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Speaker: (Chicago)

Title: 'The Development of Ryle's Conception of Logic'

Abstract: Gilbert Ryle鈥檚 distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that has come under pressure from intellectualists like Jason Stanley, who claim that knowledge-how is simply a species of knowledge-that. Stanley argues that Ryle鈥檚 famous regress argument for the distinction shows that Ryle conceives of propositional knowledge as 鈥渂ehaviorally inert,鈥� and that appreciating this shows that Ryle鈥檚 regress argument is impotent against 鈥渞easonable intellectualism.鈥� However Ryle characterizes knowledge as dispositional in character in The Concept of Mind. This seems to support Stephen Hetherington鈥檚 鈥減racticalist鈥� view that knowledge-that is a form of knowledge-how, and puts into question whether Ryle can really rely on the regress argument for his distinction. In this essay I address such questions as: how is the regress argument connected to his distinction? what conception of knowledge-that is implied? does the regress argument survive if we do not think of knowledge-that as involving acts of acknowledging-that, of contemplating propositions and judging them to be true? I approach these questions through examining the development of Ryle鈥檚 thinking about knowledge, from his life-long insistence that knowledge and belief are generically distinct, through his early rejection of a dispositional conception of knowledge and belief, his later development of the distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that, including a dispositional characterization of knowledge-how, and his introduction of a distinction among dispositions between capacities and tendencies, with knowledge (both -how and -that) on the capacity side and belief on the tendency side. I argue that his initial formulations of the regress argument and the knowledge-how/knowledge-that distinction come from an earlier stage of his thought before he had drawn the capacity/tendency distinction and located knowledge as a capacity. As a result, his formulation of the regress argument even in The Concept of Mind sits poorly with his view of knowledge and belief there. I conclude by discussing whether the regress argument can be reformulated in a way that fits Ryle鈥檚 conception of knowledge as a capacity, and meets Stanley鈥檚 objections. Along the way I discuss Ryle鈥檚 relationship to a number of other historical figures, including Cook Wilson, Prichard, MacDonald, Ayer, and Vendler, as well as the contemporary philosophers Stanley and Hyman.