Faculty Fellow Lecture Series: Will Small, Associate Professor, Philosophy, “Skill as Practical Knowledge”
Faculty Fellow Lecture Series
March 18, 2026
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Location
Institute for the Humanities, 153 Behavioral Sciences Building
Address
1007 W. Harrison St., Chicago, IL 60607
Calendar
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The claim that skill (or “know-how”) is a kind of practical knowledge has a long history—going back at least to Aristotle—and may seem so obvious as to be a platitude. But there are different things it can mean. After distinguishing several of them, I sketch a conception of skill according to which it is adistinctively practical form of knowledge, explain some of the philosophical attractions of this conception, and indicate how it differs from, and its theoretical advantages over, the “intellectualist” and“anti-intellectualist” conceptions of skill that are dominant in contemporary philosophy.
Will Small is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy. He works in the philosophy of action, epistemology, and ethics. He aims to articulate what we can understand about agency by virtue of the fact that we ourselves are agents—our agential understanding of agency.
Date posted
May 28, 2025
Date updated
Feb 23, 2026