I guess I’m not seeing the distinction between propositional and procedural knowledge. I get that people don’t always realize what all the little steps they follow are (or their significance); but things like “Don’t introduce any grease into the batter, or peaks will fail to form” are propositional knowledge, are they not?
(or from my own baking experience: It’s very important to CUT the butter into scones, but a large percentage of recipes will fail to mention that.)
The phrase “non-propositional knowledge” brings to my mind things like Zen Buddhism...
(EDIT: If you’re saying procedural knowledge is a subset of propositional knowledge, then I have no qualms...)
Procedural knowledge is often initially constructed out of propositional knowledge. But once procedural knowledge is had, it also incorporates things like body memory and pure automatic habit, which, when observed in oneself, are just as likely to be rationalized after the fact as they are to be antecedently planned for sound reasons. It’s also easy to forget the initial propositions about a mastered procedure. I am likely to forget why I separate eggs with spoons at some point, until and unless I decide to go back to doing it by hand and get the corresponding poor results: I will just reach for the silverware drawer and set about separating eggs. (This is probably a bad example, since by mentioning in the post above my reasons for changing methods, I’ve cemented those reasons in my mind. However, I’m sure there are a dozen things I do automatically in the kitchen that have no cognitively occurrent relationship to the reasons I started doing them in the first place.)
Here’s possibly a better example of procedural cooking knowledge: salt.
Indepdent of the perceived “salty” flavor, low levels of salt in food have the subjective effect of bringing out other flavors. Undersalted food will smell good, but taste mysteriously flat and bland. On the other hand, too much makes the dish taste actively salty, which is often not desired.
A cook with some degree of skill and practice will usually have an intuitive grasp of how much salt to put into a dish, depending on the size of the batch and the saltiness of other ingredients. This is a key skill for cooking, but nearly impossible to communicate propositionally, which is why when a novice cook asks me how much salt a dish needs I end up waving my hands around and saying “Uh, however much is enough!”
But once procedural knowledge is had, it also incorporates things like body memory and pure automatic habit, which, when observed in oneself, are just as likely to be rationalized after the fact as they are to be antecedently planned for sound reasons. It’s also easy to forget the initial propositions about a mastered procedure.
I’ve also noticed this kind of thing in my martial arts training.
For instance, often times high level black belts will be incredibly successful at a particular technique but unable to explain the procedure they use (or at least, they’ll be able to explain the basic procedure but not the specific detail that makes the difference). These details are often things the practitioner has learned unconsciously, and so are not propositional knowledge for them at all. Or they may be propositions taught long ago but forgotten (except in muscle memory).
The difference between a great practitioner and a great teacher is usually the ability to spot the difference that makes a difference.
Perhaps another example is learning to drive a stickshift; it seems no amount of talking will help someone find the sweet spot on the clutch any faster.
I think the clearer examples (of procedural knowledge) tend to be things like physical skills that we can learn to reliably perform, but without necessarily being able to articulate how it is that we perform them. In that sense it wouldn’t be accurate to say it’s simply a subset of propositional knowledge; it’s more that the two may intersect to some extent, and the boundaries of each can move as we learn to articulate what it is that we’re doing, or to think about what we’re doing in propositional terms. (EDIT: or, as Alicorn suggests, forget the propositional reasons why we did things a particular way in the first place.)
The classic example of riding a bicycle comes to mind. No amount of propositional knowledge will allow you to use a bike successfully on the first go. Theory about gyroscopic effects of wheels and so forth all comes to nothing until you hop on and try (and fail, repeatedly) to ride the damn thing.
Conversely, most people never realise the propositional knowledge that in order to steer the bike left, you must turn the handle bars right (at least initially and at high speeds). But they do it unconsciously nonetheless.
I tend to view procedural knowledge as being infered from propositional knowledge. You have the map (propositional), draw the route (procedural) and then store/transmit essentially only the route without the map (the how without all of the justufucation, although some does leak in). Mentions to automatic habit etc. can essentially be considered caching that persists even after the propositional knowledge has been discarded.
I view Alicorn’s method as essentially 1. gathering a lot of (procedural) routes to similar goals, 2. reverse-engineering propositional knowledge from them by using (mostly) voting and 3. adding extra knowledge through experimentation and the current circumstances. This arrives at a new procedure that reaches a goal in cookie-space that is satisfying to Alicorn’s taste, constrained resources available to her, in short, an Alicorn-optimized procedure.
I guess I’m not seeing the distinction between propositional and procedural knowledge. I get that people don’t always realize what all the little steps they follow are (or their significance); but things like “Don’t introduce any grease into the batter, or peaks will fail to form” are propositional knowledge, are they not?
(or from my own baking experience: It’s very important to CUT the butter into scones, but a large percentage of recipes will fail to mention that.)
The phrase “non-propositional knowledge” brings to my mind things like Zen Buddhism...
(EDIT: If you’re saying procedural knowledge is a subset of propositional knowledge, then I have no qualms...)
Procedural knowledge is often initially constructed out of propositional knowledge. But once procedural knowledge is had, it also incorporates things like body memory and pure automatic habit, which, when observed in oneself, are just as likely to be rationalized after the fact as they are to be antecedently planned for sound reasons. It’s also easy to forget the initial propositions about a mastered procedure. I am likely to forget why I separate eggs with spoons at some point, until and unless I decide to go back to doing it by hand and get the corresponding poor results: I will just reach for the silverware drawer and set about separating eggs. (This is probably a bad example, since by mentioning in the post above my reasons for changing methods, I’ve cemented those reasons in my mind. However, I’m sure there are a dozen things I do automatically in the kitchen that have no cognitively occurrent relationship to the reasons I started doing them in the first place.)
Here’s possibly a better example of procedural cooking knowledge: salt.
Indepdent of the perceived “salty” flavor, low levels of salt in food have the subjective effect of bringing out other flavors. Undersalted food will smell good, but taste mysteriously flat and bland. On the other hand, too much makes the dish taste actively salty, which is often not desired.
A cook with some degree of skill and practice will usually have an intuitive grasp of how much salt to put into a dish, depending on the size of the batch and the saltiness of other ingredients. This is a key skill for cooking, but nearly impossible to communicate propositionally, which is why when a novice cook asks me how much salt a dish needs I end up waving my hands around and saying “Uh, however much is enough!”
I’ve also noticed this kind of thing in my martial arts training.
For instance, often times high level black belts will be incredibly successful at a particular technique but unable to explain the procedure they use (or at least, they’ll be able to explain the basic procedure but not the specific detail that makes the difference). These details are often things the practitioner has learned unconsciously, and so are not propositional knowledge for them at all. Or they may be propositions taught long ago but forgotten (except in muscle memory).
The difference between a great practitioner and a great teacher is usually the ability to spot the difference that makes a difference.
Thanks, that makes your point much clearer.
Perhaps another example is learning to drive a stickshift; it seems no amount of talking will help someone find the sweet spot on the clutch any faster.
I think the clearer examples (of procedural knowledge) tend to be things like physical skills that we can learn to reliably perform, but without necessarily being able to articulate how it is that we perform them. In that sense it wouldn’t be accurate to say it’s simply a subset of propositional knowledge; it’s more that the two may intersect to some extent, and the boundaries of each can move as we learn to articulate what it is that we’re doing, or to think about what we’re doing in propositional terms. (EDIT: or, as Alicorn suggests, forget the propositional reasons why we did things a particular way in the first place.)
The classic example of riding a bicycle comes to mind. No amount of propositional knowledge will allow you to use a bike successfully on the first go. Theory about gyroscopic effects of wheels and so forth all comes to nothing until you hop on and try (and fail, repeatedly) to ride the damn thing.
Conversely, most people never realise the propositional knowledge that in order to steer the bike left, you must turn the handle bars right (at least initially and at high speeds). But they do it unconsciously nonetheless.
I tend to view procedural knowledge as being infered from propositional knowledge. You have the map (propositional), draw the route (procedural) and then store/transmit essentially only the route without the map (the how without all of the justufucation, although some does leak in). Mentions to automatic habit etc. can essentially be considered caching that persists even after the propositional knowledge has been discarded.
I view Alicorn’s method as essentially 1. gathering a lot of (procedural) routes to similar goals, 2. reverse-engineering propositional knowledge from them by using (mostly) voting and 3. adding extra knowledge through experimentation and the current circumstances. This arrives at a new procedure that reaches a goal in cookie-space that is satisfying to Alicorn’s taste, constrained resources available to her, in short, an Alicorn-optimized procedure.