Knowing That as Knowing How: A Neurocognitive Practicalism

The next meeting of the seminar „Philosophy of Cognitive Science” will take place on February, 9th, at 10:30 (AM Warsaw, CET). Our guest will be Gualtiero Piccinini (University of Missouri – St. Louis). We will discuss the manuscript: Knowing That as Knowing How: A Neurocognitive Practicalism, co-authored with Stephen Hetherington (UNSW, Sydney). 

Abstract: We argue that knowing that is a form of knowing how. Our distinctive addition to previous such pictures is neurocognitive. Specifically, we argue that knowing that P is knowing how to represent the fact that P, how to ground such a representation in the fact that P, how to use such a representation to guide action with respect to P, and exercising the relevant know-how when needed. More precisely, agents acquire knowledge via their neurocognitive systems and neurocognitive systems control organisms by building internal models of their environments and using such models to guide action. Such internal models implicitly represent how things are. When agents’ implicit internal models are grounded in the fact that P and are usable for guiding action with respect to P, agents have implicit knowledge that P. When agents acquire the additional capacity to manipulate language, they also acquire the capacity to explicitly represent and express that the world is thus-and-so. When agents’ explicit internal models are appropriately grounded in the fact that P and are usable for guiding action with respect to P, agents have explicit knowledge that P. Thus, both implicit and explicit knowing that P are forms of knowing how to represent that P, ground such a representation in P, use such a representation to guide action with respect to P, and exercising the relevant know-how when needed.

Workshop will take place at  GoogleMeet (for link ask: pnowakowski@ifispan.edu.pl)

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