and knowing how to use Modus Ponens in reasoning.
(vi) The intelligent reasoner and reasoned change in view
Consider requirement (2), the fact that the intelligent reasoner is skilled, possesses a multi-track disposition whose exercise is indefinitely heterogeneous. One of the many situations in which such skill is deployed is illustrated by Harmanian reasoned change in view (see Harman, 1986).14 Thus consider the following scenario:
(Ironing) Suppose that you are doing your ironing with the radio in the background. Very absorbed in your task, you pay no attention to the radio and lose track of time. Suddenly you look at your watch and come to believe that it has just gone 6pm. You realize that if it has just gone 6pm, then the news is on. You pay attention to the radio and hear that it is not the news at all but already the programme that follows it. Being a rational agent you do not conclude that the news is on. Given that you are listening to the BBC, you have more reasons to think that your watch has stopped than that they have changed their programme. So you reject your initial belief that it has just gone 6pm.
Here, intuitively, you exploit your knowledge of Modus Ponens to revise your initial views, rather than reason to what these views logically entail by Modus Ponens.
In the forthcoming sections, I use (Ironing) as an adequacy condition for an account of knowing how to reason deductively: (Ironing) involves manifestation of knowledge of Modus Ponens, and so an account of the skill that is possessed by one who knows Modus Ponens should help explain how such knowledge is manifested.15 I argue that an account of knowledge how that
13 See Rumfitt (2011) for insightful criticism of this Rylean conception of inference. 14 Harman puts forward cases change in view to express skepticism about the very idea that we might follow logical rules in reasoning: he suggests that deductive reasoning might not exist at all (1986: 6) or that we do not ‘employ’ deductive logic in reasoning (2009, p. 334). I do not address these skeptical worries here. 15 (Ironing) involves broadly epistemic reason for revising one’s views – to do with evidence and truth. There might also be practical or prudential reasons not to draw conclusions: a considered conclusion might be morally wrong or psychologically harmful to accept. For brevity, I set these aside. (See Murzi 9
meets this adequacy condition is unable to meet requirement (1) – that there is no ‘gap’, no ‘go- between’ mental activity of considering the relevant rule/principle, between accepting the premises and drawing the conclusion – designed to avoid Carroll’s Regress.
Consider again our Rylean rule for Modus Ponens:
(!) If you accept both P and (if P then Q): accept Q!
Knowledge of (!) would not help explain how knowledge of Modus Ponens is exploited in (Ironing). Such knowledge would be manifested simply in the case in which, having accepted your premises, you accept your conclusion. But again, in (Ironing) you do not reason to Q, because you have evidence that it is false.
One could insist that you do in fact reason to Q in (Ironing): you come to believe that it is 6pm and that if it is 6pm, the news is on; you conclude that the news is on (while bizarrely having evidence that the news is not on); you then realise that something has to go and so reject that it is 6pm. On this interpretation of (Ironing), you have to reach an outright contradiction before revising. But this is counterintuitive. It is surely possible to appreciate or see the commitment of your beliefs without embracing them: seeing that B follows from your belief in A does not require you to believe B. On this interpretation it does, and this is mistaken.
(vii) Wide scope principles and dispositions
Many think that reasoned change in view favours wide scope reasoning principles – such as the following, which is the wide scope version of (Regulative) of Section (i):
16 (Regulativewide) S ought to be such that [if S accepts P and (if P, then Q), S accepts Q].
(Regulativewide) is compatible with the fact that there are various ways of manifesting knowledge of Modus Ponens depending on the attitudes you take to your premises. It could thus be used as an inspiration for articulating the Rylean idea of knowing how to reason deductively as articulated in requirement (2).
There is no straightforward way of articulating the wide-/narrow-scope distinction for imperatives such as (!). You effectively have to capture such width by appealing to sub-rules, for instance as follows:
(!1) If you accept P and (if P, then Q): accept Q! (!2) If you reject P and accept (if P, then Q): do not accept Q! 17 (!3) If you accept P and reject (if P, then Q): do not accept Q! and Steinberger (2013: 179) for discussion). I also do not consider more mundane reasons why drawing a conclusion might not occur in a given context: you might do nothing whatsoever once you have accepted P and (if P, then Q) – get distracted, interrupted, or do something unrelated. 16 How exactly to formulate such wide-scope principles is a much debated matter. See McFarlane (2004) and Steinberger (2017) for discussion. 17 Notice that (!1)-(!3) goes beyond (Regulativewide) conceptually speaking: (!1)-(!3) speak both of acceptance of rejection, and provide that rejection can be defined in terms of acceptance and negation, as the standard Frege-Geach view of assertion suggests (see Geach 1965), they also speak of negation. If so, (!2) is effectively a version of Modus Tollens, which would suggest, somewhat unintuitively, that knowing Modus Ponens encompasses knowing Modus Tollens. See Rumfitt (2000) for an alternative view of rejection, according to which rejection is a sui generis mental action, conceptually independent from negation. 10
From this, a partial and approximate articulation of knowledge of Modus Ponens articulated as a complex disposition might go as follows, call it ‘(Disposition)’:
(Disposition1) The disposition to accept Q, from accepting P and (if P, then Q). (Disposition2) The disposition to reject Q, from rejecting P and accepting (if P, then Q). 18 (Disposition3) The disposition to reject Q, from accepting P and rejecting (if P, then Q).
Now consider (Ironing) again. Given (Disposition), you start with the belief P, that it is 6pm; and if P, then Q, that if it is 6pm then the news is on. At this stage (Disposition1) kicks in. So you should form the belief Q, that the news is on—this is the appropriate manifestation of (Disposition1). However, again, you do not do this, you do not accept Q.
The problem here is that given (Disposition1), (Ironing) is treated as a case where, to put it in the parlance of the metaphysics of dispositions, the condition of manifestation obtains but there is no manifestation, and so as a case of falsifying exception to the disposition: dispositions cannot fail to manifest when their conditions of manifestation obtain. Thus, as things stand, you appear to have lost (Disposition1), which was destroyed when you failed to believe Q. (Disposition1) partly constitutes knowing how to reason according to Modus Ponens, and it was assumed that you had this knowledge when you started your reasoning, so this knowledge was somehow lost.
There are many suggestions about how to weaken dispositions so as to preserve the idea that a disposition is retained even if it is not manifested. Philosophers have appealed, for instance, to the idea that a disposition might be masked – prevented from being manifested in the relevant circumstances by an external factor.19 It is important to stress here that (Ironing) does not present us with a case in which the relevant disposition/skill/knowing how is not manifested – it is – but it is not manifested in a way captured by (Disposition).20 What we need here is a kind of disposition that someone can manifest while not (immediately) reasoning to Q once they have accepted P and if P, then Q; a disposition that allows the manifestation to stop short of accepting Q.
18 This formulation raises a host of issues in the metaphysics of dispositions. First, the way (Disposition) is stated can be naturally unpacked as a series of conditionals, with the manifestation conditions in their antecedents and the manifestation in their consequent. I do not mean to promote a conditional view of dispositions (see Vetter 2013, 2014 for criticisms of such views), (Disposition) is just a toy example; but I note that the antecedent-consequent structure of conditionals sits well with the premise-conclusion structure of logical rules. Second, (Disposition) is not a multi-track disposition in the sense discussed in debates over the nature of dispositions, where a multi-track disposition is one which has several conditions of manifestation but one kind of manifestation. (Disposition) states both different kinds of conditions of manifestation and different kinds of manifestations. My sense is that a theory of skill, if it is articulated in terms of dispositions, will need to talk of multi-track dispositions in this way, and so I continue using the label. Third, (Disposition), just like (Regulative) and its wide scope version, constitutes only a partial and approximate articulation of the relevant skills because, for instance, it considers only the mental states of acceptance and rejection (and not for instance supposition, suspension of judgment, etc.); it does not factor in various contextual features that have to be equal (for instance those alluded in footnote 15); it might be too general (perhaps the disposition should by typed to different specific contents for P and Q); and of course the relevant skill might not be finitely specifiable. 19 In my (2012) paper on dispositional accounts of logical knowledge, I evaluate several proposals to articulate how such knowledge works, such as appealing to masks or antidotes (see Johnston (1992)) or restricting the statement of the manifestation conditions and appealing to an account in terms of habituals (see Fara 2005). I argue that none of these are adequate for our purposes. 20 11
(viii) Weaker dispositions
One initially plausible candidate for such a weaker disposition to replace (Disposition1) is (Pro- 21 Attitude1) – which does not require the disposition to be manifested in terms of acceptance of Q:
(Pro-Attitude1) The disposition to form a pro-attitude towards reasoning to Q, from accepting both P and (if P, then Q).
(Pro-Attitude1) can handle (Ironing) because manifesting (Pro-Attitude1) does not require any actual reasoning to Q: having accepted P and (if P, then Q), you form a pro-attitude towards accepting Q. You come to accept not-Q, cease to have this pro-attitude, and reject P. However, it is unclear why in (Ironing) you should form a pro-attitude towards accepting that the news is on, given that you have evidence that it is false. It does not seem to be the case that whenever you accept both P and (if P, then Q), you should always form a pro-attitude towards accepting Q. Sometimes you should not, and whether you should is sensitive to the context and the content of the beliefs that figure in the reasoning.
A better way to state a weaker disposition appeals to the mental state of considering accepting Q:22
(Consider1) The disposition to consider accepting Q, from accepting both P and (if P, then Q).
If knowing Modus Ponens requires (Consider1), it is exercised in (Ironing): this disposition makes good sense of the fact that one can exercise knowledge of Modus Ponens without reasoning to Q, indeed without even forming a pro-attitude towards reasoning to Q. It fits the intuition on which cases of change in view rely: that one can see the commitments of one’s beliefs without endorsing these commitments.
Let us try to flesh out in more detail what goes on in (Ironing): you start with accepting both that it is 6pm and that if it is 6pm then the news is on. At this point (Consider1) kicks in, and you consider accepting that the news is on. That the news is on is inconsistent with your evidence that the news is not on. Perhaps because you have a disposition not to believe outright contradictions, you reject that the news is on. At this point, perhaps the following disposition – which can be tied to your capacity to reason according to Modus Tollens – kicks in, which eventually leads to the rejection of P, that the news is on:
The disposition to consider rejecting P from rejecting Q and accepting if, P, then Q.
What seems clear is that there will be an array of dispositions capturing knowledge of different rules and ways to respond to evidence that will need to be in place to account for reasoned change in view – the story is already quite complex in a simple case such as (Ironing). (Consider1) will also need many companion dispositions to get close to an articulation of what it is to have the skill to use Modus Ponens in reasoning so as to underwrite that this skill’s manifestation is indefinitely heterogeneous. But I hope this is a good start.
21 This, of course, is also not captured by (Regulative) nor by (Regulativewide). I set aside the issue of how to revise these regulative propositions, which are just used as foils, and focus on the issue of the proper way of articulating the relevant skill/disposition. 22 This suggestion is made in Murzi and Steinberger (2013: 178) as a reply to my (2012). 12
(ix) Carroll’s Regress and Ryle’s ‘no gap’
Consider again requirement (1) stated in Section (v):
(1) There is no ‘gap’, no ‘go-between’ mental activity of considering the relevant rule/principle, between accepting the premises and drawing the conclusion.
As seen in Section (ii), according to Ryle, an account of knowing how has to meet (1) to avoid Carroll’s Regress. The problem is that (Consider1) cannot do the job Ryle wants knowing how to reason deductively to do: to directly, without any kind of ‘go-between process’, take you to a given conclusion once you have accepted the relevant premises. All that it does is take you directly to consider that conclusion. To take you to accepting the conclusion from considering it, something else has to be factored in, which you may as well call a ‘go-between process’.
If so, it appears that it is no longer the case that the Regress constitutes an objection to the intellectualist ‘prevailing doctrine’ which, by contrast, Rylean knowing how can easily meet. As far as the Regress is concerned, both seem to face similar problems: they both have to explain how reasoning occurs, while acknowledging some gap between manifesting knowing how and actually reasoning to a conclusion – thus requiring other mental states/processes to play some kind of role in explaining the issuing of the action of drawing a conclusion. It may be that they will have very different things to say about what these mental states/processes are, but overall they are in similar positions in explaining how reasoning to a conclusion on the basis of one’s knowledge might in fact occur.
So, (1) and (2) impose inconsistent requirements; and (2), the requirement that manifesting skill in intelligent action is indefinitely heterogeneous, is highly plausible. To put it in a way suggested in Section (v), it is desirable that knowing how of a rule of logic can accommodate the various actions that count as reasoning using the rule – where that includes change in view – and is not confined to accommodating inferring from accepted premises to accepted conclusion. It has to accommodate both knowing how to infer following Modus Ponens and knowing how to use Modus Ponens in reasoning. If so knowing how has to satisfy requirement (2), and we have to find a way of not falling foul of Carroll’s Regress while failing to meet (1).
The general issue here is that of what goes between knowing how/skill and action. It relates to that mentioned at the end of Section (iv), concerning the heterogeneous applicability of skill and the fact that it is disputed the extent to which this application, given its heterogeneity, is a controlled, personal, voluntary process. While I cannot do justice to this debate, I briefly consider two views on the matter, explaining why I think one is preferable.23
An example of the first is offered by Jason Stanley, who argues that manifesting knowing how in action is the product of sub-personal mechanisms, a kind of ‘automatic processing’ (2011: 26). To elaborate, he cites Fodor:
[K]nowledge doesn’t eventuate in behavior in virtue of its propositional content alone. It seems obvious that you need mechanisms to put what you know into action; mechanisms that function to bring the organization of behavior into conformity with the propositional structures that are cognized. (1983: 9)
23 Much of the rapidly expanding literature on skilled action focuses on how to account for different degrees of expertise and how to account for expert skills, where skilled agents exhibit great degrees of sophistication and precision in a seamless way. See Dreifus (2007), Stanley (2011), Stanley and Krakauer (2013), and Fridland (2014). 13
The operations of these mechanisms are not under our rational control: they are ‘automatic processes mediating between a bit of propositional knowledge and the action that it guides’.24 So the gap here is filled by some sub-personal go-between process that relate the content of what is known – construed by Stanley as a proposition with some intrinsic connection to skills – to the relevant action.
This construal however does not quite capture the natural way of describing reasoned change in view, which seems to be a personal activity and requires a degree of intentionality and control on the part of the agent. After all, reasoned change in view is reasoned; it suggests that agent is responding to reasons – in the case of (Ironing), to evidence that it is false that the news is on. It thus seems unnatural to construe this as the result of sub-personal processing.
An example of the second is offered by Ellen Fridland (2014), who argues against views that characterise manifestation of skill/knowledge how merely as the result of a sub-personal causal mechanism, on the grounds that these cannot underwrite the fact that intelligent action is a controlled action, where exercising control is in some parts a voluntary process. In particular, manifestation of skill requires ‘strategic control’, exercise of which may partly be a conscious personal and voluntary process, requiring attending to the action. Such control has to do with the ‘goals, plans and strategies’ that you use as a guide for how you manifest your knowledge in various contexts and situations, and so is naturally thought of as voluntary, accessible to you, and susceptible to deliberative processes (Fridland 2014: 2744ff).
While Fridland does not consider examples of skills to do with deductive reasoning, her view appears to be apt to explain reasoned change in view. Consider (Ironing) again. To consider the possibility that the news is on, but reject it in light of evidence that it is false, requires you to have strategic control over how you exercise your skill/knowledge of Modus Ponens that have to do with your goals, plans or strategies. What might these be in this case? In (Ironing), they are naturally construed as having to do with the desirability to avoid believing falsehoods. In other reasoning contexts, they might have to do with the desire for truth, knowledge and the like; or an interest for useful information, perhaps for some practical purposes; or simply the plan to entertain oneself with some puzzles or to learn some logic.
One might thus have many plans that determine how one manifests knowing how to use Modus Ponens in reasoning. Carroll’s Regress presents us with someone who has accepted some premises, perhaps those stated in REASONING of Section (iii). What makes them draw a conclusion from these premises? The proposal is this. They know how to use Modus Ponens in reasoning, where such skill can be partially specified in terms of (Consider1). They manifest their skill by reasoning to the conclusion in light of their goals and plans. These constitute our go-between mental processes/states that stand between knowledge how/skill and action.
Concluding Remarks
The proposal just sketched still offers a Rylean story about skills and knowing how to reason deductively, but one that preserves requirement (2) at the expense of requirement (1). There is of course a lot more that needs to be said about this proposal. For instance, what does this ‘in light for their goals and plans’ really mean? One might worry here that it in fact means contemplating some kind of proposition about one’s plans or goals or reasons etc., and so leads us straight back to Carroll’s Regress. It is also unclear how this broker in terms of plans and goals speaks to Ryle’s worry that what goes between knowing how and action might have to be schizophrenic – i.e. have the incompatible properties of being both practical and theoretical. I
24 See e.g. Bengson and Moffet (2011a: 21ff) for discussion. 14
have not spoken to this issue.
Another worry is that this proposal is too much like Intellectualism in that it is, for lack of a better word, more ‘cognitive’ than perhaps it initially appeared. But Rylean knowing how is in any case in some ways quite close to propositional knowledge. In Section (iv), I briefly explained how for Ryle knowing how sits tight between habit and propositional knowledge. And perhaps some of the difficulties the account faces in meeting both requirements (1) and (2) have to do with the fact that it might sit too tightly: on the one hand, Ryle sometimes wants knowing how to be very like a habit, as when he cashes out the idea that knowing how is directly, blindly, manifested in intelligent action in terms of automatism and directedness; on the other, he sometimes it wants it to be very like propositional knowledge the way he characterises it, in being the manifestation of knowing rules, which requires ‘judgment’ and ‘thinking’ about what one is doing. In our case, we might again put this as Ryle wanting skill with Modus Ponens to be both knowing how to infer following Modus Ponens, perhaps a little like a habit to do one thing, where one manifestation is the replica of another, and knowing how to use Modus Ponens in reasoning, with all the sophistication that this requires. This paper has argued that we should privilege the latter, as offering a better understanding of knowing how to reason deductively. This understanding brings it closer to Intellectualism.
Thus if a two-tier picture of logical reasoning were to be offered it would be one where ordinary reasoners have knowledge how – understood as knowing how to use a logical principle in reasoning – which they may or may not at some point reflect on. Such knowledge reflects the fact that ordinary reasoners are intelligent in that they can manifest their knowledge how in a way that is indefinitely heterogeneous, for instance in revising their views in a rational, controlled, manner.
15
Bibliography
Bengson, John and Moffett Marc A. (2011a). ‘Two Conceptions of Mind and Action: Knowing How and the Philosophical Theory of Intelligence’, in John Bengson and Marc A. Moffett (eds), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind and Action, New York: Oxford University Press: 3-55. ― (2011b). ‘Nonpropositional Intellectualism’, in John Bengson and Marc A. Moffett (eds), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind and Action, New York: Oxford University Press: 161-195. Bengson, John. and Moffett Marc A. (eds), (2011c). Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind and Action, New York: Oxford University Press. Besson, Corine. (ms) Logic, Reasoning, and Carroll’s Regress (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). ― (2018). ‘Reasons, Norms and Reasoning: A Guide through Lewis Carroll’s Regress Argument’. In Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2018): 505-529. ― (2012). ‘Logical Knowledge and Ordinary Reasoning’, Philosophical Studies 158: 59-82. Boghossian, Paul A., (2001). ‘How are Objective epistemic Reasons Possible?’, Philosophical Studies, 106: 1–40. ― (2003). ‘Blind Reasoning’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 77: 225–248. Brogaard, Berit. (2011). ‘Knowledge How: A Unified Account’, in John Bengson and Marc A. Moffett (eds), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind and Action, New York: Oxford University Press: 136-160. Carter, J. Adam and Pritchard, Duncan. (2015). ‘Knowledge How and Cognitive Achievement’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91(1): 181-100. Carroll, Lewis. (1895). ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’, Mind 4: 278–280. Devitt, Michael. (2011). ‘Linguistic Knowledge’, in John Bengson and Marc A. Moffett (eds), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind and Action, New York: Oxford University Press: 314-333. Dreyfus, Hubert, (2007). ‘The Return of the Myth of the Mental’, Inquiry 50 (4): 352-365. ― (2002). ‘Intelligence without Representation: Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Representation’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1: 367-383. Engel, Pascal. (2016). ‘The Philosophical Significance of Carroll’s Regress’, in Francine Abeles and Amirouche Moktefi (eds) ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’ Lewis Carroll’s Paradox of Inference, The Carrollian 28: 84–111. Fara, Michael. (2005). ‘Dispositions and habituals’, Noûs 39: 43–82. Field, Hartry. (2009). ‘What is the Normative Role of Logic?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 83: 251–268. Fodor, Jerry. (1983). The Modularity of the Mind, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fridland, Ellen. (2014). ‘They’ve Lost Control: Reflections on Skill’. Synthèse 191: 2729-2750. ― (2012). ‘Knowing How: Problems and Considerations’, European Journal of Philosophy 23(3): 703-727. Geach, Peter, (1965). ‘Assertion’, The Philosophical Review 74(4): 449-465. Reprinted in Logic Matters, pp. 254–269. Oxford: Blackwell. Ginet, Carl. (1975). Knowledge, Perception and Memory, Boston: Riedel. Hagbood-Coote, Joshua. (2019). ‘Knowledge-How, Abilities and Questions’, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97(1): 86-104. Harman, Gilbert, (2009). ‘Field on the Normative Role of Logic’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 109: 333–335. ― (1986). Change in View: Principles of Reasoning, Cambridge: MI T Press. 16
Hornsby, Jennifer. (2011).‘Ryle’s Knowing-How and Knowing How to Act’, in John Bengson and Marc A. Moffett (eds), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind and Action, New York: Oxford University Press: 333–359. Johnston, Mark (1992). ‘How to Speak of the Colors’, Philosophical Studies 68: 221–263. Löwenstein, David. (2017). Know-how as Competence. A Rylean Responsibilist Account, ‘Studies in Theoretical Philosophy’, Vol. 4, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. MacFarlane, John. (2004, unpublished). ‘In What Sense (If Any) is Logic Normative for Thought?’. Murzi, Julian and Steinberger, Florian. (2013). ‘Is Logical Knowledge Dispositional?’, Philosophical Studies 166 (1): 165–183. Noë, Alva. (2005). ‘Against Intellectualism’, Analysis 65(4): 278-290. Pavese, Carlotta (2015a). ‘Practical Senses’, Philosophers’ Imprint 15(29): 1–25. ― (2015b). ‘Knowing a Rule’, Philosophical Issues, 25(1): 165–188 Phillie, Patrice, (2007). ‘Carroll’s Regress and the Epistemology of Logic’, Philosophical Studies 134: 183-210. Rumfitt, Ian. (2000). ‘‘‘Yes’’ and ‘‘No’’’, Mind 109: 787–829. ― (2003). ‘Savoir Faire’, The Journal of Philosophy 100: 158-166. ― (2011). ‘Inference, Deduction, Logic’, in John Bengson and Marc A. Moffett (eds), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind and Action, New York: Oxford University Press: 333– 359. Ryle, Gilbert, (1950). ‘If, So, Because’, in Max Black (ed.) Philosophical Analysis, Cornell: Cornell University Press: 302-18. Reprinted in (1971) Collected Papers, vol. 2, London: Hutchinson: 244-260. ― (1949). The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson. ― (1946). ‘Why Are Calculuses of Logic and Arithmetic Applicable to Reality?’ Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Vol.20: 20–29. Reprinted in (1971) Collected Papers, vol. 2, London: Hutchinson: 236-243. ― (1945). ‘Knowing How and Knowing That’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 46: 1- 16. Reprinted in (1971) Collected Papers, vol. 2, London: Hutchinson: 222-235. Snowdon, Paul. (2003). ‘Knowing How and Knowing That: A Distinction Reconsidered’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104: 1-29. Stanley, Jason, (2011). Knowing How, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stanley, Jason and Krakauer, John W. (2013). ‘Motor Skill Depends on Knowledge of Facts’, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7. Stanley, Jason and Williamson, Timothy. (2001). ‘Knowing How’, The Journal of Philosophy 98: 411–444. Steinberger, Florian, (2017). ‘The Normative Status of Logic’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
president: Bill Brewer (KCL)
president-elect: Robert Stern (Sheffield)
honorary director: Rory Madden (UCL)
editor: Guy Longworth (Warwick)
executive committee: Alexander Douglas (St Andrews) Sarah Fine (KCL) / Nicholas K. Jones (Birmingham) / Heather Logue (Leeds) Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (KCL) / Barbara Sattler (St Andrews) Helen Steward (Leeds)
managing editor: Holly de las Casas
assistant editor: David Harris
designer: Mark Cortes Favis
administrator: Nikhil Venkatesh
www.aristoteliansociety.org.uk