Bridging the Intellectualist Divide

Abstract

Gilbert Ryle famously denied that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that, a thesis that has been contested by so-called “intellectualists.” I begin by proposing a rearrangement of some of the concepts of this debate, and then I focus on Jason Stanley’s reading of Ryle’s position. I show that Ryle has been seriously misconstrued in this discussion, and then revise Ryle’s original arguments in order to show that the confrontation between intellectualists and anti-intellectualists may not be as insurmountable as it seems, at least in the case of Stanley, given that both contenders are motivated by their discontent with a conception of intelligent performances as the effect of intellectual hidden powers detached from practice.