For example, take that canonical example of learning to ride a bike. It’s true that you can learn it hands-on, using the inscrutable, patient training of the master. But you can also learn it by being told the primary counterintuitive insights (“as long as you keep moving, you won’t tip over”), and then a little practice on your own.
In that case, the verbal knowledge has substituted one-for-one with tacit learning you would have gained on your own from practice.
I’m looking forward to your article, and I think that you’re right to emphasize the vast gap between “unverbalizable” and “I don’t know at the moment how to verbalize it”.
But, to really pass the “bicycle test”, wouldn’t you have to be able to explain verbally how to ride a bike so well that someone could get right on the bike and ride perfectly on the first try? That is, wouldn’t you have to be able to eliminate even that “little practice on your own”?
Or is there some part of being able to ride a bike that you don’t count as knowledge, and which forms the ineliminable core that needs to be practiced?
But, to really pass the “bicycle test”, wouldn’t you have to be able to explain verbally how to ride a bike so well that someone could get right on the bike and ride perfectly on the first try? That is, wouldn’t you have to be able to eliminate even that “little practice on your own”?
Depends on what the “bicycle test” is testing. For me, the fact that something is staked out as a canonical, grounding example of tacit knowledge, and then is shown to be largely verbalizable, blows a big hole in the concept. It shows that “hey, this part I can’t explain” was groundless in several subcases.
I do agree that some knowledge probably deserves to be called tacit. But given the apparent massive relativity of tacitness, and the above example, it seems that these cases are so rare, you’re best off working from the assumption that nothing is tacit, than from looking for cases that you can plausibly claim are tacit.
It’s like any other case where one possibility should be considered last. If you do a random test on General Relativity and find it to be way off, you should first work from the assumption that you, rather than GR, made a mistake somewhere. Likewise, if your instinct is to label some of your knowledge as tacit, your first assumption should be, “there’s some way I can open up this black box; what am I missing?”. Yes, these beliefs could be wrong—but you need a lot more evidence before rejecting them should even be on the radar.
(And to be clear, I don’t claim my thesis about tacitness to deserve the same odds as GR!)
something is staked out as a canonical, grounding example of tacit knowledge, and then is shown to be largely verbalizable
Just to be clear, I don’t think it has been shown in the case of bike-riding that the knowledge can be transferred verbally. You can give someone verbal instruction that will help them improve faster at bike-riding, that isn’t at issue. It’s much less clear that telling someone the actual control algorithm you use when you ride a bike is sufficient to transform them from novice into proficient bike rider.
You can program a robot to ride a bike and in that sense the knowledge is verbalizable, but looking at the source code would not necessarily be an effective method of learning how to do it.
I think being able to verbally transmit the knowledge that solves most of the problem for them is proof that at least some of the skill can be transferred verbally. And of course it doesn’t help to tell someone the detailed control algorithm to ride a bike, and I wouldn’t recommend doing so as an explanation—that’s not the kind of information they need!
One day, I think it will be possible to teach someone to ride a bike before they ever use one, or even carry out similar actions, though you might need a neural interface rather than spoken words to do so. The first step in such a quest is to abandon appeals to tacit knowledge, even if there are cases where it really does exist.
I’m looking forward to your article, and I think that you’re right to emphasize the vast gap between “unverbalizable” and “I don’t know at the moment how to verbalize it”.
But, to really pass the “bicycle test”, wouldn’t you have to be able to explain verbally how to ride a bike so well that someone could get right on the bike and ride perfectly on the first try? That is, wouldn’t you have to be able to eliminate even that “little practice on your own”?
Or is there some part of being able to ride a bike that you don’t count as knowledge, and which forms the ineliminable core that needs to be practiced?
Depends on what the “bicycle test” is testing. For me, the fact that something is staked out as a canonical, grounding example of tacit knowledge, and then is shown to be largely verbalizable, blows a big hole in the concept. It shows that “hey, this part I can’t explain” was groundless in several subcases.
I do agree that some knowledge probably deserves to be called tacit. But given the apparent massive relativity of tacitness, and the above example, it seems that these cases are so rare, you’re best off working from the assumption that nothing is tacit, than from looking for cases that you can plausibly claim are tacit.
It’s like any other case where one possibility should be considered last. If you do a random test on General Relativity and find it to be way off, you should first work from the assumption that you, rather than GR, made a mistake somewhere. Likewise, if your instinct is to label some of your knowledge as tacit, your first assumption should be, “there’s some way I can open up this black box; what am I missing?”. Yes, these beliefs could be wrong—but you need a lot more evidence before rejecting them should even be on the radar.
(And to be clear, I don’t claim my thesis about tacitness to deserve the same odds as GR!)
Just to be clear, I don’t think it has been shown in the case of bike-riding that the knowledge can be transferred verbally. You can give someone verbal instruction that will help them improve faster at bike-riding, that isn’t at issue. It’s much less clear that telling someone the actual control algorithm you use when you ride a bike is sufficient to transform them from novice into proficient bike rider.
You can program a robot to ride a bike and in that sense the knowledge is verbalizable, but looking at the source code would not necessarily be an effective method of learning how to do it.
I think being able to verbally transmit the knowledge that solves most of the problem for them is proof that at least some of the skill can be transferred verbally. And of course it doesn’t help to tell someone the detailed control algorithm to ride a bike, and I wouldn’t recommend doing so as an explanation—that’s not the kind of information they need!
One day, I think it will be possible to teach someone to ride a bike before they ever use one, or even carry out similar actions, though you might need a neural interface rather than spoken words to do so. The first step in such a quest is to abandon appeals to tacit knowledge, even if there are cases where it really does exist.