1. Introduction
Are human actions guided by knowledge whenever these are what Gilbert Ryle would have called intelligent? The idea that all such actions are so guided is what Ryle named intellectualism. It is also what, famously, he discarded. His arguments against it are philosophically well-known.Footnote 1 And these arguments – are they correct? here, we assume soFootnote 2 – have helped to launch the subsequent epistemological debate.
However, they have also contributed to limiting that debate unnecessarily. If successful, they show that knowing how to act in a particular way – such as knowing how to juggle – need not be constituted at all by some knowledge that this-and-not-that is how to so act. Knowing-that and knowing-how, concluded Ryle, are metaphysically distinct because intellectualism is false. But any such inference is too swift. Even if intellectualism's falsity entails that knowledge-how is not even partly a kind of knowledge-that, this fails to entail the fundamental distinctness of knowledge-that and knowledge-how. Rather, there is a further option to consider – namely, practicalism. It has recently received some expressions of support.Footnote 3 In this paper we offer a new line of partial support for it – not a fully developed conceptual argument; but a suggestive argument for at least a proto-practicalism, an argument centred upon some comparative philosophy, directing us to elements of Confucian philosophy.
2. Practicalism's Main Idea
Like intellectualism, practicalism is about constitutive relations between knowledge-that and knowledge-how. But while intellectualism is a way of reconceiving of the nature of knowledge-how – as being a kind of knowledge-that – practicalism reconceives the nature of knowledge-that – as being a kind of knowledge-how. Whereas intellectualism pictures intelligent action as being guided by knowledge-that, for practicalism the converse guidance reigns. How should we formulate the latter idea? Here is a strong version of it:
Practicalism about knowledge-that. To know that p is to know how to perform various pertinent actions, ones bearing upon or reflecting p in particular.
Knowledge-that is thus to be understood as being a kind of knowledge-how.
That is a highly schematic thesis, though. Can we render it less so (before commenting upon how to argue for it)? We can indeed, by considering a competing (and standard) epistemological view.
Usually, knowledge is said by epistemologists to be a state of belief – not merely belief, of course; a belief instead with some epistemically significant properties. Practicalism likewise allows knowledge to be a state; but most likely a more complex one, and not necessarily one of belief in particular. Practicalism tells us that knowledge is a state of knowledge-how – the complex knowledge how to perform actions from some apt range of possibilities (the complexity being commensurate with this range). And, as we will now explain, having a belief that p might but need not constitute that full range.
For example, suppose you know that you are sitting on a chair. According to practicalism, your having this knowledge is the following:
Your knowing how to answer accurately to questions about where you are sitting, and/or your knowing how to make inferential links accurately between such an answer and other claims or thoughts, and/or your knowing how to describe accurately to yourself what you are doing, and/or your knowing how to accommodate your body accurately to a circumstance of sitting on a chair, and/or so forth.
The point is not that you have the independently specifiable knowledge that you are sitting on a chair – which then gives you some or all of these cases of knowledge-how. The practicalist's point is that your former knowledge-that is not specifiable independently of these in the first place; for it is your having some or all of these and more instances of knowledge-how.Footnote 4 Clearly, any actions with which we would manifest or express these kinds of knowledge-how (answering accurately, reasoning accurately, etc.) are the sorts of action which – speaking traditionally, and perhaps bespeaking a residual intellectualism – we may wish to describe as ways of using knowledge:
‘You have the belief. It is also true and well justified. Indeed, it is knowledge. Hence, because you have that knowledge, you are able to act knowledgeably in at least some of these other ways, all of them bearing upon p. That is, your having the knowledge that p allows you knowledgeably to reason, question, perceive, act, etc., in ways that bear upon p.’
But practicalism offers an alternative conception of the relationship between the knowledge that p and those sorts of action. It allows us to regard these actions, insofar as they are expressing or manifesting the knowledge-how (the knowledge how to reason, to question, etc., in such ways), as thereby expressing or manifesting the knowledge-that – the knowledge that p. And it allows this by conceiving of the knowledge-how which is being expressed or manifested as itself being the knowledge-that.
Apart from the elegance of that practicalist picture, though, why would one adopt it? Again, the standard epistemological motivation for not doing so includes describing knowledge as a belief with some epistemic properties. Again also, these epistemic properties may well be said to render the believer able to perform various actions, such as the ones listed above – questioning accurately, answering accurately, reasoning accurately, etc. On that interpretation, the believer can – because she has the belief that p with its epistemic properties (that is, she has the knowledge that p) – reason accurately regarding p, answer accurately as to p, perceive accurately with respect to p, act accurately in relation to p, and so on. Accordingly, we are told, there is this interconnected, albeit loosely specified, grouping of capabilities, with the epistemically augmented true belief that p (the knowledge that p) located firmly at its core. The augmented belief thereby is the knowledge that p, with these other capabilities being present because the augmented belief is.
However, that picture is more conceptually optional than epistemologists have tended to realise. This is precisely where we should acknowledge a conceptual opening for an alternative picture, a practicalist one. After all, maybe the true belief that p's having its epistemic properties (those which would be thought to make it knowledge) is partly constituted by the presence of these further features. If they did not exist, presumably we would be reluctant to deem it even epistemically justified from the outset. If the true belief was not accompanied by apt abilities to question, reason, answer, act, etc., then even the presence of much logically supportive evidence would not make the belief justified sufficiently to be knowledge.Footnote 5 This suggests the possible unwarrantedness of the usual epistemological approach of placing the epistemically augmented true belief that p at the grouping's core, treating that belief as being independently understandable as sufficiently epistemically augmented to be knowledge that p.
That point is reinforced by the fact that any other member of the grouping could equally, no less fluidly, be understood as locatable at the grouping's core. We might have said, for instance, that reasoning accurately about p (not believing accurately that p) is what sits at the core of such a grouping – with the rest of these capabilities, including the believing, being reflections or expressions of it.Footnote 6 In turn, we may proceed to speak in that same way, mutatis mutandis, for each member of that grouping – not only for reasoning accurately, and not only for believing truly or accurately, but for answering accurately or for questioning accurately or for acting accurately, etc. The conceptual result is that no member is constitutively prior to the others in such a way that only it (when suitably augmented) could be the knowledge and in such a way that all of the others must at best be mere ways of using that knowledge.
Consequently (and by the same token), we may decline to place any one in particular of those possible members at the core of that grouping; for to do so would be to elevate, to conceptual pre-eminence within the project of understanding knowledge-that, what has no greater claim to that status than do other members of the grouping. Practicalism allows us thereby to decide that the augmented true belief, say, is not any more the knowledge than are any of those other possible states. Knowledge is as much believing-accurately-with-epistemic-properties as it is asserting accurately, questioning accurately, answering accurately, moving accurately, etc. – still with epistemic properties. But knowledge is also no more one of these than it is one of the others. It is any or all of these, equally.
Yet how can that be so? How could the knowledge that p be any or even all of these, equally? Here is how. It can be so by being not quite any of them, while equally being potentially any or all of them. And it can achieve this tantalising balance by being at once the knowledge-how to be any or all of them. In other words, the knowledge that p can be the knowledge-how which would typically be expressed or manifested in any or all of those ways. On this conception, the knowledge that p is the knowledge how to act in any or all of these clearly p-relevant ways. The knowledge that p is the knowledge how (not the knowledge of how) to perform any or all of these sorts of action, or to respond in any or all of these ways – all of them bearing upon or reflecting the truth that p. A specific epistemic agent's knowledge that p, for a specific p, at a specific time will be a case of knowledge like that.
This section has presented the barest sketch of practicalist thinking. But it was sufficient for our immediate purpose, of providing simply a sense of how such thinking might be formulated and to some extent supported.Footnote 7 Our main aim in this paper is to describe some further support for practicalism, some support which (unlike this section's thinking) is not so conceptual. The ensuing sections will present a different kind of argument — the core of the paper. As section 1 mentioned, this argument will draw upon some Confucian philosophy.
3. Confucian Philosophy: Epistemological Background
In addressing some of the questions posed in the previous sections, we focus primarily on a Confucian text, the Analects, a compilation of anecdotes presented in the form of conversations with Confucius.Footnote 8 The received version of the Analects comprises conversations that date from between the 5th to 2nd centuries BCE, a period dubbed the Warring States period (476–221 BCE).Footnote 9 This was a turbulent time in Chinese history and the texts proposed solutions to the unrest. This aim dominated the subject matter of these debates, their conceptual frameworks, and methodological approaches.Footnote 10
We discuss relevant passages in the Analects in order to reveal their assumptions about epistemic matters. While there are discussions of comparative Chinese and western epistemology that draw more broadly from the range of Chinese philosophical traditions,Footnote 11 the purposes of this paper will be better served by more in-depth analysis of approaches to knowing in the text of one philosophical tradition.
In their solution to the unrest, Confucius and his followers dwelt on how some of the models of exemplary conduct of an earlier age – the early Zhou 周 when the collective good flourished (Analects 3.14; 7.5) – could be appropriated and realised in their time. There are extensive conversations in the Analects on learning processes and the primacy of practice, and it is where we may find support for practicalism.
4. Knowing and Realising: zhi in the Analects
The primary epistemic term in the Analects is zhi (知),Footnote 12 corresponding to ‘knowledge’ although it is used more frequently as a gerund – and most appropriately translated as ‘knowing’ – where it refers to the manifestation of knowledge. In the Analects, zhi may refer to the capacities, practices or actions associated with the exercise of wisdom, intelligence, knowing and understanding. It may function as a verb (to know), or a noun (the subject matter of one's knowing), or it may denote the state of a person (who knows). The meaning of zhi varies according to a number of factors including especially the context of the discourse, the subject matter of discussion and its objects (that is, the objects of knowing). The variety of meanings of zhi when coupled with different objects include:
zhitianming (知天命) – to apprehend and realise the ordinances of heaven (Analects 16.8);
zhiren (知人) – to understand people in order appropriately to utilise their capacities in official tasks (Analects 1.16; 12.22; 13.2; 14.30; 14.35) and, more generally, to respond to people appropriately;
zhiyan (知言) – to appreciate the use and force of speech (Analects 20.3);
zhisheng/zhisi (知生/知死) – to understand life and death (so as to appreciate what is morally weighty) (Analects 11.12); and
zhili (知禮) – to grasp and abide by the norms of behavioural propriety (Analects 3.15; 3.22).
In the large majority of conversations that refer to zhi, it is used in conjunction with a specific subject matter, usually in relation to the tasks or duties associated with an official career. It is interesting to note that zhi is seldom referred to as a single character on its own;Footnote 13 this perhaps indicates that there is no prioritisation of the activity or state of knowing that is independent of its subject matter. Where the conversations focus on whether a person has knowledge of a particular subject matter, evaluations are made on the basis of whether a person is or has been able to carry out a specific task. This gives the impression that ‘knowing-how’ is an appropriate understanding of the term zhi. Across a number of conversations in the Analects, zhi pertains both to the discovery of possibilities for, and implementation of, a particular set of actions relating to the topic in question. This suggests that there is no dichotomy that parallels that in contemporary western epistemology: on the one hand, the possession of knowing-that and, on the other, the application of knowing-how.
Zhi (知) in the Analects is closely related to a key moral term, ren (仁). Ren is the defining characteristic of an exemplary person who both attends to particular relationships and has a more inclusive concern for all people (Analects 4.2, 6.23, 9.29, 14.28). At the core of the Confucian proposal is the capable official who is able to realise ren in rectifying the unrest.Footnote 14 There is a robust conception of knowing – perhaps having many parallels with virtue epistemology – in the Confucian tradition. Lisa Raphals, commenting on wisdom in classical Confucianism, notes that zhi in the Analects may be set out according to a range of levels:Footnote 15
(1) The mastery of a set of ideas, expressed as rules for appropriate conduct (li), contained in a body of written texts; (2) the acquisition of a moral or ethical outlook (ren, yi), embodied in a set of practices described in the texts; and (3) the ability to recognize (zhi), and at times predict, situations in life and conform one's conduct to the guidance of those texts – in other words, to act appropriately. Hence Confucian knowledge concerns both ideas and modes of action.
Raphals' characterisation of zhi follows the knowledge-how/knowledge-that dichotomy suggested by Ryle. She classifies zhi as covering two possibilities: ideas (propositional knowledge contained in texts) and modes of action (procedural know-how). The argument in this paper does not deny that such a distinction may be made. However, we suggest that the latter has significantly greater weight in the philosophical framework of the conversations.
Some support for this thesis is raised in the distinction that is made between recitation (song 誦) and knowledge (zhi). In one conversation in the Analects, Confucius notes: ‘If people can recite all of the three hundred Songs and yet when given official responsibility, fail to perform effectively, or when sent to distant quarters, are unable to act on their own initiative, then even though they have mastered so many of them [the Songs], what good are they to them?’Footnote 16 This comment implicitly refers to the role of knowledge in official life. Here, Confucius remarked on the futility of recitation of the Songs without being able to realise their insights in official duties. This conversation, as does another in Analects 9.27, specifically uses the term song, recitation, and not zhi. This suggests that the possession of a body of information, which may also include the ability to say it correctly, does not constitute zhi. Interestingly, Ryle made a similar comment, also using recitation as an example of knowledge-that not necessarily accompanied by knowledge-how and, importantly, of knowledge-how of a particular activity not necessarily accompanied by a corresponding or underlying ability to cite or formulate the rules associated with that activity.Footnote 17
In light of the assumptions about the roles and nature of knowledge and knowing in Chinese philosophy, Lao Sze Kwang (Lao Siguang 勞思光), an influential contemporary scholar of Chinese philosophy, suggests that Chinese epistemology is ‘orientative’ in character.Footnote 18 On this, he notes that Chinese philosophy focuses on problems of ‘where should we go’ instead of ‘what it is’.Footnote 19 The extensive focus on learning (xue 學) in the Analects is geared toward orientation to particular circumstances and then to select what is appropriate (ze 擇): I hear much, select what is good, and put it into practice. I see much, and commit it to memory (Analects 7.28; trans. by Lai).Footnote 20 These considerations suggest that the search for truth or the possession of conceptual knowledge is not unimportant in Chinese philosophy. However, neither truth nor conceptual knowledge has the same priority as in contemporary western epistemology. Unlike intellectualism, Chinese philosophy does not have a particular metaphysical commitment to (true) belief as basic.Footnote 21 This claim is substantiated in the contemporary research literature on Confucianism.Footnote 22
In the following section, we examine an important use of zhi, in its coupling with li (禮), behavioural propriety. The notion of propriety captures both the Confucian understanding of human relationships and its emphasis on the performative aspect of human attachment (Analects 3.3). We focus on what it means to know li.
5. Knowing Behavioural Propriety
The term li has a central place in the Confucian tradition; it is one of the defining characteristics of Confucian philosophy. It occurs in many of the conversations in the Analects. Although its scope and meaning varies in the contexts of particular conversations, it is acceptable to say that li in general denotes the behavioural propriety that is indispensible in communicating the attendant attitudes and feelings appropriate in a particular situation.Footnote 23 In practical terms, li are the social ritual norms appropriate in specific contexts. The phrase ‘zhili’, (知禮) to know li, is used typically to denote that a person has incorporated li in his actions. In other words, the basic understanding of zhili is its manifestation in action. There is no explicit statement to the effect that a person's knowledge-that of appropriate li informs and drives the right kinds of performances of li. In fact, one of the four occurrences of zhili in the Analects (passage D below) reveals an interesting scenario where both (propositional) knowledge of li and knowing how to manifest it are brought into question. We examine the four conversations (A to D below) in the text where zhili is mentioned.
(A) The Master said, ‘One who does not know the conditions of life (知命 zhiming) is unable to be an exemplary person. One who does not know behavioural propriety (zhili) is unable to be (properly) situated. One who does not know words (知言 zhiyan) is unable to know people [zhiren].’ (Analects 20.3; trans. Lai)Footnote 24
This passage addresses knowing, coupled with four objects: knowing the conditions of one's life and circumstances, knowing li, knowing (the impact of) words and knowing people (so as to respond to them appropriately). It appears to be a list of prerequisites for developing the characteristics of the exemplary person. Could zhi in these couplings refer to knowledge-that as prerequisites of knowledge-how (i.e. to know that particular li apply in particular situations in order that one may know how to adopt a particular stance)? If we were to consider this passage on its own, this interpretation is possible. However, we have seen that, across the text on the couplings of zhi, manifestation, not the possession, of knowledge is the primary concern. To say that a person ‘zhiren,’ for example, is to say that they know how to treat and respond to others appropriately, as previously discussed. There is no specific mention of knowing-that as necessary for zhi, knowledge. Nevertheless, this still leaves us with the question of whether, in these conversations, knowledge-that is assumed in the manifestations of zhi. We return to this question in section 6.
(B) The Master said, ‘Guanzhong was lacking in capacity.’
Someone asked: ‘Do you mean that Guanzhong was frugal?’
The Master replied: ‘Guanzhong had three residences and each member of his staff had only one responsibility. Where's the frugality?’
‘This being so, did Guanzhong know ritual propriety [zhili]?’ he was asked.
The Master replied: ‘The ruler of the state set up ornamental stone blinds before his gates, and Guanzhong did the same; for entertaining other rulers the ruler of the state had a stand for inverting drinking vessels, and Guanzhong had the same. If we say that Guanzhong knew ritual propriety [zhili], then who doesn't [zhili]?’Footnote 25
In this passage Guanzhong had overstepped the ritual boundaries for a person of his status. Although he was not a ruler, he took it upon himself to enjoy the benefits due to rulers. Confucius criticises him for his lack of understanding of li. If we were to apply the knowing-how/knowing-that distinction, zhili may refer either to knowledge of the proprieties appropriate to his status (knowledge-that) or to his ability (and perhaps motivation) to manifest li, or to manifest the specific knowledge-that relating to his status. There are no comments in the passage that explicitly suggest any of these readings. What is clear, however, is that Confucius judges Guanzhong – that he does not know li – on the basis that he has failed to manifest the appropriate li in court. In this conversation, Confucius, as the assessor, makes an evaluation concerning whether we may attribute zhili to Guanzhong. Does Guanzhong qualify? Not in this case. Hence, Confucius asks the rhetorical question concerning whether Guanzhong did really know li.
(C) The Minister of Justice of the state of Chen inquired, ‘Did your late Duke Zhao of Lu know ritual propriety [zhili]?’ and Confucius replied, ‘He knew ritual propriety [zhili].’ Confucius then withdrew.
The Minister then bowed to Wuma Qi, and summoned him to come closer. ‘I have heard your Master say that the exemplary person (junzi 君子) is not partisan, and yet isn't Confucius himself acting partisan in this?’ he said. ‘[Duke Zhao] of Lu took a wife from the state of Wu who had his same surname, “Ji”, and then called her “Wu” Mengzi. If he knew ritual propriety [zhili], who doesn't!’
Wuma Qi told the Master of this exchange, and the Master said, ‘I am so fortunate. If I go astray, others are certain to notice it.’Footnote 26
Is this a conversation wherein Confucius admits a mistake? Brooks and Brooks, who have worked on the text and its place in the early Confucian tradition, suggest that Confucius could not have criticised his ruler (Wuma Qi) while visiting in a different state, for that would have breached customary expectations.Footnote 27 Perhaps this is a case of a conflict in the requirements of li: perhaps Confucius has had to select between speaking ill of his ruler while in another state, and being partisan, and he selects the latter.Footnote 28 No matter which way we interpret the evaluative significance of this scenario, it is clear that the question of whether we can say that Confucius knows li is judged by his responses. The Minister of Justice does not grant that Confucius knew li on the basis of his alleged failure to act – in this case, through appropriate speech – in a non-partisan way.
(D) The Master on entering the Grand Ancestral hall asked questions about everything. Someone remarked: ‘Who said this son of a man from the Zou village knows ritual propriety [zhili]? On entering the Grand Ancestral Hall he asks questions about everything.’
When Confucius heard of this, he said: ‘To do so is itself ritual propriety.’Footnote 29
The person who has observed Confucius asking questions at the Hall presumes that Confucius does so because he lacks knowledge. On this basis, he asks if Confucius actually knows li. Confucius' response turns the tables on the inquirer. To ask questions is not a sign of not knowing (that); it is in fact a manifestation of knowing to perform li – this suggests that it is an act of respect or courtesy by a visitor to the Hall to show interest in its details.Footnote 30 In this passage, Confucius evaluates his knowledge in practical terms and not in mental-state terms. The important issue is not about whether he knew particular proprieties (that is, believed them to be true or correct) but that he knew how to manifest them (by asking questions),
These conversations challenge intellectualism's central claim that knowing-how is reducible to knowing-that. In (B) – (D), knowing-how is basic: the conversations on zhili suggest that claims of a person's knowing li are justified only insofar as the person is able to manifest li in practice. In other words, it seems that performance of actions in line with li is necessary for knowing li.
Of course, practicalism makes a stronger claim than that. Section 2 claimed that knowledge-how is sufficient for knowing (since the latter amounts only to the former); and so intelligent actions do not owe their status as intelligent – as manifestations at least of knowledge-how – to the existence also of knowledge-that, set apart conceptually from the knowledge-how. Hence, we must confront two questions about knowing, as it is discussed in the Confucian tradition.
First, is the performance or manifestation of a particular type of activity ever sufficient for the existence of associated knowledge or knowing? Passage (D) seems open to this possibility: Confucius' asking questions at the Ancestral Hall is (to) zhili. Confucius' statement suggests that the performance of li-type acts are sufficient (for us) to grant that a person knows li. Yet the passage does not state unambiguously that this is so. Section 6 will ask what we may nonetheless infer.
Second, given practicalism's position that all knowledge-that is knowledge-how, what relation do manifestations of the latter bear to knowledge-that? Section 2 suggested that knowing that p is knowing how to perform any or all of a collection of types of p-related activity. This conception of any or all manifestations of knowing-how (to act in ways reflecting or bearing upon a truth p) has elsewhere been called an epistemic diaspora, a loose or flexible gathering whose members collectively constitute knowing-that.Footnote 31 Our understanding of zhili in the Confucian tradition lends weight to this aspect of practicalism.
Suppose li (behavioural propriety) is one such type of knowing. Throughout the Analects, there are references to li in a wide range of contexts: religious ceremonies (3.4), filial conduct (2.5), official life (3.19), government (4.13) and conduct of an exemplary person (12.15), to name a few. At one level – judging by the anecdotal tone of the conversations – discussions of li seem merely to be examples of how li are realised in action. If we place these conversations in the context of the Confucian concern to prepare oneself for an official career, however, it becomes clear that these ‘examples’ are ways of manifesting li. Confucian learning is not about the memorisation (and possession) of knowledge that there are particular normative prescriptions in a range of contexts. As we have seen, on the basis of their actions or performances, different individuals are said to know.
Each manifestation of li, expressed in a particular context, is sufficient to demonstrate that a particular person may be regarded as knowing li – as we have seen in passages (A) – (D). There is no particular type of li, or a specific context in which it is realised, that is singled out as the defining characteristic of knowing li. This lends weight to the practicalist view that a person's knowledge of li must be properly understood in terms of his or her performance of a specific (set or type of) li at a specific time.
6. An Interpretive Principle of Charity
What substantive philosophical morals have our Confucian texts given us? In particular, to what extent are those texts practicalist? (Have sections 3 through 5 supported section 2?) The question is pressing because (unlike what we would expect to find in contemporary Western epistemology)Footnote 32 the Confucian texts are not systematically epistemological or, therefore, practicalist. No general theory of the objects of knowledge-attributions – let alone directly those of knowledge – is stated; none is sought.
Nevertheless, we note, what is articulated in those texts is more practicalist than not. Some, even if not all, of what a contemporary Western epistemologist might recognise as practicalism (e.g., as this was presented in section 2) is made explicit within our texts. Moreover, whenever talk of knowledge and of knowing enters the relevant stories and observations, so does a practicalist spirit. This is because, as we have seen, knowledge-how and intelligent actions are being accorded the contextually needed explanatory weight.
Is that merely because there was no linguistic means for these authors to have been talking of knowledge-that? Not at all. Harbsmeier notes that, in Analects 9.23, a conversation concerning zhi, Confucius expresses ‘uncertainty about a possible fact rather than unfamiliarity with an actual fact’.Footnote 33 In this instance, Confucius lacked certainty in relation to a particular piece of knowledge-that. Further, Harbsmeier points out that, while there are constructions in the early texts that distinguish between ‘believing something to be so’ and ‘knowing something to be so,’ the Chinese ‘did not have a count noun for a belief or a piece of knowledge.’Footnote 34 Hence, that linguistic construction – of knowledge that – was available. It was simply not chosen within these settings. It was not reached for as a required part of, or accompaniment to, these ascriptions of knowledge of intelligent actions.Footnote 35
So, here is a principle which seems to us to be true, and in the light of which we interpret our cited and analysed texts:
In practice, whenever these texts aim to speak explanatorily of knowledge and knowing, they talk of knowledge-how and of intelligent actions – manifestations of knowledge-how. And they treat such talk as sufficing for that explanatory purpose.
The texts' explicit epistemic references are to knowledge-how and to its being manifested – knowledge exemplified in actions both potential and actual. The texts evince no compulsion also to buttress such talk with references to a further form of knowledge, a kind of knowledge independently understandable as knowledge-that. In practice, the texts' explicit focus is on knowledge in action – potential actions, actual ones. That focus was not treated as thereby needing separately to highlight knowledge-that. And that textual observation suggests, without entailing, a view at odds with intellectualism: namely, the texts display no felt need to talk of knowledge-that also, as somehow distinct from, and even as undergirding, the knowledge-how which those intelligent actions exemplify or express.
Consequently, we return to this section's initial question. Was practicalism being articulated within these texts of Confucian philosophy? Not fully, we allow; but partly so, we claim. Yet if the articulation was only partial, may we reasonably infer any fuller endorsement of practicalist thinking? In a cautious way, perhaps we may do so, given the following implication of our interpretive principle of charity:
These texts convey some philosophy of knowledge's nature. And whatever they convey in this respect exemplifies a practicalist sensibility. (Nothing competing, nothing intellectualist, about knowledge is conveyed, even as aspects of what we would deem to be practicalism are.)
The result is at least a proto-practicalism. And part of the conceptual interest in noticing this is its reminding us that the contemporary Western epistemological focus on knowledge-that is not one to which philosophers must be loyal when setting out to reflect upon knowledge's nature. Contemporary practicalism, we suggest, should be encouraged by this aspect of these ancient texts.Footnote 36
