JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY VOLUME INTRODUCTION: GILBERT RYLE ON PROPOSITIONS, VOLUME 5, NUMBER 5 PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES, AND THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE EDITOR IN CHIEF JULIA TANNEY KEVIN C. KLEMENt, UnIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS EDITORIAL BOARD ANNALISA COLIVA, UnIVERSITY OF MODENA AND UC IRVINE In the introduction to the special volume, Gilbert Ryle: Intelli- GaRY EBBS, INDIANA UnIVERSITY BLOOMINGTON gence, Practice and Skill, Julia Tanney introduces the contribu- GrEG FROSt-ARNOLD, HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES tions of Michael Kremer, Stina Bäckström and Martin Gustafs- HENRY JACKMAN, YORK UnIVERSITY son, and Will Small, each of which indicates concern about the SANDRA LaPOINte, MCMASTER UnIVERSITY appropriation of Ryle’s distinction between knowing-how and CONSUELO PRETI, THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY knowing-that in seminal work in contemporary epistemology. MARCUS ROSSBERG, UnIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT Expressing agreement with the authors that something has gone ANTHONY SKELTON, WESTERN UnIVERSITY awry in these borrowings from Ryle, Tanney takes this criticism MARK TEXTOR, KING’S COLLEGE LonDON to a deeper level. She argues that the very notion of content- AUDREY YAP, UnIVERSITY OF VICTORIA bearing, causally-efficacious mental states, let alone represen- RICHARD ZACH, UnIVERSITY OF CALGARY tational states of knowledge-that or knowledge-how, embodies the very presuppositions that Ryle calls into question in his re- REVIEW EDITORS jection of classical theories of meaning and his related warning SEAN MORRIS, METROPOLITAN STATE UnIVERSITY OF DenVER of the type-errors involved in conflating rational and mecha- SANFORD SHIEH, WESLEYAN UnIVERSITY nistic explanation. That these mental posits are presupposed, unchallenged, in today’s debates make his arguments against DESIGN intellectualism particularly difficult to discern. DaNIEL HARRIS, HUNTER COLLEGE JHAPONLINE.ORG SPECIAL ISSUE: GiLBERT RYLe: INTELLIGENCe, PRACTICe, SKILL © 2017 JULIA TANNEY EDITED BY JULIET FLOYD AND LyDIA PATTON VOLUME INTRODUCTION: GILBERT RYLE ON against a background in which Ryle is interpreted as advanc- PROPOSITIONS, PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES, AND ing behaviourist views, denying the existence of mental states, THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE clinging to a verificationist theory of meaning, or espousing a form of anti-realism about dispositions, and whose targets in JULIA TANNEY his discussion of intellectualism, if they can be discerned at all, are directed toward a “straw man”. The context, thus, is one in which some of the very assumptions that Ryle was so keen to dismantle are so entrenched that his arguments are practically impossible to fathom. INTRODUCTION To bring this home, however, will involve examining the top- ics of concern within the context of Ryle’s rejection of traditional This special issue of the Journal of the History of Analytic Philoso- theories of meaning whose key tenets are implicitly accepted in phy features critical discussions of recent work in epistemology discussions in analytic philosophy of mind and epistemology that engage with the writings of Gilbert Ryle. The particular today. Thus, after introducing the critical articles that make up focus of concern is with Ryle’s distinction between “knowledge- this special volume, I shall mark out a particular trail through how” and “knowledge-that” and his regress arguments against his body of work which allows us to grasp the radicalness of the intellectualist. Alarmed that Ryle is often accused of an his views in philosophical logic, how these affect the logical “anti-intellectualism” which reduces to mechanical habit, each implications or saying-power of expressions using, for exam- paper offers suggestions as to how one might find material for a ple, the verb “know”, and, finally, what disturbed him about middle ground between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism the rationalism embodied in, among other topics, the philoso- (thus understood) in Ryle’s discussion of dispositions, capac- phy of language, mind, maths, and morals. As we shall see, ities, abilities and tendencies and in his distinction between a fil conducteur throughout this tour concerns the notion of a habit and repetition on the one hand and skill and learning proposition and, correspondingly, that of a propositional atti- on the other. Important themes from Ryle’s work emerge and tude understood as a particular type of mental state. Much the authors offer their insights, by and large within a spirit of of the difficulty of assimilating Ryle into contemporary episte- cooperation with the burgeoning epistemological literature on mology and philosophy of mind is due to the fact that these “knowledge-how”. philosophical notions, highly problematic from Ryle’s point of Their correctives come as much-needed relief, for at the cen- view, are simply taken for granted in today’s discussions. tre of arguments in epistemology to which these papers allude are those that explore whether knowledge-how is propositional *** knowledge, whether Ryle takes knowing how to be a distinc- tive kind of non-propositional state, and whether a reasonable Michael Kremer sets the context of current debates in episte- intellectualist might hold that the action is guided by proposi- mology by quoting a key passage in which Ryle complains that tional knowledge in such a way that this does amount to some philosophers have not done justice to the familiar distinction be- sort of prior theoretical operation. These explorations occur tween knowing that something is the case and knowing how to JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY VOL. 5 NO. 5 [1] do things. They focus on the discovery of truths or facts, while Ryle would have been well aware of particular disputes across either ignoring “the discovery of ways and methods of doing a variety of disciplines. He suggests that philosophers such as things” or by attempting to reduce ways of gleaning knowledge G. F. Stout and Ryle’s own colleague Susan Stebbing represent to the discovery of facts. In assuming that intelligence “equates the intellectualist; the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, the politi- to the contemplation of propositions and is exhausted in this cal scientist Wallas, and the social scientist McDougall speak out contemplation” they face a vicious regress. For, as Kremer says, in favour of the anti-intellectualist. But the latter group, who summarising the argument, “intelligent acts must be backed by tended to emphasise instinct, emotion, subjective feelings, im- intelligent internal acts of considering regulative propositions, pulses, volitions, non-rational, and simple automatic behaviour which in turn must be backed by further intelligent internal are not espousing a position congenial to Ryle, who, Kremer acts of considering meta-regulative propositions, and so on, ad argues, would have had no truck with it either. Both, he claims, infinitum.” over-intellectualise the intellect. Kremer argues that Ryle is try- Kremer’s approach to the topic of intellectualism and the dis- ing to steer a middle ground between intellectualism and (what tinction between “knowledge-how” and “knowledge-that” is has become known as) “anti-intellectualism”. Ryle’s discussion distinctive and unique, for instead of considering the topic a- of “knowledge-how”, instead, emphasises the important aspect temporally, or in the light of today’s concerns, he turns to the of human rationality as a capacity for reasonableness, or the preoccupations of those in an array of disciplines who were capacity to get things right, that does not depend on prior de- likely to have influenced Ryle at the time he was writing. In liberation or theoretical reasoning. “Ryle’s ‘Intellectualist Legend’ in Historical Context” he takes In “Skill, Drill, and Intelligent Performance: Ryle and Intel- on the challenge, posed by at least one of the early reviewers of lectualism”, Stina Bäckström and Martin Gustafsson also diag- The Concept of Mind and still alive in the epistemological liter- nose a misunderstanding in those who view Ryle as an “anti- ature today, that Ryle’s opponent “intellectualist” was a straw intellectualist” in the sense Kremer identifies above. Urging that man. Kremer sets out to show whose views were in the target we reexamine what it means to think about what we are doing so range with a detailed examination of the decades-long debate that it does not fall foul either of the regress or collapse the between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism that spanned notion of being guided by instruction, they draw attention to the the disciplines of psychology, economics, political science, and type-distinction Ryle makes between intelligent action which sociology, as well as philosophy while Ryle was writing, with involves skill and learning on the one hand and mechanical special emphasis on the way this dialectic played out between habit, consisting of mere repetition and drill, on the other. This the two World Wars. It is a common assumption today that category distinction, they argue, can best be understood as a since Ryle argued vociferously against intellectualism, which he difference in form in which understanding, variability, learning, dubbed “the prevailing doctrine of the time”, he could safely being open to—and (I would add) adjusting one’s performance be called an “anti-intellectualist”. Kremer warns us against this in the light of—criticism, using one’s judgment in novel situa- assumption. tions, becoming a self-critic, and so on, play an essential role. Using what he calls “indirect evidence” from books