ABSTRACT
People believe that professor Ryle performed a useful and important task when, in the concept of mind, he showed at some length the difference between knowing how and knowing that. Ryle himself puts it as follows: To say that this sleeper knows French is to say that if, for example, he is ever addressed in French, or shown any French newspaper, he responds pertinently in French, acts appropriately or translates it correctly into his own tongue. On the other hand, knowing that sentences, although cases of knowing how, do possess certain characteristics of their own which differentiate them from certain other cases of knowing how. The reduction of knowing that to knowing how, therefore, makes no difference to the decision-analysis; indeed, the moment people have translated the author know that into its dispositional counterpart, people are already quite obviously in the realm of knowing how.
