Knowers and Knowledge in East-West Philosophy: Epistemology Extended

By Karyn L. Lai

This volume offers arguments from eastern and western philosophical traditions to enrich and diversify our present conceptions of knowledge. The contributors extend contemporary Western epistemology in novel directions, through investigating and questioning entrenched conceptions of knowledge. The cross-tradition engagement with the neurosciences, psychology, and anthropological studies is an important feature of the volume’s methodological approach that helps broaden our epistemological horizons. It presents a collection of perspectives on epistemic agency by engaging philosophical traditions east and west, including Japanese, Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist, and Anglo-analytic.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Sep 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9783030793494

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

K. L. Lai (ed.)Knowers and Knowledge in East-West PhilosophyPalgrave Studies in Comparative East-West Philosophyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79349-4_1

1. Introduction

Karyn L. Lai¹  

(1)

UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Karyn L. Lai

Email: [e-mail]

Recent investigations into how knowers are enabled by their knowledge have extended epistemological debates. The discussions in this volume offer a broad range of arguments from eastern and western philosophical traditions to enrich and diversify our present conceptions of knowledge. The contributors extend contemporary Western epistemology in novel directions, through investigating and questioning entrenched, often mainstream, conceptions of knowledge. Many of these discussions were presented at the fifth East West Philosophers’ Forum, held at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, in May 2019. Indeed, some of the ideas here have arisen in conversations between members of the group over the years.

How is knowledge extended? Three meanings of extension are employed across the volume’s chapters. First, we challenge prevailing conceptions of knowledge in Western epistemology. Within this tradition, some entrenched conceptions of knowledge include the idea of knowledge as justified true belief; of knowledge’s (or the knower’s) certainty; and of knowledge-how and knowledge-that as fundamentally adequate for understanding human knowledge. Our discussions ask whether these foundational and still-prevalent views of knowledge sufficiently reflect knowledge’s place in human life.

A second way we have extended knowledge takes its cue from recent debates on extended cognition and extended knowledge. Their primary thrust is that cognition and perception are not processes that occur solely in the mind or brain—or within the skull, so to speak—but also in and by an organism’s body located in specific environments. According to this view, generally, to have knowledge is not (only) to have ideas cogitating in the mind, but (also) to perceive, feel, act and respond by engaging the body in specific environments.

Third, and finally, the interaction between intellectual traditions, Eastern and Western, help diversify our discussions about knowledge. Examples from the Chinese and Japanese traditions raise fascinating questions about knowledge in practice as, on the whole, they take a more empirically focused view of knowledge. The scenarios we evoke here challenge western epistemology’s predominantly theoretically bound conceptions of knowledge. The Chinese and Japanese approaches to knowledge—embodied—prompt us to attend to the question of knowledge’s place in a life lived well. The cross-tradition engagement is an important feature of the volume’s methodological approach that enriches our discussions and fosters the broadening of our epistemological horizons.

This volume’s chapters are organised in two parts. Part I’s discussions, Knowing Better: More Capacious Knowledge, stretch Western epistemology’s traditional conceptions of knowledge. The chapters in Part II, Embodied Knowers in Epistemic Environments, explore embodied knowledge, conceptually and in practice.

1 Part I: Knowing Better—More Capacious Knowledge

The chapters in this part expose how restricted and restrictive some existing views of knowledge are. The first three chapters (Chaps. 2, 3, and 4) in this part pose questions about the traditional distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that. Together, they challenge its fundamental assumptions and wonder if another concept, knowing-to, is required to enhance our understanding of knowledge. The next three chapters (Chaps. 5, 6, and 7) continue to push the boundaries of knowledge, contending that it should be more inclusive and capacious. They ask if there is a place for forgetting in memory-building; whether we should listen more carefully to chaos narratives instead of rejecting them as epistemically unreliable; and whether our delineation between knowledge and belief is too neat, forcing us (typically) to see belief as inert, as far as actions are concerned. Perhaps belief is action-oriented too?

Chapter 2 considers whether our categories of knowing-how and knowing-that adequately explain human knowledge. Questions about the natures of knowing-how and knowing-that, and the relation between the two, have generated vigorous philosophical debates since Gilbert Ryle made an influential case for the conceptual distinctness of knowing-how (Ryle 1946). Contemporary intellectualists maintain the reducibility of knowing-how to knowing-that. In contrast, anti-intellectualists, including Hetherington, make a case for the irreducibility and perhaps primacy of knowing-how (e.g., 2011: Chap. 2). Yet, underlying these tensions, there remains a gap that knowing-how or knowing-that, or even the two taken together, cannot fill. In other words, the maximal degree of the required know-how, together with all the required know-that, might not ensue in intelligent action (of the Rylean sort). Knowing how to drive a car (even to drive a car well), and having all the right kinds of information about driving (including traffic rules), does not guarantee that a driver will even drive when she should, let alone never cause an accident. What more is needed? In Knowing-To, Stephen Hetherington proposes knowing-to as a conception of knowledge that is metaphysically distinct from both knowing-how and knowing-that. Knowing-to’s locus—a specific moment, in particular circumstances—has an immediacy that draws together knowledge and action. This, Hetherington suggests, addresses knowledge-how and knowledge-that’s insufficiencies in relation to knowledge’s manifestation. Knowing-to is an activation—even if not a completed manifestation—of knowing-how, generating an action that is a completed manifestation of the knowledge-how. It is not identical with either or both of knowledge-that and knowledge-how. It is, distinctively, a kind of knowledge present within acting. Finally, one most telling facet of knowing-to’s promise in opening up new lines of inquiry is its measure, not of truth, but of success.

Chapter 3 continues with the theme of successfully exercising knowledge. This question is ever more urgent for people in power. In the Mencius, a fourth-century BCE Chinese text, Mengzi (c. 385 BCE-c. 312 BCE), a prominent Confucian thinker, has difficult conversations with kings about their effectiveness in protecting the people. In Mencius 1A7, Mengzi has an extended discussion with King Xuan of Qi about extending (tui 推) kindness in order to protect the people. The puzzle in this story concerns why King Xuan, who takes action to prevent an ox from being slaughtered for a sacrificial ritual, is not taking action to protect the people. Waldemar Brys presents a fresh interpretation of the intriguing idea of extension in this story. In The epistemology of Mengzian extension, Brys resists the dominant interpretation of extension as primarily associated with King Xuan’s application of his compassion for the ox (analogously) in the case of the people. He proposes that extension in Mencius 1A7 is an epistemic term; it relates not to having emotions or applying them, but to exercising knowledge. Specifically, it is the exercise of knowing-to: the king’s protecting the people consists in his knowing-to take particular actions in specific situations to alleviate their suffering or enhance their welfare.

In Chap. 4, Shun Tsugita, Yu Izumi, and Masaharu Mizumoto, destablise our assumptions about knowing-how. Their study, Knowledge-How Attribution in English and Japanese, discusses how, for Japanese language users, attributions of know-how (e.g., knowing how to swim) does not require the relevant corresponding physical ability (e.g., swimming), nor does having the physical ability require that a person be considered as having or possessing know-how. This decoupling of attributions of knowing how and the relevant physical ability among speakers of Japanese, poses challenges for epistemologists, irrespective of their intellectualist (or otherwise) leanings. More generally, it prompts us to consider the differences between Japanese and English speakers’ attributions of know-how. Are there semantic, or pragmatic, or merely contingent, reasons? Whatever the case may be, are Anglophone epistemologists guilty of linguistic—and conceptual—chauvinism, in assuming that know-how and ability (in relation to practical activities) are closely intertwined or related by entailment? Or, could there be a plurality of knowing-how’s and, if so, how might this expand our conceptions of knowledge?

Forgetting is often perceived as epistemological deficit, or as a loss of knowledge or of memory. Contesting this view, Chap. 5 creates a space for forgetting in epistemology. Chien-kuo Mi and Man-to Tang interrogate the commonplace negativity about forgetting, held by a majority of epistemologists and reflected in the lack of scholarly work on this topic. In The Problem of Forgetting, they contest the view that forgetting has only negative impacts on navigating life. Drawing on philosophical work from the Western and Chinese traditions, they propose a variety of important and positive roles forgetting can play in life. First, forgetting turns our attention to the issue of seeming to remember (for example, we may remember the experience of setting up a banking password). Such memory-seeming may be regarded as a source of justification for preserving a true belief. Therefore, recognising the role of forgetting here helps highlight the role of the experiential in the justification of belief. Second, forgetting may be understood as the omission of irrelevant information in the memory process. It works in the justification of beliefs originating from reliable memory processes, which include the guarantee that a person has no significant reason to distrust his memory. In this way, forgetting contributes to the reliable process of forming true beliefs. Third, forgetting tangential information can lessen our cognitive load, making room for more of the more significant details. There is a balance—a mean—between forgetting too much and remembering too much; Mi and Tang propose that this sense of forgetting renders it not unlike an intellectual virtue. Fourth, forgetting entrenched norms and practices can be liberating as it can enable more engaged and more fruitful engagements with the world. This final type of positive forgetting is found in the ancient Chinese text, the Zhuangzi. Mi and Tang also build on the philosophical literature on forgetting, suggesting an interesting taxonomy inspired by Plato. The taxonomy affords the alignment of three types of forgetting, each corresponding to a stage of memory formation (encoding, storing and retrieving). This discussion opens up new space for epistemologists to give greater consideration to a concept that has for the most part generated anxiety due to its perceived predominantly negative impacts.

Chapter 6 continues to push at the boundaries of knowledge, making a case for taking chaos narratives seriously in epistemology. Seisuke Hayakawa insightfully brings out the significance of socially extended knowledge, updated by the theme of responsibilism arising from debates in feminist epistemology. Hayakawa shows how socially responsible knowers, and socially responsible environments, take care to attend to those who are differently situated. In particular, he highlights how, in the context of illness, a person in pain might express themselves primarily in chaotic bodily narratives. Chaos narratives are typically inarticulate messages, primarily expressed through bodily movements rather than solely in words. These first-person narratives typically get overshadowed by medical vocabulary and measurements, especially as we are not adequately attuned to them. In Illness Narratives and Epistemic Injustice: Toward Extended Empathic Knowledge, Hayakawa builds on debates to emphasise that, quite frequently, restitution narratives are considered normative, and people who are suffering or in pain are also required to subscribe to this norm. The restitution narrative—of the ill person looking up, positively, bravely and resolutely to conquer his illness—may simply be all too much for a person who feels hopelessness in his pain and suffering. How can we empathise with someone who is ill? Drawing on the rich discourses in feminist epistemology, especially in empathy, Hayakawa urges that we exercise humility in recognising our own vulnerabilities. These epistemic practices, he argues, should also be manifest at the macro level, where we responsibly empathise by cooperating with others to address institutionalised injustice such as the marginalisation or disregard of chaos narratives. Hayakawa’s proposal is refreshing, bringing together ethics and epistemology, to enrich our epistemic practices as knowers, and to broaden our understanding of knowledge.

Chapter 7 challenges how we sometimes draw lines between epistemological concepts that are difficult to defend. For example, we may think of knowledge’s manifestation in the world, but belief is typically conceived of as a more abstract and theoretical commitment. (This sharp distinction between knowledge and belief is embedded, for example, in the traditional view of knowledge as justified, true belief). Contesting this view, Michael Slote proposes that the putting-into-practice aspect of knowledge may also be relevant to belief, if we take a step back from epistemological discussions to examine how practice may be an important component of our beliefs about the world. Might it be right to think of belief in more active ways, in contrast to how it is generally conceived in Western philosophical debates (as primarily inert acceptance of particular propositions)? Building on his recent work on yin/yang, a set of complementary terms in Chinese philosophy, Slote makes a case for beliefs that are engaged with the world. He integrates belief into a yin/yang conceptual framework whereby beliefs necessarily involve emotions. In "The Yin/Yang 陰陽 of Pervasive Emotion", yin is (the) receptive favouring (of particular propositions) while yang is (the) active and productive (element that enacts the belief). All beliefs have the feature of yin—that is, a person who believes p receptively favours p—and all beliefs are productive (of action). Slote’s yin/yang structure of beliefs functions both epistemically to inform action, and motivationally to activate it. From the perspective of comparative philosophy, this framework moves beyond the more typical parsing of the heart-mind (xin 心) as a capacity that engages in both cognitive and emotive activity. What is more, Slote proposes that beliefs and desires are similar in kind (or, at least, that there is no important metaphysical difference between the two), the difference between them being one of emphasis as far as yin and yang are concerned. While all beliefs are yin-receptive (and yang-productive), desires are primarily yang-active (even though desires incorporate yin elements). Creatively, Slote’s use of the yin/yang framework steps out further to offer an action-oriented account of belief. Needless to say, the framework also helps to advance Slote’s sentimentalist account of (heart-)mind, extending it by moving belief into the domain of action in the world.

2 Part II: Embodied Knowers in Epistemic Environments

This part begins with three chapters (Chaps. 8, 9, and 10) that discuss the scope of extended cognition debates and their implications for embodied and extended epistemology. The first presents an overview of key themes and issues in these debates, while the next two problematise various aspects of it. Issues that arise include the nature of embodied knowledge, the coupling of the knower with tools, and the environment within which knowledge is enacted. Chapters 11 and 12 explore the idea of epistemic environments. Chapter 11 emphasises the centrality of place in how knowers orient themselves, while Chap. 12 considers the lines of responsibility for maintaining the quality of epistemic environments. The final three chapters (Chaps. 13, 14, and 15) articulate models of embodied knowledge from the Chinese and Japanese traditions. Drawing from traditional texts and performance practices, they focus on the practical aspects of embodied knowing, such as engaging with or disengaging from aspects of the activity, learning to handle tools better to improve one’s epistemic practice, and the importance of bodily form to (some types of) epistemic action.

In Chap. 8, Mog Stapleton’s Enacting Environments: from Umwelts to Institutions sets out a range of explanatory frameworks on extended cognition and knowledge that challenge the traditional view of mind. On the traditional view, the mind is, exclusively, the organ that processes information about the world. By contrast, debates in extended mind and extended knowledge push activities such as perceiving and cogitating beyond the individual’s skull and even beyond their body. Knowledge is articulated in the interaction between self and world. There are two important implications of this view: we engage with the world directly, not as a bunch of representations cogitated by mind; and the instruments we manipulate in order to engage with the world, are part of our epistemological system. Stapleton traces the trajectory and vocabulary of key debates that locate epistemology in an organism’s engagement with the world. She shows how these debates align more closely with a bottom-up (rather than a theorised, top-down) approach to knowledge. On a bottom-up approach, exploring the physiology of a tick, and its manoeuvrings in its environment, for example, may reveal insights on how organisms not only adapt to their environments, but how they adapt their environments to enhance what the world affords them. These considerations prompt us to consider parallels between organisms building niches to maximise the affordances of the world, on the one hand, and humans establishing institutions to enhance human wellbeing, on the other. The debates on extended knowledge present exciting opportunities for thinking about epistemic agency, particularly of knowledge that sits, actively engaged, at the nexus of self and world.

Chapter 9 worries about the idea of extended knowledge, which is established on the basis of arguments for extended mind. Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen and Jens Christian Bjerring argue that the idea of extended mind in debates on mind and cognition may not translate unproblematically into what the idea of extension means for knowers and knowledge. Extended mind scenarios present cases of people having or enacting knowledge with instruments external to the self—hence extended. These tools—a calendar app on one’s mobile telephone—can be part of a person’s epistemic activities. Leila’s calendar app is manipulated to provide information on how she should plan her day. Does Leila’s telephone, or the calendar app in her telephone, qualify as part of her extended knowledge, though? Unlike her beliefs and desires, Leila’s calendar app has no capacity to automatically update its information, say, on the basis of new knowledge. Moreover, given the wide variety of storage repositories and devices (literally) at one’s fingertips (online journals, Dropbox, Google, stored telephone contacts), would we say that many individuals possess a large body of extended knowledge? In Extended Knowledge Overextended?, Pedersen and Bjerring discuss concerns that such an explosion of knowledge—or cognitive bloat—might give rise to. First, whither expertise, if so many people may be considered extended knowers. Second, where, now, would we place cognitive effort—steps taken by individuals to commit details to memory, to apply knowledge, to deliberate and to assess and reflect? Pedersen and Bjerring problematise a number of attempts to resolve the issue of cognitive bloat. They argue that it may be difficult to resist cognitive bloat, especially given the possibility of neuromedia—computer devices seamlessly integrated with our onboard capacities.

Chapter 10 problematises another aspect of extended epistemology. If we accept arguments about extended mind and extended knowledge, we will need to consider the issue of agency: who is the knower who has extended knowledge? What does this extended knower know? How does she know? In The Possibility of the Extended Knower, Leo Cheung casts doubt on whether extended knowers are possible, if epistemic attributability is an essential part of a theory of extended knowledge. Cheung focuses on a particular externalist conception of the extended knower (Hetherington 2012). On this view, an extended knower is a-person-plus-more-besides (ibid.: 213). For example, if a person were to use a thermometer for testing the internal temperature of his roast, the unity of the person-plus-thermometer is the epistemic agent. Cheung articulates problems arising from Gettier-style cases, posing questions about the knowledge-producibility of the belief-forming process. The person-plus-more-besides account, Cheung maintains, would have to allow that both positive and negative entities are constitutive of the knower. Hence, this conception of a knower is just not viable.

Our spatial orientation—of place, location and distance—are central to our identity and agency. In Chap. 11, Sydney Morrow proposes that the Chinese philosophical traditions are deeply aware about how the self is extended in the different ways in which it is located. She establishes a tri-level geographical framework to highlight the extent to which our place and location shape and inform our understanding of self and world. At the most rudimentary level, our experiences of terrestrial locatedness and travel contextualise our grasp of how we, as humans, are able to navigate the world. This knowledge is indispensable to our understanding of the human condition. Secondly, the metaphysical terrain within which our interactions with others play out compel us to attend to the circumstances that advance or impede our projects. That there are blocked paths or smooth ones, or conflict or harmony, are aspects of our experiences in the world that may help us thrive, or cause us to languish. As contrasted with terrestrial location, the focus at this level attends more closely to the processes in our engagement with the world. Finally, at the third, most significant, level, Morrow draws out elements of moral geography, highlighting the relational aspects of self. Here, Morrow focuses particularly on the Confucian theme of how a morally committed person is able positively to extend her moral influence to others, even across distances. In Finding the Joy of Far-Flung Friends: Extending Oneself Through Terrestrial, Metaphysical, and Moral Geographies, it is clear that the three geographically extended facets of personhood are intricately intertwined. Morrow makes a compelling case for understanding the complexity of our orientation to the world, accentuating how orientation extends the notion of self. This picture of situated self, in a variety of relationships with others, holds important epistemological and moral implications for agency. In her distinctively Chinese account of geographical agency, Morrow offers an interesting and unique way to diversify philosophical discussions on self, world and action.

The idea of the epistemic environment draws our attention to some quite invisible elements in society that may affect our wellbeing. Chapter 12 investigates the quality of epistemic environments, focusing specifically on the nature of a state’s responsibility for maintaining epistemic quality. Shane Ryan shows that meta-theoretical debates on epistemic environments can illuminate our views of the nature and extent of epistemic goods that are available to us within our environments. Ryan presents a careful and multifaceted discussion of the conditions necessary for our enjoyment of epistemic goods, including a state’s or community’s monitoring and policing policies for maintaining or improving epistemic quality, varieties of epistemic environments, and the nature of the state’s protection or intervention in relation to epistemic goods. State Epistemic Enviromentalism makes a case for the permissibility of state intervention, opening up various nuanced and complex questions about the state’s role in the maintenance and distribution of epistemic goods. There are also questions about the parity or lack thereof, between epistemic goods and other goods that are necessary for or add to human flourishing. Ryan’s discussion not only raises exciting new questions about epistemic environments, it opens up future lines of inquiry where epistemic goods weigh in on our conceptions of a good life.

What might the practice of embodied and extended knowledge look like? In Chap. 13, Margus Ott suggests that ancient Chinese texts do not presuppose that the borders of agency are drawn at the human mind or body. Rather, in Chinese philosophy’s action-oriented approach, the locus of knowledge, perception and action is in the engagement with other beings, objects and within an environment. In Contextualising and decontextualising knowledge: extended knowledge in Confucius, Mozi and Zhuangzi, Ott demonstrates that there is a variety of versions of extended knowledge across the Chinese tradition. In the Confucian Analects, ritual objects are agentive and central to the refined forms of human expression. They are not mere conduits within the ritual process but are part of the cultivation of individuals, and therefore constitutive of a more profound sense of human collaboration within the spiritual and cosmic spheres. The Confucian approach, which Ott describes as a contextualising one, views ritual objects as part of an individual’s engagement with the world. By contrast, the Mozi took a decontextualising approach and sought to implement models that are universally applicable so as to empower all people, cultivated or otherwise, to use the same standards. In doing so, individual discretion was not required, meaning that a person effectively disengages with the task at hand as they only need to apply the relevant standards and measurements. What were these standards? As craftsmen, the Mohists drew on their expertise with tools. They advocated the practicability and effectiveness of standards of human behaviour, analogised with the practices of using measuring squares and compasses to achieve reliable results. Bypassing the vast variation across individuals’ capacities for discretion, the use of standards seemed to the Mohists an effective method for lifting the quality of human interactions. Importantly, these tools of the trade are not mere abstractions but developed and refined through time in practice. Ott suggests that, notwithstanding its contrasts with the Confucian approach, the Mohist program was also committed to the assumption that epistemic quality is necessarily located in human practices and interactions. The Zhuangzi, the third text in this discussion, advocates both engaging and disengaging with the world. As Ott sees it, the Zhuangzi takes the contextualising and decontextualising tendencies to the maximum. Using the example of cook Ding, Ott proposes that he disengages from ritualised life, of the kind that the Confucians would have advocated. Yet, as with the Confucians, the Zhuangzi saw tools as a nontrivial part of mastery. In fact, the Zhuangzi’s disengagement with ritual and other customary standards of practice serves to improve the intensity of the master’s engagement with the conditions of the task at hand. Overall, Ott demonstrates that, in ancient Chinese philosophy, knowledge-making resides in engagement, of human with nonhuman, and of organisms in environment. These views are much more closely aligned with extended knowledge and cognition theories and could help support as well as diversify extended knowledge debates.

Chapter 14 continues the discussion in the previous chapter by focusing specifically on the Zhuangzi. In "Models of knowledge in the Zhuangzi: knowing with chisels and sticks", Karyn L. Lai examines two well-known stories in the text, the cicada catcher and the wheelmaker, each involving a master performing at high levels of expertise. They are intellectually engaged with and physically attuned to their activities, manipulating their stick and chisel, respectively, in their knowledgeable execution of cicada catching and wheelmaking. Lai contends that the knowledge of these masters align more closely with knowing how rather than propositional knowledge. Yet, this intellectualist/anti-intellectualist framing is deficient as it lets too much detail in these stories slip through the cracks. Lai proposes that debates on embodied and extended cognition will help us better understand what the Zhuangzi’s masters know. In turn, this new understanding sheds light on why the Zhuangzi was so bothered by prevailing conceptions of government, with their visions for a flourishing life. Lai argues that the Zhuangzi’s mastery stories (with these two as examples) offer important insights on the acquisition of embodied knowledge. On this view, individuals need to be provided with opportunities to prepare for their knowledgeable engagement with the world. As the masters have done, individuals need to develop mental acumen and physiological fitness (including coupling with tools) to act responsively to fluctuating conditions relevant to their activities. Lai strikes a two-way conversation between the Zhuangzi’s mastery stories and embodied epistemology. Thinking about the masters’ knowledge as embodied knowledge helps illuminate the stories in the Zhuangzi better than other Western epistemological frameworks available to date. Conversely, the idea that the success of embodied knowledge requires extended cultivation and practice, is an insight the Zhuangzi can bring to existing contemporary Western debates. Finally, the Zhuangzi’s model of first-hand embodied knowledge—as contrasted with one that emphasises the transmission of information or wisdoms—brings out how a flourishing life enabled by embodied knowledge may incorporate both failures and successes.

Chapter 15 brings out themes from an early Noh dramatist to shed light on embodied expertise. The aim of the comparative discussion in Dreyfus and Zeami on embodied expertise is to give more thought to the notion of embodied expertise. Katsunori Miyahara focuses in particular on Dreyfus’ influential discussions on skilled expertise, proposing that this account is challenged, and may be supplemented, by reflections on skilled performance in traditional Japanese Noh theatre. The discussion highlights three features of skilled expertise in the writings of fifteenth-century Noh dramatist, Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443?). The first, mushin (no mind), points to the expert ability to deliver a perfectly coordinated performance without exerting conscious control over it. Miyahara suggests that Zeami’s mushin resembles Dreyfus’ rejection of conceptual mindedness (2007: 361). Common to the two views is the idea that skilled action does (and should) not involve agents’ constant attention to and reassessment of his intended goals and outcomes, for instance, in the way a person might relentlessly track his progress while undertaking a skilled task. Nevertheless, mushin also requires that performers be attentively mindful of the situation throughout the performance. The second feature of skilled Noh performance, shoshin ([to maintain] the beginner’s mindset), highlights the openness and dynamism of expert practice. According to Miyahara, Zeami advocates that a skilled Noh performer should have a beginner’s mindset in three ways: (1) the beginner is not established in entrenched practices and thus is open to the engagement of theory and practice; (2) the beginner seeks to add more to his repertoire: Noh learning is not simply about deepening the dramatist’s handling of a subset of manoeuvres he is especially good at. Rather, the expert should continue to broaden his expressivity by accumulating more and different expressive forms; and (3) the skilled performer, like the beginner, is continually seeking to learn; as the expert’s body grows older, he should be aware that he needs to find different ways of expressing his characters. These reflections extend Dreyfus’ views on skilled expertise which, according to Miyahara, mostly focus on idealised forms of expertise, relative to a healthy body. For Miyahara, therefore, Zeami introduces greater sensitivity to Dreyfus’ discussions on embodied skill by acknowledging the dependence of performance on bodily fitness and form. Finally, Zeami’s most profound articulation of skilful Noh performance is symbolised by a blooming flower. A flower blooms in context, in a timely way, insofar as conditions allow. This theme highlights the centrality of a skilled performer’s coupling with the environment, on which success partly depends. Through highlighting how precarious skilled performances are in Zeami’s views, Miyahara brings insight to the practicalities of skilful performance. His discussion reminds us of how, if we are serious about embodied knowledge and skill, we need to have a more nuanced understanding of how embodiment can both promote and hinder knowledge due to its adaptability and vulnerability.

References

Dreyfus, Hubert L. 2007. The Return of the Myth of the Mental. Inquiry 50: 352–365.Crossref

Hetherington, Stephen. 2011. How to Know: A Practicalist Conception of Knowledge. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Crossref

———. 2012. The Extended Knower. Philosophical Explorations 15 (2): 207–218.Crossref

Ryle, Gilbert. 1946. Knowing How and Knowing That. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 46 (1): 1–16.Crossref

Part IKnowing Better: More Capacious Knowledge

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

K. L. Lai (ed.)Knowers and Knowledge in East-West PhilosophyPalgrave Studies in Comparative East-West Philosophyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79349-4_2

2. Knowing-To

Stephen Hetherington¹  

(1)

UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Stephen Hetherington

Email: [e-mail]

I am grateful to audiences at the University of Sydney and UNSW, along with Waldemar Brys, Karyn L. Lai, and Shane Ryan especially, for helpful comments on drafts of this chapter. I also valued feedback on the chapter from a UNSW discussion group.

Influentially, Gilbert Ryle (1949, 1971 [1946]) argued for the conceptual distinctness of knowing-that from knowing-how. Previously, epistemologists were content to equate knowing with knowing-that, but—thanks to Ryle—that equation is no longer an epistemological given, at any rate. Increasingly, epistemologists are discussing the conceptual relationships between knowledge-that and knowledge-how. This has enriched contemporary epistemology, and the present chapter will enrich it further in that same vein, by showing why we also need to accommodate a distinct concept of knowing-to.¹ Epistemologists routinely talk about knowledge-that and knowledge-how, but not at all about knowledge-to.² This needs to change, because knowing-to—as we will soon discover—has distinctive characteristics. It is neither knowledge-that nor knowledge-how. Let us now begin to uncover some of those characteristics.

1 Introducing Knowing-to

What is knowing-to? Consider initially these states of affairs:

(1)

Knowing-how. You know how to play a cover drive (an oft-admired kind of shot in cricket).

(2)

Apt circumstance. There now is the cricket ball, emerging from the bowler’s hand, hastening towards you. The ball is … now … in a position apt for you to respond with a cover drive.

(3)

Manifestation. Here … now … is your playing a cover drive, reacting to the ball as it reaches that apt position described in (2). You are exemplifying, manifesting, or applying the knowledge-how described in (1).

How did your knowledge-how become manifested or applied, though? (3) says that this happens; and we readily talk in such terms. But what do they describe? Is something further involved, something glossed over by our talking simply of the knowledge-how’s being manifested or exemplified?

Quite possibly so. First, the knowledge-how’s being manifested requires more than the circumstance being apt, as described in (2). Nor is it enough that you have the knowledge-how, even that you have it—knowingly or not—in the apt circumstance. What more is needed? I suggest that you also knew to move as you did—applying your general cover-driving know-how, at just that moment in just that apt circumstance. You suddenly knew to do, exactly then and there, what you already knew more generally how to do in some or all actual or possible circumstances from among a range of circumstances sufficiently like this one.³

This suggests already that some knowing-to is part of your beginning to play the shot described in (3). But only part; the knowing-to’s presence is not all that matters. The knowing-to is not contributing merely by its presence. It also plays a vital role in the dynamic structuring of your acting intelligently (acting in a way that manifests knowledge-how).⁴ The knowing-to would be your knowledgeably activating your knowledge-how—the result being your manifesting or applying that knowledge-how in a specific action. You would manifest or apply the knowledge-how in action only due to the knowing-to’s intervention (not wholly because of the knowing-to, but partly so). Your knowing-to is the means by which you ‘convert’ or ‘spark’ the knowing-how—which could be thought of as at least partly an ability to perform such actions—into a particular action on a particular occasion.

After all, how would the action ever be performed or executed without your having some aptly timed knowing-to? The knowledge-how by itself would not be enough: knowing how to play a cover drive is insufficient for actually playing it at a particular time in a particular place. Nor is there enough to bring about that particular shot, simply in the conjunction of the knowledge-how with the particular circumstances of that time and place. You could know how to play a cover drive, yet fail to play it at the right moment; for you could fail to respond aptly at the precise moment to the specific spatio-temporal details of that particular event of the ball being delivered when and where it is. Even the knowledge-how plus the circumstances plus your intention or desire is not enough: even then, you could fail to play that desired shot in this fitting circumstance.

What is also needed is your knowing to play the cover drive now and here. (This is so, for any ‘here and now’.) We supposed that you know how to perform such actions in general. What we may now add as an explanatory detail is that in this particular circumstance you know here and now—in this world, in this circumstance, at this time—to perform this particular action. You need not have premeditated this action with its details (although of course you might have done so, more or less realistically): you can be reacting to an unanticipated apt circumstance. Nor need you think consciously that this action is now to be done; you could be reacting instantaneously and unselfconsciously to your apt circumstance. This instance of your knowing-to will not have been present earlier or later. It is present only when required: you know to act in the required way, only when your acting in that way is required.⁵ Although the knowledge-to can be momentary when present, this does not render your instance of knowing-to less real or less required.⁶

2 Knowing-to as Part of Knowing-how?

This might seem to be a strong objection to Sect. 1’s picture:

Knowing-to is merely part of knowing-how. It is not a conceptually distinct kind of knowledge from knowledge-how. If you do not know to move your feet in the right way just now (as the ball is reaching you in an apt location), you do not know how to play a cover drive. This knowing-how subsumes this instance of knowing-to, as a necessary component. (We might regard the knowing-to as knowing how to know how to play a cover drive. This could be your knowing how to manifest enough of the other components of your knowing how to play a cover drive.)

Yet that objection bespeaks too demanding a conception of knowing-how.⁷ Insofar as the knowledge-how in question is general—as it always is, when you know how to play a cover drive—it need not include associated knowledge-to directed at this particular time and place. Indeed, it need not include anything explicitly reflecting this particular time and place. The generality in the knowing-how is not that sort of universal quantification, taking into implicit account all actual and/or possible circumstances where the knowledge-how will or could ever be manifested. Ten minutes ago, you knew how to play cover drives; and still you do. Only here and now, though, do you know to play this particular cover drive; and you know only here and now to do this, because only here and now are you in an apt circumstance where this knowledge-to can both arise and die. Perhaps whenever—as now—you know to move your body exactly so, this reflects your knowing—more generally—how to play the shot in question. But your knowing how in general to play the shot (even excellently and very reliably) need never have included this instance of knowing-to—your knowing here and now to move your hands and feet exactly so, your having this knowledge without prompting at this moment from someone such as a coach calling instructions to you.

Nonetheless, there is something correct behind the objection. Accordingly, I propose a slight amendment to my picture so far, one that should appease those who continue to believe that the relevant knowledge-how must include the instance of knowing-to.

We might allow the knowledge-how to play a cover drive, for example, to include a more, or a less, extensive range of instances of conditional knowing-to: knowing-to-do-X1-if-circumstance-C1-arises, knowing-to-do-X2-if-C2-arises, etc.—with each Xi being an instance of the general action-type X, such as ‘playing a cover drive’. But these do not yet amount to what I am explicating, in talking of knowing-to. As the ball approaches you right now, in circumstance C55, say, you know—unconditionally, categorically—to do X55 (this being a more or less complex movement sufficing for your playing a cover drive).⁸ You know (categorically) to do this, once you are somehow sufficiently registering that you are in C55—thereby allowing your associated conditional knowing-to (your knowing to do X55-if-C55-arises) to be activated, as you ‘detach’ from it in your action of doing X55. For argument’s sake, we might even wish to allow that this ‘registering’ can involve knowledge-that. Even this does not undermine the categorial distinctness of the categorical knowing-to, though. Somehow, your knowing that you are in C55 would combine with your conditional knowing-to-do-X55-if-C55-arises—to produce your categorical knowing to do X55, which amounts to your knowing to do what suffices for your playing a cover drive in this circumstance, and which will then result in your actually playing the shot.

I realise that this has been a programmatic precisification of my story. Still, here are two significant features of this amended picture, a picture that is, I suggest, leading us into the inner structure of knowing how to know to do X.

First, even your having the conditional knowledge-to-do-X55-if-C55 does not entail your knowing—your already knowing categorically—to do X55. Thus, the unconditional—the categorical—knowing-to is not already contained in the knowledge-how. And categorical (along with its being primary or basic) knowing-to is this chapter’s explicandum.

Second, I am not presuming that the knowing-to-do-X55 must arise by conscious inference. I am agnostic on how it might arise in a specific setting. I claim only that somehow it does arise.

With these details in mind, let us now return to the section’s main point. Even once you know how to play a cover drive, and even once the circumstance arrives of the ball’s moving into an apt position for you to apply that possibly long-standing knowledge-how, the manifestation or application of your knowledge-how still need not occur: you might not proceed to play the shot. This could be due to your failing to know to implement that knowledge-how here and now.⁹ As part of knowing how to play a cover drive, you might know how to implement the knowledge-how in circumstances such as this one here and now—circumstances strikingly like this particular one. Even this would not yet be your knowing to implement your knowledge-how-to-play-a-cover-drive at this particular time in this particular place.

3 Knowing-how Fallibly

Section 2’s main reply to the proposed objection may be explained further—and indeed extended—by reminding ourselves, first, that in knowing how to play the shot you have a skill,¹⁰ and, second, that you are not perfectly skilful even just in this limited respect. (To put the point more graphically, you are not skill-full even though skilful.) In general, skills admit of grades, including lesser ones.

Thus, also in general, one can know more—or one can know less—well how to play a kind of shot, such as a cover drive. An element in your knowing better how to play that sort of shot can be your knowing to act in the specific way in which you have acted in our hypothesized case when confronted by the ball approaching you right now. Equally, though, it is possible to know better how to play the sort of shot you have played, without