How do we handle the existence of knowledge which is reliable but cannot be explained? As an example, consider the human ability to recognize faces (or places, pieces of music, etc). We have nearly total confidence in our ability to recognize people by their faces (given enough time, good lighting, etc). However, we cannot articulate the process by which we perform face recognition.
Imagine you met a blind alien, and for whatever reason needed to convince it of your ability to recognize people by face. Since you cannot provide a reasonable description of your face recognition process, you are essentially in the position of saying “I’m totally sure of the identity of the person I saw, but I cannot explain why I am so certain”.
Quite a bit is known about the neurology behind face recognition. No one understands the algorithm well enough to build a fusiform gyrus from scratch, but that doesn’t mean the fact that there is an algorithm is mysterious.
Even if we did not have any understanding of the neurology, I’m not sure why pointing to an empirical record of successful face recognition shouldn’t be fairly convincing. Is the point that we could be lying about our record?
(In the specific example given, you could probably get a fair bit of mileage from explaining the nature of vision, even without the specifics of face-recognition. I’m not really sure what broader lesson that might have though, as I don’t fully understand the nature of the question you’re asking.)
How do we handle the existence of knowledge which is reliable but cannot be explained? As an example, consider the human ability to recognize faces (or places, pieces of music, etc). We have nearly total confidence in our ability to recognize people by their faces (given enough time, good lighting, etc). However, we cannot articulate the process by which we perform face recognition.
Imagine you met a blind alien, and for whatever reason needed to convince it of your ability to recognize people by face. Since you cannot provide a reasonable description of your face recognition process, you are essentially in the position of saying “I’m totally sure of the identity of the person I saw, but I cannot explain why I am so certain”.
Quite a bit is known about the neurology behind face recognition. No one understands the algorithm well enough to build a fusiform gyrus from scratch, but that doesn’t mean the fact that there is an algorithm is mysterious.
Even if we did not have any understanding of the neurology, I’m not sure why pointing to an empirical record of successful face recognition shouldn’t be fairly convincing. Is the point that we could be lying about our record?
(In the specific example given, you could probably get a fair bit of mileage from explaining the nature of vision, even without the specifics of face-recognition. I’m not really sure what broader lesson that might have though, as I don’t fully understand the nature of the question you’re asking.)