Knowing How to Do What One Can’t Do

Abstract

Jonathan Ellis

In this paper, I argue against Alva Noë’s defense of the claim that knowing how to do something requires being able to do it.  Noë objects to Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson’s arguments against this claim by charging that their arguments involve a lot of what he calls “GOOP”: good old-fashioned Oxford philosophy.  I provide an example in which I claim an individual knows how to do something that he is unable to do.  The example is persuasive, I maintain, and especially so against someone who forbids the use of GOOP in this context.