Tacit Knowledge/Knowing and the Problem of Articulation

Key words: strong thesis of tacit knowledge, weak theses of tacit knowledge, Wittgensteinian tradition, Polanyian tradition, Chinese philosophy In this paper, I attempt to create a dialogue between the Wittgensteinian tradition and the Polanyian tradition concerning the understanding of the concept of tacit knowledge/knowing from the perspective of the problem of articulation. Norwegian philosopher Harald Grimen argues for a distinction between the strong thesis of tacit knowledge and the weaker theses of tacit knowledge. The former highlights the logical gap between our knowledge and our capacity for verbal articulation, which is not the case for the weaker theses. Inspired by this important distinction, I claim that there are actually two meanings of Polanyi¡'s concept of tacit knowledge/knowing. Finally, I try to bring out the relevance of the ongoing discussion on tacit knowledge/knowing to contemporary Chinese philosophy. The term " tacit knowing " or " tacit knowledge " was first introduced into philosophy by Michael Polanyi in 1958 in his magnum opus Personal Knowledge. Since then, different philosophical traditions—among them are the phenomenological, the hermeneutical, the Wittgensteinian and the Polanyian traditions—have carried on a discussion about this notion and related issues, producing along the way a great deal of literature. It is no exaggeration to talk about an ongoing discourse on tacit knowledge. The notion of " tacit knowledge " or " tacit knowing " is rich in its philosophical implications and has many theoretical dimensions. As indicated by the word " tacit, " the prima facie approach to this multifaceted discourse is that of the philosophy of language. Therefore, it is my goal in this paper to analyze " the problem of articulation, " and by means of discussion, I hope to clarify the meaning of the term " tacit knowledge/knowing. " 1. Tacit knowledge: the strong and the weak interpretations By the problem of articulation, I mean the problem of the articulation of knowledge. According to Michael Polanyi, the theory of tacit knowledge stands in opposition to the " ideal of wholly explicit knowledge " which took shape from the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. From Galileo's famous saying " The book of Nature is written in mathematical language, " to Leibniz's dream of universal language, to the logical positivists' view of knowledge, we can see clearly the development of this ideal. Among them, logical positivism serves as a paradigm case. Kjell S. Johannessen, a Norwegian philosopher who …