The article discusses the relation between skills (or competences), creditability, and aptness. The positive suggestion is that we might make progress understanding the relation between creditability and aptness by inquiring more generally about how different kinds of competences and their exercise might underwrite allocation of credit. Whether or not a competence is acquired and whether or not a competence is actively exercised might matter for the credit that the agent deserves for the exercise of that competence. A fine-grained taxonomy of competences opens up the possibility of instinctual knowledge (knowledge by mere instincts) as well as the possibility of habitual knowledge (knowledge by mere habits), alongside knowledge by skills (or alongside knowledge by yet other sorts of competences). If instinctual knowledge were possible, it is suggested that it might not be of the sort that deserves credit at all. By piggybacking from the literature in evolutionary psychology, I suggest that, as inborn social learners, merely instinctual—and so not fully creditable—knowledge might be a reality for us.

本文讨论了技能（或能力）、可信度和能力之间的关系。积极的建议是，我们可以通过更普遍地询问不同类型的能力及其行使如何支持学分分配，在理解可信度和适当性之间的关系方面取得进展。是否获得了一项能力以及是否积极行使了一项能力，这可能对代理人行使该能力应得的信用有所影响。精细的能力分类法开辟了本能知识（纯粹本能的知识）的可能性，以及习惯性知识（纯粹习惯的知识）的可能性，以及技能知识（或与其他类型的能力知识一起）。如果直觉知识是可能的，那么它可能根本不是那种值得称赞的知识。通过借鉴进化心理学的文献，我建议，作为天生的社会学习者，仅仅是本能的知识——因此并不完全可信——对我们来说可能是现实。