Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA22076 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 15 Sep 2000 14:52:45 +0100 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 06:49:40 -0700 From: "Scott Chase" <hemidactylus@my-Deja.com> Message-ID: <ONPDPMCGCMMEDAAA@my-deja.com> X-Sent-Mail: off X-Mailer: MailCity Service Subject: Re: memetics and knowledge X-Sender-Ip: 209.240.200.136 Organization: My Deja Email (http://www.my-deja.com:80) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Language: en Content-Length: 3908 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
--On Fri, 15 Sep 2000 10:49:17 Robin Faichney wrote: >In a message I've deleted, Joe said something like: > > If you can't say it, you don't know it. > >This is simply wrong, but it opens up an interesting topic: the distinction >between memetic and non-memetic knowledge. > >Intellectual knowledge is not the only sort -- there is also experiential >knowledge, that gained through experience, rather than verbally or via >other media, from books, parents, teachers and friends. > >Now, there is obviously a large overlap between intellectual and >experiential knowledge, in that much of what we learn through direct >experience we can verbalise and pass on to others, and much of what we >learn from others, we could have learned through experience. > >But there remains a residue of experiential knowledge that is not >communicable. Can you ride a bicycle? Could you teach someone else >to do so using only words, so that the first time they mounted one, >they could display the same level of skill as yourself? > >Obviously not. We are talking about motor skills here, which can be >learned only through experience. And to say that this is not knowledge >is mere semantic quibbling. If I can swing an axe through, say, 135 >degrees, the head travelling perhaps a couple of metres, to split a log, >hitting it within a centimetre of the point I was aiming at, then I know >how to use that axe! (At least, in the log-splitting context. I could >actually do that, a few years ago, but I'm sadly out of practice now.) > >Mystical "knowledge" (and here we are reaching the limits of usefulness >of that word) is of the experiential sort, and it lies beyond the overlap >with intellectual knowledge, being largely non-communicable. Of course, >just as we can teach someone who is willing to do so to ride a bike, by >being with them as they practice and sharing the snippets we can find >a way to verbalise, with many hints and some actual physical support, >so mysticism can be taught, to those who are willing to learn, the first >several lessons usually being concerned with meditation. > >But, to sum up, some knowledge is non-intellectual, and non-memetic, >and our memetic theorising, and general intellectualization as well, >will be sadly lacking, if we forget that. I'd go so far as to say that >it's the ground upon which everything else is built. Unless it's based >upon, and ultimately returns to, actual experience, it's sheer hot air. > > One could have knowledge about a topic yet have trouble choosing the precise words at a given time to convey this knowledge (various shades of aphasia or whatever, especially under stress in front of an audience) or just plain have difficulty remembering specific important things on the spot. Words themselves are difficult entities to wrangle in, sort of like those felines in a recent commercial about cat-herding. I haven't yet caught the linguistic bug, but I've had the way paved for me in Berkeley and even Nietzsche here and there. In an intro to _Beyond Good and Evil_ I'm reading, the author Robert Holub talks about problems surrounding words and how they can be seductive, such as Descartes "I think" or Schopenhauer's "I will". Also even if one does not wear the mask of persona, it will be provided by the interpretations of the readership. There are several steps in recall, word choice, and interpretation where what is intended and what results become two frustratingly different things.
Another subject would be intuition, but I'll need to ruminate on this one for a while.
Motor skills and things that over time become "second nature" are difficult to produce words for, transferring them from the implicit or motorized unconscious storehouse to the explicitness of conscious thought.
Scott
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