Practical knowledge and linguistic competence

Thesis

This thesis is comprised of four long independent papers, animated by an interest in certain parallels between the debates over practical “knowledge how”, on the one hand, and linguistic competence, on the other. In particular, the implicitness of the putative content of both forms of knowledge, and their distinctive productivity—the fact that possession of the knowledge equips one to meet certain practical success conditions in the face of indefinite novelty—are two themes that loom large in the dissertation. A third is the connections, relevant to characterising both know-how and linguistic competence, between intentional action, guidance by reasons, and attributions of propositional knowledge. 

The first two papers develop and defend a broadly “intellectualist” account of knowledge how to φ, according to which this knowledge is propositional in content. These aim, inter alia, (i) to motivate intellectualism in terms that should be largely congenial even to its opponents; (ii) to incorporate within intellectualism the anti-intellectualists’ insights concerning distinctive conditions on knowing practically; (iii) to demonstrate that the proper target of anti-intellectualist arguments concerned with novelty is not intellectualism but a naïve representationalist view of intentionality; (iv) in this connection, to highlight parallels between a strand of Ryle’s anti-intellectualist regress arguments and Wittgenstein’s notorious rule following arguments. 

The third and fourth papers defend cognitivist views of linguistic competence, according to which this is (at least partly) constituted by propositional knowledge of syntax and semantics. A pivotal idea exploited in support of cognitivism is that language use is, as Dummett (1996) maintained, distinctively and intrinsically rational activity. These papers aim, inter alia, (i) to defuse objections based on distinguishing language and linguistic competence as domains of enquiry; (ii) to identify as rational the form of explanation putative linguistic knowledge offers of exercises of linguistic competence (iii) to show that anti-cognitivism fails to do justice to one important rational dimension of language use (iv) to show that routine linguistic transactions rely upon rational sensitivity to semantic information, and that, following the “knowledge view of reasons” speakers’ semantic competence must therefore be regarded as partly constituted by semantic knowledge.

Authors: Waights Hickman, N

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-m8qbygnkx
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: rule-following; knowledge how; linguistic understanding; cognitivism; novelty challenge; intellecualism; knowledge view of reasons
• Subjects: Knowledge and learning; Language; Ability; Rules (Philosophy)