Intellectual Skill and the Rylean Regress

Brian Weatherson (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

Abstract: Regress arguments have fallen out of favour in debates about intellectualism. I think this is a mistake; regress arguments of the form Ryle deployed can still teach us a lot. I use one such argument to show that a very strong form of intellectualism, one that identifies all intellectual skill with the possession of the right kind of knowledge, is mistaken. One intellectual skill is the skill to recognise what considerations are and are not relevant to a particular problem under consideration, and this skill cannot be equated with knowledge.