Fascinating. When I was a kid and was having difficulty with some task, my grandfather would say, "You didn't hold your mouth right." Many years later, I realized that he was talking about tacit knowledge (and probably most specifically about one's embouchure when playing a wind instrument). There are vital aspects to most skills that are simply not evident to the casual observer.
I had not heard the phrase "tacit knowledge" until today; I'm glad to have a word for it.
This is related to the "p-zombie" (philosophical zombie) question, no?
The idea that a being that if there were a being without access to tacit knowledge, you couldn't really prove that they don't have access because they'd struggle to communicate it in exactly the same way a person with access to their feelings would.
Like "describe the color red" -> it is hot/warm vs it is lucky or romantic or "blue" -> it is cold vs it is suffocating like the ocean vs it is free like the sky.
In maths there is a lot of tacit knowledge. A student at the beginning of learning a subject will often be able to say the exact same words about the subject as at the end of learning it. But at the beginning their ability to solve problems in this subject will be limited. At the end it will be increased. They will not be able to express with words what changed in their understanding. But in some sense the words they were speaking at the beginning were vacuous. At the same time that tacit knowledge could really be tested: by asking them to calculate or prove related things. If they can’t, their words are just repeated theorems etc. And they may even be convinced themselves that they do understand those words; yet they don’t.
As Von Neumann said: “In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.”
Fascinating. When I was a kid and was having difficulty with some task, my grandfather would say, "You didn't hold your mouth right." Many years later, I realized that he was talking about tacit knowledge (and probably most specifically about one's embouchure when playing a wind instrument). There are vital aspects to most skills that are simply not evident to the casual observer.
I had not heard the phrase "tacit knowledge" until today; I'm glad to have a word for it.
This is related to the "p-zombie" (philosophical zombie) question, no?
The idea that a being that if there were a being without access to tacit knowledge, you couldn't really prove that they don't have access because they'd struggle to communicate it in exactly the same way a person with access to their feelings would.
Like "describe the color red" -> it is hot/warm vs it is lucky or romantic or "blue" -> it is cold vs it is suffocating like the ocean vs it is free like the sky.
In maths there is a lot of tacit knowledge. A student at the beginning of learning a subject will often be able to say the exact same words about the subject as at the end of learning it. But at the beginning their ability to solve problems in this subject will be limited. At the end it will be increased. They will not be able to express with words what changed in their understanding. But in some sense the words they were speaking at the beginning were vacuous. At the same time that tacit knowledge could really be tested: by asking them to calculate or prove related things. If they can’t, their words are just repeated theorems etc. And they may even be convinced themselves that they do understand those words; yet they don’t.
As Von Neumann said: “In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.”
Reminds me of this small post, which I found here on HN, and someone suggested the author was trying to define the concept.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230926225119/https://www.koopu...
For a good exploration, see "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons" (1995).
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2782506