9.11.2006

Knowing How and Knowing That

There is a discussion here about whether knowing how is reducible to knowing that. Knowing when, knowing where, knowing whether, and perhaps a few other forms of knowing do appear to be reducible to knowing that. One might think that knowing how can be reduced to knowing that an action is performed in a certain sequence. The question is whether knowing how can mean merely an ability to perform some action.

Some potential examples:
1) A child who can ski, but at least cannot explain what it is that she is doing seems to know how to ski.
2) Instinctive behavior, such as birds building a nest seems to be knowledge how without any propositional knowledge of what is going on.

So, Questions:
- does it seem right that there is a sense of knowing how that only means having the ability to do such and such independent of knowing any facts about how it is done?
- are the above examples such cases?

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