Starting with "implicit philosophy," here is a key quote from Part 6:
In developing this theory, I have not meant to deny the role of philosophy in history but to define it, and to define it especially in one key respect. As I hinted in Part 4:
While the examples I cite in this series do not involve the influence of explicitly stated philosophical ideas, it might be objected that they do show the influence of men's implicit philosophy. Yet that is precisely my point, and spelling out exactly how good ideas are grasped implicitly, in what form and by what process, is part of what I want to address.
I consider the influence of implicit philosophical ideas to be the deepest explanation of what shapes the course of history. This is the last big issue we need to address if we are to understand how ideas spread and influence human action.This is Trancinski's answer to the question: If the world hasn't accepted Objectivism, how is it that the world hasn't collapsed? His answer is: The world has started to accept Objectivism, it just doesn't know it yet (it has accepted it implicitly). Tracinski believes philosophy is an integration of all human knowledge and that Objectivism represents everything humanity has learned over the past five thousand years. As discussed in another post, I believe philosophy is simply the answer to four basic questions.
If philosophy is really just the basics of how to live on earth, any honest observer can figure out at least some of the answers. This view of philosophy can explain why the world hasn't collapsed during the last thirty years even though the people who have had a positive impact are not Objectivists. These people include Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs, George Mitchell (the father of fracking) and even Mikhail Gorbachev. Not only are these people not Objectivists, they would categorically deny the label. However, they figured out enough proper philosophy to make a real impact on the world.So if any honest observer can figure out a proper philosophy for living on earth, what does Objectivism add? Objectivism is the first complete and fully consistent system of answers to the four basic questions. All four branches—metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics—are interconnected and Objectivism showed, for the first time in history, how they are connected and what premises they are ultimately based on. With Objectivism, the honest observer doesn't need to figure it all out, he or she only needs to study Ayn Rand.
What Tracinski calls "implicit philosophy" is really just the honest observer's grasp of a correct philosophic principle in a limited context, i.e. not integrated with a complete philosophical system. Despite the limited context, the correct principle does represents a properly formed concept linked to the facts of reality. Take as an example Ronald Reagan's view on taxes which is, briefly: lowering taxes encourages economic productivity which is good for the people and the country. He came to this view from his own experience and simply called it common sense. This one idea put into practice explains a lot of what went right in the eighties and nineties.
I also disagree with Tracinski on what he calls "implicit knowledge":
We rely on implicit knowledge all the time, as a necessity of life, in matters big and small. In ordering food at a restaurant, you rely on implicitly held assumptions about what kind of food is healthy, or about what flavor combinations are likely to be pleasing—assumptions you may go through your entire life without ever having to examine in explicit terms. When speaking or writing, you rely on your subconscious to feed you the appropriate words to express your exact shade of meaning, often without identifying explicitly all of the nuances and associations implicit in a word. Or a scientist working to solve a new problem may carry important implicit conclusions—gained from decades of experience—about the significance of certain types of evidence, or about the proper use of certain mathematical techniques, or about what constitutes proof of a theory. We rely on too many of these implicit ideas to subject all of them to explicit identification and examination—though we can and must examine the ones that are most important to us—yet we cannot function without them.
What kind of food is healthy and which tastes good is just knowledge, neither implicit nor explicit. As for taste, when one thinks of a food, the brain immediately recalls an evaluation of that food because it is a direct sensation. When I think of grilled salmon, my brain tells me it is delicious because I've had it many times before. When I think of fried leeches, they don't seem appetizing but apparently they are quite good. I simply have no knowledge of their taste, neither explicit nor implicit. As for health, one must think it through and examine what the ingredients are and then recall the health benefits and risks of each. It is very easy to be misled by marketing about healthy foods, and I'm not sure the experts even know what's really healthy and what's not. I believe most of our ideas on what is healthy—which is brought up by our subconscious—is not reliable knowledge because we are basing it on marketing rather than nutritional science.
This one example of food is an excellent case study in how the brain works. I tried star fruit once, about a year ago. Before I ate it, I had no idea about what it would taste like. I now remember it being sweet at first but then quite sour at the end, but I can't quite remember exactly. It takes a conscious effort on my part to remember what it tasted like. I formed the concept of star fruit by seeing it in the grocery store, handling it when I bought it and then by eating it. But I have not yet automated the taste, so my subconscious cannot quickly recall that information. On the other hand, I have strawberries several times every month, and I can immediately recall what they taste like. The taste of strawberries has been reinforced so many times in my brain that the subconscious has no trouble recalling the sensation.
Tracinski claims that "implicit knowledge" is similar to (or perhaps the same as) the information that the subconscious mind recalls, but he also claims that "implicit knowledge" is available before concept formation:
A philosophical concept is "implicit" when one has not yet named or defined it, but one has gone through some part of the process necessary to form it. In particular, one has the concept implicitly when one has formed some of the lower-level abstractions that form the basis for drawing a higher-level philosophical conclusion.
The examples Tracinski gives of "implicit knowledge" are all examples of subconscious recall. However, the subconscious can only function after a concept has been formed and reinforced to the point where the information about it becomes automated. If "implicit knowledge" is something that is present before the concept has been formed, the subconscious cannot automatically recall any information about the concept.
As for speaking or writing, Ayn Rand has an excellent discussion of how the subconscious works in The Art of Fiction. She makes the point that a writer must rely on his subconscious to write efficiently in a reasonable amount of time. However, for the subconscious to function well, one's knowledge needs to be stored in an orderly way, with the proper connections to the facts of reality and to the rest of one's knowledge. Ayn Rand did exactly this and was able to write Atlas Shrugged. She makes the point that one must rely on the subconscious while writing but afterwards, "you will be able to give a conscious reason for every word in your description; but you did not have to know the reasons while writing." Tracinski's description of "implicit knowledge" is the same as Ayn Rand's description of the information supplied by the subconscious mind, but she is clear that for ideas brought up by the subconscious, one must be able to "subject all of them to explicit identification and examination" (to use Tracinski's phrase).
My day job is as a scientist in industry working with some good scientists and some bad scientists. I can tell you from first-hand experience that the good ones rely on a methodical and explicit identification of principles that can explain the data, and the bad ones try to use "implicit conclusions—gained from decades of experience—about the significance of certain types of evidence, or about the proper use of certain mathematical techniques, or about what constitutes proof of a theory." These people are very poor problem solvers because they don't know which data are important, which of the many techniques they should use when, or even how to design an experiment that will test—not even prove—their hypothesis. These bad scientists have never explicitly thought about the knowledge they were taught in school, so it is not integrated correctly and they cannot recall it properly with their subconscious.
In summary, I think Tracinski's "What Went Right" is a great series that asks a very important question—How has the world improved even though it hasn't accepted an objective philosophy?—and offers some intriguing answers: the spread of global capitalism, education in science and technology, and an increase in representative government. However, I disagree with his idea of "implicit philosophy" which I believe is just correct philosophic principles in a limited context. I also disagree with his idea of "implicit knowledge" which I believe is simply our subconscious at work and occurs after concept formation, not before. Despite these disagreements, "What Went Right" is certainly worth reading for anyone interested in trying to fix the world.
Interesting.
ReplyDeleteI think there is an important distinction between two kinds of subconscious thinking.
One which provides implicit knowledge prior to it being derived consciously and properly framed in words. This would be similar to intuition or a kind of implicit adherence to the world.
And the other is automatized knowledge which is again called up and used by the subconscious but only after the knowledge has been consciously formulated and stored.
And I think you are mistaking automatized knowledge with implicit knowledge.
For examples of the first kind:
Suppose you are a child and you know the words for water, oil, blood, etc. but you don't have the word for liquid ie you have not formed the concept explicitly yet. That does not mean that you would be surprised when faced with some new "liquid" say wine, that it flows. You would be comfortable in dealing with it - you will not have to make excessive mental effort - because you know it has properties common with water, oil, etc. although you do not know the property explicitly. You would use a container to collect it and you will make sure that it does not spill. You will do all that even though you explicitly do not know what "liquid" means.
When you go to school, the teacher teaches you states of matter. And although the three words solid, liquid and gas are totally new to you, you have no problem in understanding what they mean. Which means you had a lot of implicit never-given-word-to knowledge in your mind before-hand which you just had to recall.
So, finally the question is: did you, when you were a child, know that wine is liquid? Explicitly, no. Which means that if the question was put to you in these words you wouldn't know. But implicitly, yes. Because you have dealt with it and know how it acts. And that is exactly how children learn. They first accumulate a lot of implicit knowledge - loads and loads of it - enough for them to make a concept of something and then they either observe grown-ups using a word for it or in later stages they may even ask - what is this thing called? Once they know what it is called, they know it explicitly.
So, you know something implicitly means that you have accumulated enough knowledge to sketch out the concept consciously although you have not done it yet.
Examples of the second kind are the ones that you mention about tasting food. Or how we write and speak full sentences in a flow because all of that has been automatized.