Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA00460 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 17 Sep 2000 22:02:35 +0100 Message-Id: <200009172103.RAA15240@mail1.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 16:04:52 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: memetics and knowledge In-reply-to: <39C5273B.D3DC5DA@fcol.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date sent: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 16:19:08 -0400
From: "Robert G.(Bob) Grimes" <grimes@fcol.com>
Organization: Grimes & Grimes Consulting
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: memetics and knowledge
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Folks,
>
> This subject brought to my mind experiences during W.W.II when I had to supervise a
> bunch of Electronic Technicians. I had quite a background of electronics prior to
> joining the Navy but didn't possess a rating higher than Electronic Technician's
> Mate 3/c (The only rating test I took was for that rating when I was overseas). I
> had supervisory responsibility for ETMs as high as 1/c but due to a problem with
> the Navy's otherwise excellent ETM course (4 years of electrical engineering in 2
> years). The course, by necessity, couldn't supply adequate laboratory times for
> such training and thus the great majority of teaching was verbal with verbal
> testing. As a result we had several hundred ETMs who were assisting the Red Cross
> cooking doughnuts, etc., and other jobs because their commanding officers had
> beached them since they couldn't repair the gear for which they had been trained.
> I vouch that detecting this failure was at first very difficult because they could
> answer almost any test question with excellent answers. The only problem was they
> couldn't identify the words with the physical world. For example, I would ask one
> of them what resulted in a particular symptom he might respond, "It is a shorted
> cathode bypass capacitor." I would then ask, "Point out the cathode bypass
> capacitor, please." Unfortunately, they couldn't do it. They could even point out
> certain things on the schematic but couldn't identify it on the actual chassis. It
> was a classic case of verbal I.Q. compared to performance I.Q. Normally, due to
> our mode of schooling, everyone's verbal I.Q. is much higher than their performance
> I.Q. On the other hand, I had guys who had been helpers in a radio repair shop who
> couldn't tell me in "words" how to do anything but they could fix almost any of the
> common problems we faced.
>
> Thus, the previous statements about "if you can't say it, you don't know it" is
> exactly opposite of what my experience was. I had hundreds of ETMs who could
> describe symptoms in words and techniques for repair in words but who couldn't fix
> a thing where I had others who couldn't tell anyone how they knew what was wrong
> with equipment nor how they went about repairing it, but they could do the job. It
> created quite a problem because the over verbally trained guys were convinced they
> knew their stuff because they had passed written tests (multiple choice) but when
> presented with practical problems were completely lost. They fooled me more than
> once so that I had to start asking such simple questions as, "Where is the audio
> coupling transformer?" It was startling how bad the problem was even though there
> were lots of guys who had the same training and could do the job...
>
> Cordially,
>
> Bob
>
Howzabout the general statement "if it can't be said, then it isn't
known"? That'll eliminate the problem of dealing with the verbally
challenged electronic savants and the perceptually challenged
schematic and term masters characteristic of your experience, and
make it clear that my contention is that when language lacks the
ability to express new creation, invention, discovery, innovation or
understanding, it quickly evolves, or rather we quickly evolve it, to
develop the tools to do just that. In fact, in my discourse on the
hermeneutic dialectic between appropriation and distanciation and
the "sweet spot" that can be found somewhere along such a
perspectival line, the emphasis was upon maximizing the
knowledge one could gain from one's observation; its encoding in
language is itself a never perfect but never impossible process.
What I am objecting to is the wooly/fuzzy assertion that purported
'mystical insights' can not be symbolized in language at all, but
can only be elliptically/indirectly pointed to (if that much), and yet
qualify as knowledge. I maintain that if they cannot at all be
linguistically described/symbolized AT ALL, then they do not
qualify as knowledge; on the other hand, if they ARE knowledge,
then they can be linguistically described/symbolized to some
significant degree. In this sense, purported 'mystical insights' do
not inhabit a special expressibility category separate from that of
any other kind of knowledge. Individual nimrods may not be able to
accomplish such expressions, but that is a different contention
from the assertion that they in principle cannot be accomplished;
the Saussurian distinction between competence (of a language to
express) and performance (of a particular speaker of the language)
comes to mind here.
>
> Robin Faichney wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Sep 16, 2000 at 03:07:37PM -0500, Joe E. Dees wrote:
> > >
> > > > In a message I've deleted, Joe said something like:
> > > >
> > > > If you can't say it, you don't know it.
> > > >
> > > Saying it does not mean that the other person automatically gets it
> > > (some people just aren't too bright), just that (s)he in principle can
> > > (that it semantically adheres to the state or process of affairs being
> > > described).
> >
> > Surely, for the traditional concept of knowledge, whether the other
> > person gets it is irrelevant? Unless this is some kind of mystificatory
> > backtrack? :-)
> >
> > > > 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.
> > > >
> > > Experience is the primordial source for all that verbal and written
> > > and other media knowledge passed on.
> >
> > Yup. So?
> >
>
> --
> Bob Grimes
>
> http://members.aol.com/bob5266/
> http://pages.hotbot.com/edu/bobinjax/
> http://www.phonefree.com/Scripts/cgiParse.exe?sID=28788
> Jacksonville, Florida
> Bob5266@aol.com robert.grimes@excite.com bobinjax@hotbot.com
>
> Bobgrimes@zdnetmail.com
>
> Man is not in control, but the man who knows he is not in control is more in
> control...
>
> Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore....."
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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