CLOSE READING – TACIT DIMENSION

• “Tacit knowing is the way in which we are aware of neural processes in terms of perceived objects”  
• Tacit means “understood or implied without being stated.” 
• Subsidiarily means “Serving to assist or supplement” 
• Structure of tacit knowledge – thoughts have elements where we are aware of the reason of our thoughts- existing in our bodies 
• Thinking is not only intentional – fraught with the roots that it embodies 
• From-to structure 
• Originality breeds new values- breeds them naturally. Can’t choose a new set of values but we create or adopt them based on what is needed 
• Soviet ideology under Stalin= denied justification to the pursuit of science = questions of philosophy – believed “science was a morbid symptom of a class society; under socialism the conception of science pursed for its own sake would disappear, for the interests of scientists would spontaneously turn to problems of the current Five Year Plan” saying the “conception of science” is interesting to me because science to me, is something that is usually factual, intellectual and done for a specific purpose to research or find out information and therefore doesn’t appear to be conceptual in my eyes. Also “the interest of scientists” is another interesting phrase as I feel like scientist should surely be neutral in their opinions if they are into factual topics and situations, their opinion would not affect what they were to find out anyway as research would back up all of the claims. 
• “denial of the very existence of independent scientific thought came from a socialist theory which derived its tremendous persuasive power from its claim to scientific certainty.” – this is also a very interesting approach as I just stated that I assumed how scientific facts are facts instead of having an ulterior socialist motive 
• No freedom of thought  
• “we can know more than we can tell”- science could have, and in my opinion definitely do have, the answer to a lot of things that would help save thousands of lives such as remedies to cure illnesses etc., however are being withheld due to money- begin able to prove these important pieces of information/products to people who can fund it and therefore creates a selfish and dystopian approach to science and something so ‘innocent’ as a cure for an illness 
• Recognizing a face amongst a million- but sometimes we can’t tell why we know this face- this knowledge cannot be put into words= police created something where we could select a variety of different facial features which a witness can select individually, to build up a face that they recognize– for example to find a criminal. “This very act of communication displays a knowledge that we cannot tell” 
• Recognizing the moods of a face without understanding why 
• “Ostensive definition” – ostensive meaning by direct demonstrating e.g. pointing,  
• Gestalt psychology says that we could understand a person’s facial features/ expression by understanding our awareness of the details without knowing what they are/what they mean 
• Physiognomy – a person’s facial features or expression, especially when regarded as indicative of character or ethnic origin 
• Knowing what vs knowing how – similar to intermingling bodies; these two work in conjunction with each other and influence each other’s direction to concept 
• Tools, probs, pointers=the art of knowing- verbal pointing 
• Psychological experiments revealing the diabolical machinery of hidden persuasion 
• Experiment – presented someone with many syllables that don’t make coherent sense, after showing certain of the syllables, administered an electric shock=anticipating the shock at the sight of “shock syllables”- but when questions couldn’t say what they were= expect the shock but not what made him expect it 
• Another experiment- exposed someone to shock when he happened to say things that related to certain “shock words” = person could anticipate shock by avoiding saying the associations, but they were doing it subconsciously 
• These above experiments prove that one can know more than tell 
• Subject vs observer 
• Basic structure of tacit knowing 
• Connecting two terms of words/sounds vs association and anticipation, relying on awareness of shock  
• Combining two kinds of knowing = shock syllables and shock associations formed the first term, and the electric shock formed the second term, “we know the first term only by relying on our awareness of it for attending to the second” 
• Disattending from certain things for attending to others – first term to second term, first term being proximal and the second term distal 
• Proximal – situated nearer to the center of the body or the point of attachment. 
• Distal – situated away from the center of the body or from the point of attachment. 
• Proximal term is having a knowledge that we may not be able to tell 
• “Relying on awareness of features for attending to the characteristic appearance of a face”, “likewise, relying on our awareness of a combination of muscular acts for attending to the performance of a skill” 
• Functional structure of tacit knowing 
• Begins to alter as we are anticipating an electric shock – learning what expect, looking out for it 
• Phenomenal structure of tacit knowing as shown above 
• Combining functional and phenomenal aspects, signify approach to shock when the sight of certain syllables makes us expect the shock – gives them meaning to the individual experiencing 
• Characteristic physiognomy = meaning of its features, physiognomy expresses a particular mood 
• Identifying physiognomy = understanding our knowledge of features for attending their meaning once placed together 
• Semantic aspect of tacit knowing “tends to displace all meaning away from ourselves. If we use a tool, and we are accustomed to it, we locate the tool’s effect (the meaning of its impact) on ourselves (e.g., our hand)” 
• Ontological aspect of tacit knowing  
• Ontological meaning “relating to the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. “ontological arguments” 
• 2. showing the relations between the concepts and categories in a subject area or domain. “an ontological database” 
• The way we see objects is by awareness of efforts in our bodies which we can’t technically feel, we can determine the size, shape etc. of an object using our body without feeling it= internal process to qualities of outside objects 
• Understanding the dimensions etc. of an object naturally- eyesight vs using tools and probes 
• Extending subception to subliminal stimuli  
• Muscle twitches when there’s an uncomfortable noise= increasing frequency of twitches = tacit knowledge, internal instinct, automated response, u controllable 
• Philosophers have argued that perception does not involve projection 
• Tacit knowing relates to nervous system 
• Events in our brain = subliminal twitches; perception= tacit knowing 
• “our own body is the only thing in the world which we normally never experience as an object, but always experience in terms of the world to which we are attending from our body” understanding how our body reacts and exists in the world that we exist in 
• German thinkers stated – empathy=proper means of knowing man and their humanities 
• Repeat a word a lot = reduced care in how you say it = mistakes = loosing substance and confusion, examining something or going over it too many times can make us lose sight of it 
• “recovery never brings back original meaning” 
• Going over something too much with too much analysis and detail can destroy the meaning or bring a new meaning to it, but changes the way you thought of it before 
• “The experience of seeing a problem as a scientist sees it in his pursuit of discovery” “all research must start from a problem” – only successful if it’s a good problem/original, problems are hidden, a good solution is finding something so hidden no one else would have even thought it existed,  
• Plato, in Meno says searching for a solution is not needed because you know what you are searching into resulting in no problem, or unsure what you’re looking for and therefore can’t find a solution to something that you’re not looking for 
• Plato’s solution = “all discovery is a remembering of past lives”, explanation has hardly been accepted, neither has any though 
• Humans progressed by encountering problems and solving them 
• “if problems nevertheless exist, and discoveries can be made by solving them, we can know things, and important things, that we cannot tell” 
• Truth vs fruitfulness, recognizing true statements 
• “Anticipation of discovery, like discovery itself, may turn out to be a delusion” 

The Tacit Dimension was the second close reading that we were instructed to do by our tutors, and I had thought that after completing the first one, I could potentially find this slightly easier however I found it more difficult to comprehend. The language was very complex like before, but it took me a while to understand the different terms and ideas that were being explored as I hadn’t heard about them before. Once again, I still viewed this as a good thing due to the fact that it will allow me to improve my critical thinking, allow me to explore complicated types of thinking and reference important movements within philosophy that connect to the ideas of art and design movements.  

Tacit means understood without having it directly explained; therefore, automatically knowing something. Therefore, the idea of tacit knowledge reflects on automatic responses, sensory actions, the nervous system and anticipating results due to signals from the brain. The experiments that were discussed helped me visualize what the author was saying as he was giving examples for me to understand further. One of them being in an experiment, someone was used as a test for tacit knowledge by being given nonsense syllables to listen to and after a certain one they were then shocked with an electric shock. Although they did not know what the syllable meant as it had no prior meaning to them, they started to anticipate the shock without stating how they knew.  

Soviet ideology under Stalin meant that they believed in denying justification to the pursuit of science which were questions raised in general philosophy and therefore it was  believed that “science was a morbid symptom of a class society; under socialism the conception of science pursed for its own sake would disappear, for the interests of scientists would spontaneously turn to problems of the current Five Year Plan” saying the “conception of science” is interesting to me because science to me, is something that is usually factual, intellectual and done for a specific purpose to research or find out information and therefore doesn’t appear to be conceptual in my eyes. Also “the interest of scientists” is another interesting phrase as I feel like scientists should surely be neutral in their opinions if they are into factual topics and situations, their opinion would not affect what they were to find out anyway as research would back up all of the claims. “Denial of the very existence of independent scientific thought came from a socialist theory which derived its tremendous persuasive power from its claim to scientific certainty.” This is also a very interesting approach as I just stated that I assumed how scientific facts are facts instead of having an ulterior socialist motive. Science could have, and in my opinion definitely do have, the answer to a lot of things that would help save thousands of lives such as remedies to cure illnesses etc., however are being withheld due to money- begin able to prove these important pieces of information/products to people who can fund it and therefore creates a selfish and dystopian approach to science and something so ‘innocent’ as a cure for an illness. 

Knowing something subconsciously without understanding what that actual thing is, was discussed in length within this text which I thought was something interesting to debate. On one hand, the tests prove that we can indeed sense something happening, like the electric shocks even though we would be unsure on how to communicate how we know, but you could argue that it isn’t us knowing it in our brain, it’s us being fed signals to react to something, therefore making us not understand it at all as it is subconscious. 

“Anticipation of discovery, like discovery itself, may turn out to be a delusion”  

This quote stood out to me as this could mean a variety of things. The idea of searching for something that is not there creates some sort of fake delusion that we are trying to make up, and therefore is man-made. But on the other hand, you could argue that it wouldn’t be any sort of delusion if you’re discovering new information, even if it’s new to our particular brain and discovered by someone else previously. The act of discovering a problem could be delusional as everything has a solution already to our knowledge, there could be nothing left to discover as it is all already out there. Relating to the quote of “if problems nevertheless exist, and discoveries can be made by solving them, we can know things, and important things, that we cannot tell” because if we already know the thing (even if we can’t tell) then we have discovered it already? 

Overall the ideas discussed were very complex for me and therefore I am unsure if what I was discussing even made sense but I enjoyed reading this type of text even though it took me a few tries to get to grips with it. I will challenge myself to read more academic texts and attempt to critically analyse them like I have done with the past two as I am keen to improve my critical writing skills for my dissertation project.