Skills and Savoir-Faire: Might Anti-Intellectualism Suffice?

An increasingly popular objection to anti-intellectualism about know-how is that there are clear cases where an agent having the dispositional ability to & phi; does not suffice for her knowing how to & phi;. Recently, Adam Carter has argued that anti-intellectualism can only rise to meet this sufficiency objection if it imposes additional constraints on know-how. He develops a revisionary anti-intellectualism, on which knowing how to & phi; not only entails that the agent possesses a reliable ability to & phi;, but also that she is equipped with certain kind of intellectual grasp of the method by which she is able to reliably & phi;. This paper argues that Carter's revisionary know-how does not constitute an improvement over the more standard version of anti-intellectualism. Moreover, it is argued that Carter's additional demands concede too much to the intellectualist, and, as a result, commit his revised anti-intellectualism to familiar problems facing the intellectualist account of know-how. In other words, his attempts to respond to the sufficiency objection constitutes a dangerous compromise to the intellectualist. The paper finishes with a final analysis that suggests, in the end, there are still reasons to prefer standard anti-intellectualism over intellectualism.