John Turman

Contemporary alternatives to belief-based accounts of knowledge include, among others, accounts of knowledge as a mental state, such as Williamson’s (2000), and ability-based accounts of knowledge such as those defended by Hyman (2015) and Hetherington (2011). Smith (2017) has argued that a cost of endorsing the thesis that knowledge is a mental state is that doing so commits us to an unfamiliar (and perhaps radical) form of externalism about the mental. Here I argue that we are already committed to just this kind of externalism in our thinking about an agent’s abilities and that there is no analogous cost to endorsing the thesis that knowledge is an ability.

There has been renewed interest over the last twenty years in Ryle's claims and arguments about knowledge-how. Elzinga (2018) and Löwenstein (2017) have both recently defended independent Ryle-inspired accounts of knowledge-how. In what follows, I will propose and defend an amendment to accounts of knowledge-how like those of Elzinga and Löwenstein. I argue that this amendment provides an additional needed distinction between the performance robustness provided by certain performance methods (or styles), and the robustness of an agent's ability to perform according to such methods (or styles). Additionally, the proposed amendment, if adopted, will make the amended views even more Rylean. I argue for this, in part, through original exegetical work on an under-discussed theme in Ryle's philosophy of mind: the relation between semi-hypothetical statements, methodological act-description, and knowledge-how.