Knowing how and pragmatic intrusion

It will be argued that “knowing how” can be reduced to “knowing that” provided that a view based on pragmatic intrusion is accepted. In this paper, I explore various interconnected ideas: opacity, Gettier’s problem, Igor Douven’s pragmatics of belief, negativity arguments, and contextualism about knowledge. This paper mainly shows that philosophy and pragmalinguistic considerations are deeply entangled. When matters of inference are considered, it is also worthwhile considering pragmatic intrusion. There are reasons to believe that almost all questions that pertain to knowing how can be analyzed with reference to pragmatic intrusion — that being a pervasive feature of human communication. Given what Igor Douven says about the pragmatics of belief, we are not surprised that knowledge, as well as belief, is strictly connected with the notion of communication and that many of the arguments that pertain to the sphere of epistemology can be illuminated by the tool of pragmatic intrusion.