CONCEPT
The Regress Argument
Ryle's decisive refutation of the intellectualist legend: if intelligent action required prior contemplation of a rule, the contemplation itself would require further rules, and intelligent action could never begin.
The regress argument is the logical engine of Ryle's case against the intellectualist legend and, by extension, against the picture of mind that treats all competence as the application of theoretical knowledge. The argument runs: if performing an action intelligently requires first contemplating a rule about how to perform it, then the contemplation is itself an action that can be performed well or badly. Applying the rule intelligently therefore requires further rules about how to apply rules, which require further rules still, without terminus. The regress is vicious — it cannot stop anywhere without arbitrarily privileging one level over all others, and it cannot continue forever within the finite time of an actual action. Since intelligent action manifestly occurs, the intellectualist legend must be wrong. Knowing how is not reducible to knowing that.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The argument has the elegance of mathematical proof and the durability to match. It does not depend on empirical claims about how