Can You Truly Know How Without Being Able to Explain?

Can You Truly Know How Without Being Able to Explain?

Someone may ride a bicycle competently yet be unable to explain the tiny movements used to maintain balance. We would still normally say that the person knows how to ride. This suggests that knowing how and knowing that something is true may differ. Memorising propositions about steering, balance and speed does not automatically produce the ability to ride, while a reliable rider may not be able to turn the movement into an instruction manual.

In The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle challenged what he called the ‘intellectualist legend’: the idea that every intelligent action must be preceded by considering a proposition that directs it. If applying one rule always required another rule to guide that application, the explanation could regress indefinitely. Ryle therefore stressed that intelligence can be displayed directly in flexible, appropriate practice. The contemporary debate did not end there. New intellectualists argue that knowing how may still involve propositional knowledge about a way of acting, without requiring the person to recite that proposition before acting.

My view is that being unable to explain does not mean one does not know, but one lucky success does not amount to know-how either. Knowing how should appear as reliability, correction and adaptation across situations. Knowing why can support transfer, teaching and the discovery of blind spots. The two can be distinguished without forcing either to replace the other. Mature learning lets verbal understanding and embodied ability keep testing each other.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-how/
https://iep.utm.edu/knowledg/


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