The Uniformity of Knowledge Attributions Kenny Easwaran February 2, 2006 There is a philosophical tradition going back at least to Gilbert Ryle’s 1948 The Concept of Mind of distinguishing “knowledge how ”from “knowledge that ”, in which the latter is taken to be a kind of propositional attitude, while the former is taken to be a kind of ability or capacity. Paradigm examples are, respectively: Sally knows how to ride a bike. (1) Sally knows that she owns a bike. (2) More recently, this distinction has come under renewed scrutiny, notably with [Stanley and Williamson, 2001] arguing that there really is no such distinction, and that “knowledge how ”is really a species of propositional knowledge, though the proposition is known under a different “mode of presentation” than the types of knowledge typically expressed by “knowledge that ”attributions. Their suggestion is that all knowledge claims are syntactically and semantically uni- form, so that philosophical argumentation would be needed to support Ryle’s distinction. In addition, they show that Ryle’s argument was flawed, and pro- vide an account that deals with many other philosophical worries, while giving prima facie evidence that, contrary to what one might expect, (1) is not actually talking about an ability. They argue first that Ryle’s argument in favor of a distinction was incorrect. Then they suggest that linguistic evidence recommends a uniform analysis for all uses of the word “know”. Finally, they consider various philosophical argu- ments that might motivate a departure from the linguistic structure, and find them wanting. Thus, they suggest that we should stick with the uniformity of knowledge ascriptions that is suggested by the linguistic data. I will argue that the linguistic data are not as clear-cut as they suggest. Al- though they have shown that some ascriptions of the “knowledge how ”form are syntactically best treated like “knowledge that ”, they have not shown that all must be. I will give evidence that three similar constructions are best treated with a non-uniform syntactic analysis, and some prima facie evidence that this construction should be as well. It is not clear what sort of data would conclu- sively settle the syntactic question one way or the other. But if the linguistic argument is not conclusively settled one way or the other, then they will need to put forward positive philosophical arguments for their position, rather than merely refuting philosophical arguments against their position. 1