ABSTRACT
The present article surveys some of the ways in which recent epistemology has been informed by work in the philosophy of language. In particular, we focus on four important issues.
Gilbert Ryle (1949) begins chapter 2 as follows: “In this chapter I try to show that when we describe people as exercising qualities of mind, we are not referring to occult episodes of which their overt acts and utterances are effects; we are referring to those overt acts and utterances themselves” (Ryle 1949, 25). In the course of trying to show this, Ryle occasionally describes our qualities of mind, or the overt acts and utterances in which we express those qualities, as “knowledge how,” and he also occasionally describes the occult episodes spuriously posited as the causes of these acts or utterances as “knowledge that.” Since the chapter in which these occasional descriptions occur is entitled “Knowing How and Knowing That,” it is commonly assumed that Ryle means to be claiming that knowing how to do something is not a matter of knowing that something or other is the case. (In fact, I find nothing in Ryle’s text that commits Ryle to this view. What Ryle is committed to is that the know-how that is exhibited in our overt acts and utterances is not a matter of our knowing any rules, and that it is not a matter of our acts and utterances having any particular antecedents.)
But whether or not Ryle thought that knowing how was distinct from knowing that, a number of other philosophers (for example, Putnam 1996, Lewis 1990, Devitt 1996) have assumed that they are distinct. Is this assumption correct? The assumption was challenged by Vendler 1972, who writes:
It will be objected here that in some cases of knowing how it is impossible to tell, in words, what one knows. I know how to tie a necktie, but I could not tell you in words alone. I grant this, but point out that this situation is possible with nearly all the knowing wh forms. I know what coffee tastes like, what the color
magenta looks like, where it itches on my back, when I should stop drinking, how the coastline of Angola runs, but I could not tell you in words alone. I must have, however, some other means to supplement words: pointing, offering a sample, a sketch, a demonstration; or saying ‘now.’ By these means I can tell you, or show you, what I know: I know that magenta looks like this (offering a sample), that it itches here (pointing), that I should stop drinking now. The need to supplement words with non-linguistic media affects knowing how, and knowing wh in general, exactly because it affects the corresponding knowing that.
