This is a post by Andrés Soria-Ruiz (University of Barcelona).
Think of the following: for all you know, you could be living in a computer simulation. Your friends might be so-called “Non-Player Characters”; your home, your surroundings might all be part of a sophisticated illusion. All of that is possible, and more worryingly, you—we—have no way of telling whether that’s actually the case.
Scenarios like these are often called ‘skeptical hypotheses’, because they are hypotheses about reality that lead to a certain kind of general skepticism. The reasoning is straightforward: since we cannot rule out such hypotheses, much of our knowledge seems questionable. Take any piece of everyday knowledge. For example: you know that you live in Barcelona. Don’t you? Well, think again: if you were living in a computer simulation, then you wouldn’t be living in Barcelona; rather, you would be living inside a computer program. And if you can’t be sure whether you live in Barcelona or inside a computer program, then you don’t know that you live in Barcelona after all.
Thus, skeptical hypotheses appear to destroy everyday knowledge. All of it? Perhaps not. In a recent article, I argue that practical knowledge, or know-how, is a kind of knowledge that would, in certain instances, “survive” under such skeptical hypotheses. Think of basic actions, such as high-fiving, swimming backstroke, tying your shoelaces, or—my favorite example—playing a drum rudiment, e.g. the single paradiddle. The thought is the following: I know how to play the single paradiddle. Now, if I can’t rule out that I am living in a simulation, does that destroy my knowledge of how to play a single paradiddle? In my article, I answer ‘no’.
My argument rests on what it takes, on reasonable assumptions, to know how to do things. As many philosophers have stressed, knowing how to do something is not, or not just, a matter of knowing facts; that is, things about the world. Rather, know-how is a matter of possessing and displaying abilities, often acquired by drill and habit (this idea goes back most famously to Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind).
In my view, know-how is also not just a matter of possessing abilities. It is a matter of knowing certain norms, rules, or procedures. One needs to know what is required in order to perform the relevant action appropriately. And such requirements, I argue, would still hold even if we were living in a simulation. For instance, knowing how to play the single paradiddle requires knowing that one needs to play the following pattern with the (R)ight and (L)eft hand (or foot, or fingers…): RLRRLRLL… And even if we were living in a computer simulation, the requirement on playing a single paradiddle would still be that. After all, the single paradiddle just is the pattern RLRRLRLL…, and it would still be that pattern in a simulation, a dream, or the real world. So, if you know how to do play a single paradiddle, then you know something that would still hold even if much of our everyday knowledge turned out to be false.
Thus, know-how survives a certain kind of skeptical argument about the external world. The external world might be wildly different from what it seems to us, but that need not automatically degrade, or diminish, our practical knowledge. So there’s the good news: if you’re into epistemological skepticism and you’re concerned about your practical knowledge, you can stop worrying—your know-how is safe!
To read more, check out my article, “I know how to withstand the skeptic”, which appears in Synthese, issue 205(97), February 2025.
Andrés Soria-Ruiz is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona, specializing on philosophy of language. He has written on subjective and evaluative terms, attitude verbs, metalinguistic uses of language, and discriminatory public speech.
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