Intellectualism and Ryle's Regress

I want to make two points in this post about know-how and intellectual ability: one critical, one defensive.

In The Concept of Mind, Ryle argues that a certain "intellectualist" view of the mind is mistaken. According to this intellectualist view, all intelligent action consists in a two-step process of theorising about a course of action and then making use of that theorising in order to go guide one's action. Ryle is not particularly clear on either of the two crucial notions invoked in this claim, namely, "intelligent action" and "theorising". For my purposes, it is adquate to suppose that theorising consists of any sort of propositional deliberation and, in particular, propositional deliberation about ways of acting. The other notion is more difficult to pin down. The following is, I believe, a fair characterization of the class: an action is an intelligent action iff it is the sort of action which can be appropriately characterized by terms of intellectual evaluation (as I will call them). The terms of intellectual evaluation are then given be (partial) enumeration: "witty", "clever", "stupid", "brilliant", etc.

Against this background, Ryle argues that intellectualism leads to a vicious, infinite regress. The argument goes roughly as follows.

1. According to intellectualism, every intelligent act of psi-ing involvess deliberation about a way of psi-ing together with the implementation of that way.
2. Implementing a way of psi-ing is an intelligent action.
3. But then in order to impeliment a way of psi-ing one must engage in (n+1)-order deliberation about a way of implementing one's n-order deliberation about a way of psi-ing together with an implemenatation of that way.
4. But then, in order to psi intelligently, one must first run through an infinite number of theoretical deliberations.
5. This is not possible.
6. Therefore, the intellectualist theory of intelligent action is wrong

In place of the intellectualist theory, Ryle proposes the following: x is able to psi intelligently iff x knows how to psi.

Now, it is relatively easy to see that there are a large number of cognitive abilities which do not give rise to intelligent actions and which are not appropopriately described in terms of know-how. For instance, I am able to see red, but seeing red is not an intelligent action, nor do I know how to see red. For instance, it is not appropriate (generally) to say things like, "Gee Marc, that was a clever seeing of red" or "Wow, you really know how to see red!" Here then is the critical point: the fact that seeing red is not an intelligent action is a bit of an embarassment for Ryle; so is the fact that I don't know how to see red. The problem that such cases give rise to is that cognitive abilities fall into two classes, those that give rise to intelligent actions and those that don't. And the challenge for the Rylean is to say what distinguishes the two (and why) in such a way that does not entail intellectualism. From what I can see of the terrain, this doesn't look like an easy task. For instance, I doubt that it can be done simply in terms of learning. For instance, there is nothing concpetually incoherent about saying that somebody know how to psi innately (or at birth).

But these observations also provide the basis for an intellectualist response to Ryle's regress. For once it becomes clear that there are cognitive abilities associated with our intellectual lives which do not give rise to intelligent actions (or know-how), it becomes clear that there is very little intuitive support for premise (2)--the claim that implementing a way of psi-ing is always an intelligent action. But if implementation is not always an intelligent action, then Ryle's regress fails.

Comments

[Kevin Schutte]

I wish I could remember what book it was, but I once asked a colleague of mine about a book on Frank Jackson's problem of Mary & her black-and-white room. The solution was that Mary learned a bit of know-how, rather than any knowledge-that. My intuitions suggest the same. Just because ascriptions of varying abilities to know red seem incredible, that doesn't mean that you and I both don't know how to see red (because the incredibleness could be a problem with the ascriptions rather than with the knowledge; it could be a private language difficulty rather than an epistemology difficulty).

[marc moffett]

Hi Kevin,

It has been a while since I have read anything about Mary, so hopefully I don't get things too screwed up!

There is a tradition of trying to solve the Mary Problem by appealing to know-how (first proposed by Nemirow). The claim, in effect, is that Mary really does know all the physical facts while in the room. What she learns when she sees her first red delicious apple is a bit of know-how. (It is worth noting that one could maintain this strategy by claiming that what she learns is an ability w/out identifying cogntive abilities with know-how; that is a further thesis.) But if she does learn some know-how, what is it? Is it that she learns how to see red? If that is the proposal, then it just seems like a non-starter to me. My inclination is to say that she already knows how to see red while in the room, namely, by looking at red things in normal conditions. In fact, if she didn't already have the ability while in the room, then it would be hard to see why she saw red when she got out!

A better suggestion would be that she learns how to identify red things by looking at them. But even this is might be susceptible to the worry that she already had the proposed ability while in the room, but that the enabling conditions just weren't in place.

[Aidan McGlynn]

Nemirow's original proposal was that Mary's coming to know what it is like to see red consists in her coming to know how to imagine red. Lewis added knowing how to recognize and remember red. To my knowledge, no one has suggested that she comes to know how to see red. One of those guys discusses the worry that these kinds of abilities are ones Mary could have in her room (I think - think - it's Lewis, but I'm really not sure). Whoever it is, they argue that such an objection misses the point of the kind of response to the knowledge argument allows one to make. But I can't remember the details.

[marc moffett]

Thanks Aidan. It has been a VERY long time since I've looked at that stuff--though I am going to be teaching it after the break.

I have to add, however, that knowing how to imagine/recognize/remember red all seem like non-starters to me as well.

In all of these cases, it is possible to imagine scenarios where it makes sense to say such things. For instance, suppose you are playing a video game and what you have to do before progressing is to get him to see any red object hidden in the game. You learn the trick (e.g., learn where a certain red jewel is hidden) and then tell your friend that you now know how to see red in the game. That sounds ok to me. But it isn't at all comparable to what is going on in the Mary case.

Does anybody else feel the same way about those cases?

[Buy cialis]

This is very good, I like your point of view and best of all is that I have to do a paper based on Intellectual definitions.