Replying to LO25810 --
Ah, more food, more differences ;-)
Thank you, Maggie!
>In discussing language acquisition, Michael Polanyi clarifies tacit
>knowledge by recognizing its existence in three areas.
>
>The first area is referred to as the "ineffable domain" where "the tacit
>predominates to the extent that articulation is virtually impossible"
>(Personal Knowledge 87). Polanyi describes the ineffable as things we know
>in only by doing them. It is the knowledge obtained through mimesis, or
>immersion
Artur and Fred, doesn't this sound like the way animals may know? Only
doing it, articulation virtually impossible. I am still convinced (why?
;-) that humans mind with its ability to formal articulation is a
complexification of animals minds, not an immergence.
>In the second area, "the tacit component is the information
>conveyed easily by intelligible speech, so that the tacit component is
>co-existive with the text of which it carries the meaning" (87). Polanyi
>cites reading a letter as an example of this second area. The text is
>subsidiary to the meaning, and as we read, the text, as it were, drops
>away and the meaning remains.
A formal articulation can only convey information, knowledge is situated
in the mind. I think we agree on this distinction.
>The third area is the "domain of
>sophistication" in which "the tacit and formal fall apart" (87). Polanyi
>explains that the domain of sophistication is formed by symbolic
>operations which are not fully understood, but described as "a fumbling,"
>to be corrected later by our tacit understanding or a "pioneering," to be
>followed up later by our tacit understanding" (93). He goes on to say that
>both cases incur a "state of mental uneasiness due to the feeling that our
>tacit thoughts do not agree with our symbolic operation, so that we have
>to decide which of the two we should rely and which we should correct. In
>the light of the other" (93). The "uneasiness" that Polanyi describes is
>cognitive dissonance, a sensing of anomalies.
>
>" Fumbling" and "pioneering" thus become linked to tacit knowledge, and
>dissonance provides the vital information. Gregory Bateson describes such
>disturbances as news or signals of boundaries:
>
>"[The mind] can only encounter news of boundaries, news of the contexts >of differences" (240).
Now, this sounds to me very much like the birth, emergence of formal
articulation from a tacit ground. It is then 'rote learning' which
destructively disconnects formal rote knowledge from the tacit ground and
supresses (in a process of 'socialisation'?) the unease - until the map
has nothing in common any more with the territory, the experential
fundament.
The differences, aren't they (like) entropic forces?
The process of adapting the map to the territory, isn't this described
more comprehensive as a 'dance of LEP on LEC' by which a system
complexifies self in the context of its surrounding?
I love this thread! It is exciting!
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
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