Ok, here’s the new plan.
Each Wednesday, I turn in a few pages that attempt to make sense of some article or chapter on a philosophical topic of some kind. Most Wednesdays, others who have also just completed this task gather at my house for dinner. Both the discussion and the food aim to be sensible but innovative, and both are reliably satisfying.
So I’m going to start using these Wednesdays as the material for (I hope) weekly posts. Either I’ll put up the paper I wrote, or some discussion of the topic. Or discussion of some other topic, if I feel like it. And I’ll include recipes for the dishes that we deemed successful at dinner. Or other recipes, if I feel like it. None of this is set in stone.
Here we go. We have some catching up to do.
In "Knowing How and Knowing That," Gilbert Ryle elaborates a view of intelligence as a "skill," and intelligent action as "the exercise of a skill." He admits that an act itself has no distinctive marking of intelligence, since two acts could be indistinguishable though one is performed intelligently and the other is not. But this is because a skill is not a particular event itself, so would be incorrect to talk about it in the ways we talk about events, as being seen or unseen. To possess a skill is to have a particular kind of disposition, and possession of a disposition does not consist in actually being in a certain state, but in the truth of certain statements about what state one would be in if various conditions arose.
But what more can we say about intelligence, other than that we can't think about it in terms of a single isolated instance? Ryle seems to acknowledge the importance of distinguishing intelligent capacities from mere habits, but he fails to give a satisfying explanation of what it is that sets intelligent dispositions apart.
Whenever Ryle sets out to give an account of which counterfactual statements must be satisfied by an individual in order for his disposition to be intelligent, his analysis falls short in a specific way: the criteria that he enumerates are themselves intelligent capacities, so we come no closer to an understanding of the property of intelligence itself. Ryle is adamant that observation of action is sufficient for justifying attributions of intelligence: a chess player demonstrates his competence in chess with the moves he makes on the board, and nothing further is required. But what is it about his demonstration of those moves that makes chess-playing a matter of intelligence? Here and elsewhere in the chapter, Ryle refers obliquely to strategy: the chess player’s competence is shown in “the moves he avoids or vetoes," and the intelligent arguer has to “innovate,” be "on guard," and "exploit opportunities." A mountain climber must be “ready" to cope with any obstacles that come his way. But avoidance, exploitation, readiness, and innovation are all understood as processes that require intelligence, and we're interested in understanding that very concept, not just paraphrasing it. We still want to know, what is it about all of these activities that makes them intelligent ones?
It's striking that Ryle seems to blatantly ignore the somewhat obvious element shared by all of his criteria. Sure, he makes it clear that the player’s moving the chess pieces demonstrates that he knows how to move them – that he knows the rules for the types of moves allowed for each piece. But there is another kind of rule, or at least a feature of chess, that the player has to know to count as knowing how to play, which Ryle essentially leaves out: the player must know how to win the game. He must not just make legal moves, but make ones that will help him achieve his main aim of capturing the king. This omission is the source of the insufficiency of Ryle’s explication of the criteria for intelligence. It is fine to elaborate the specific ways in which an adept mountain climber or marksman would exercise his skill in order to reach his goal, but the key factor that separates these and all intelligent actions from mere habits and other simpler dispositions is that the agent has a goal. To act intelligently, the agent must antecedently grasp what it is to be successful in his endeavor, or what it is to win. Ryle is right to point out that since intelligence is a disposition, we must talk about it in modal language, using "could" and "would" statements. But to accurately capture intelligence, we must also recognize that the relevance of those "would" statements is determined by normative "should" statements. Intelligence must be explained in terms of successes and mistakes, in relation to a goal. Why does this seem to slip past in Ryle's discussion?
The end. Time for some Mexican stew.
Nopalito Posole
1 onion, diced
1 15 oz. can of hominy
1 qt. vegetable stock
1 cup tomatoes, diced
1.5 cups canned nopalitos, drained and rinsed
1 dried New Mexican chili
juice of 1 lime
handful chopped cilantro
Garnishes: diced avocado, crumbled cotija cheese, extra cilantro and lime
Sautee onions until translucent. Add next five ingredients, plus more water to cover if necessary. Bring to a boil, then simmer at least 30 minutes until stewy. Add cilantro and lime, and serve with extra garnishes.
