Embodiment, Situated Knowledge, Implicit Knowledge and Know-How in Technology Use as Technique: Wittgenstein’s Epistemology (Act 3, Scene 1)
Let us connect the view of technology as tool use to thinking about
technique and
skill. In philosophy in general and also in philosophy of technology there has been some work on skill. For instance, Polanyi (
1958) has famously argued that implicit knowledge serves as basis for scientific research in contrast to explicit knowledge. Capabilities which we are not able to tell (make explicit) play major roles in epistemic human-world relations and include perceptions as well as the usage of probes and laboratory tools. In the context of critical controversies about AI technologies, Dreyfus (
1972) emphasized the epistemic role and significance of human bodies and skills: bodily skills serve as a basis for human cognition. Intelligence is not only a matter of formal calculation; it includes also tacit competences, which serve as general conceptual features of a philosophical approach to technology (Coeckelbergh
2012: 135f.; Irrgang
2001). Ihde (
1979) also interprets technology as practice, not as static artefact. In his understanding of technological practice, competences in using tools also play a role. In current cognitive sciences the enactive approach became an influential research paradigm, including bodily capacities, skills and body extensions by tools as well (Varela et al.
1997; Noë
2004). There are also many other views in phenomenology/hermeneutics, pragmatism or cognitive science that focus on embodiment and skilled engagement in cognition. Now this approach is applicable to technology use. Music is a concrete example (Funk and Coeckelbergh
2013; Funk
2015) and we will soon say more about music as a technological practice. Let us first turn again to Wittgenstein’s later work in order to link the Wittgensteinian view of technology developed in the previous section to Wittgenstein’s epistemology, in a way that tells us more about technique and skill.
In the
Investigations, Wittgenstein already says that using and learning a language is about mastery, and suggests that this involves implicit knowledge (see also Funk
2010). Consider again what Wittgenstein says about board-games:
one can also imagine someone’s having learnt the game without ever learning or formulating rules. He might have learned quite simple board-games first, by watching, and have progressed to more and more complicated ones. […] he has already mastered the game. (Wittgenstein
2009: § 31/18e, 19e)
This remark is entirely in line with the previously cited works on skill, tacit knowledge, technique, and performative knowledge. Mastery of a game can only be reached if one has this kind of knowledge. Moreover, in Wittgenstein we also find explicit references to mastery as technique:
The grammar of the word “know” is evidently closely related to the grammar of the words “can,” “is able to”. But also closely related to that of the word “understand” (To have ‘mastered’ a technique.). (Wittgenstein
2009: § 150/65e)
And:
To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to have mastered a technique. (Wittgenstein
2009: § 199/87e)
If we apply this view to technology, then one could re-conceptualize technology use not only as performance but also as technique, which requires the adequate know-how and skill. We agree with Werner Kogge’s claim that Wittgenstein talks about technology in the context of procedures and (also intellectual) competences (
2015: 101–103). But the
tacit dimension of knowledge is also emphasized by Wittgenstein, who distinguishes between several forms of knowledge:
Compare knowing and saying:
how many metres high Mont Blanc is
how the word “game” is used
how a clarinet sounds.
Someone who is surprised that one can know something and not be able to say it is perhaps thinking of a case like the first. Certainly not of one like the third. (Wittgenstein
2009: § 78/41e)
Here Wittgenstein’s view is very close to Michael Polanyi’s, in particular his famous slogan: “we can know more than we can tell” (Polanyi
2009: 4). In
On Certainty, a mix of Wittgenstein’s very last writings, Wittgenstein also compares learning language to the learning of a skill: “We say: if a child has mastered language—and hence its application—it must know the meaning of words” (Wittgenstein
1969: § 522/68e). He stresses practical knowledge:
If, however, there are several ways of finding something out for sure, like counting, weighing, measuring the stack, then the statement “I know” can take the place of mentioning how I know. […] But here there isn’t yet any question of any ‘knowledge’ that this is called “a slab,” this “a pillar,” etc. (Wittgenstein
1969: § 565, § 566/74e)
Instead of certain knowledge, in the sense of something that has been measured, we have tacit knowledge about concrete sounds and how to sensory perform it. We infer that using words presupposes some explicit knowledge (explicit rules) but also implicit knowledge: knowledge acquired by watching (listening) and participating in language games, by growing up in a particular form of life. But we also acquire knowledge by means of material performances. Applied to technology, Wittgenstein’s view implies that using technology is embedded in a game in a sense that for using the technology one has to perform with it, learn a particular game (e.g., playing a musical instrument etc.), and grow up in a particular cultural context (e.g., a musical family).
On Certainty is also relevant here since it includes an intellectually deep contention about skepticism and the possibilities of knowledge as such, which we can use to elaborate the epistemology of technology as technique. Wittgenstein criticized the static ontology of Cartesian dualism and indeed its dualism itself. He wanted to understand knowledge not as an inner mental state but as practical process, which is immune against skeptical intervention. His point about the impact of tacit knowledge and his counterargument against skepticism goes beyond the cogito-argument (I think therefore I am) as found in Descartes. Instead it focuses on the success of practice, which is also a social matter. I can have success or failure when playing with tools, language, values or ideologies—and this is a matter of what we are and do. The concrete person is always socially embedded. (Subjectivity is hence understood as intersubjectivity and trans subjectivity.) For technology this means that technology use is also about success in a social sense, not only in a “technical” sense in the usual, narrow sense of the word. Technology is not only about how we relate to the world as individuals, but has consequences for the social and intersubjective. This point can also be put in the language of “games” and “form of life”: a game and a form of life gives us a certain “grammar” for the successful use of technology. (We will return to this point in the fourth section.)
To this social approach we can add the aspect of development. Consider again Wittgenstein’s view of language, which can be interpreted in a developmental way. Perhaps in the beginning children or other new language users need instruction—they need to hear a particular word and connect this with a particular meaning—but as they get better language users, and indeed if they want to become better language users, they need to learn in a more implicit way and get themselves embedded in an entire form of life (By the way, this Wittgensteinian point also shows why it is so difficult for computers to translate language; algorithms and databases work with explicit knowledge, whereas human language involves an implicit knowledge that can only be learned as one learns language games within a specific cultural context). Similarly, technology can be conceptualized as technique and performance that requires the development of implicit knowledge.
Moreover, we must add the dimension of embodiment, which can be further developed by elaborating Wittgenstein’s critique of Cartesian premises. His later works are not only traversed by critical thoughts that reject a naive Cartesian dualism (Gier 1981: 13; Rentsch
2003, thesis 3 & 4: 15, 287ff.) in favor of a more social and cultural approach; we can also read Wittgenstein as replacing the postulate of Cartesian
res cogitans—the process of non-physical and pure inner cognition—by a critical proposal of
bodily and socially embedded practice. Linguistic meaning is no matter of isolated inner cognition, but of sensory practice:
Misleading parallel: a cry, an expression of a pain—a sentence, an expression of a thought. As if the purpose of a sentence were to convey to one person how it is with another: only, so to speak, in his thinking apparatus, and not in his stomach. (Wittgenstein
2009: § 317/111e)
Cognition and thinking do not belong to an ontologically separated substance, as Descartes at least suggested with his argument in the
Meditations; instead, in performance, body and mind are together. This also means that
language and thinking are innately linked to the body, are deeply embodied, at the level of performance:
Thinking is not an incorporeal process which lends life and sense to speaking, and which it would be possible to detach from speaking […]. (Wittgenstein
2009: § 339/116e, see also § 454/140e et passim)
Indeed, in the
Investigations, Wittgenstein constantly questions the inner-outer distinction. For example, he writes that “The arrow points only in the application that a living creature makes of it. This pointing is not a hocus-pocus that can be performed only by the mind” (Wittgenstein
2009: § 454/140e) and that “An ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria” (Wittgenstein
2009: §580/161e). Moreover, concrete performances depend on concrete situations, both in everyday life and in methodological reconstructions: “An expectation is embedded in a situation, from which it arises” (Wittgenstein
2009: §581/161e). Now this thought can be connected with technique and embodiment. Techniques can be seen as the concrete bodily skills (which we may call “innate technique”) of using tools, which enable successful handling of contingent situations. Tool use plays a crucial role here: not only as external physical artifact, but also in another sense: tool use already starts with usage of the own human
body and its capacities.
Thus, one could say that Wittgenstein raises the same question as René Descartes did three hundred years earlier: How to find a solid ground of reasoning in contention with skepticism and the possibility of radical disbelief? Descartes’ answer—
I think, therefore I am—was to postulate two separated ontological substances: pure cognition (
res cogitans) and physical bodies with spatial extension (
res extensa). Wittgenstein’s answer differs. In what we take to be a somewhat Feuerbachian manner (Feuerbach
1983: e.g., § 36/91), Wittgenstein’s solution can be translated into the slogan:
we perform, therefore we are. This also means that there is an epistemological basis, not in an abstract “I”, but in a shared language, and in technique and performance. In
On Certainty he writes:
That is to say, the question that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn. (Wittgenstein
1969: § 341/44e)
Some propositions or sentences (“Sätze”) “are exempt from doubt”. The technical metaphor Wittgenstein uses (“are as it were like hinges on which those turn”) illustrates the sensory postulate behind his contra skeptical argument.
If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put. (Wittgenstein
1969: § 343/44e)
We can interpret this hinges example as saying something about technology use: for Wittgenstein the use of an artefact is not an isolated inner cognition, but a finite bodily practice, which can succeed or fail in concrete socially shared situations. These practices, performances, and techniques are thus revealed as a solid ground of reasoning, as something that is presupposed when we reason and which we accept and trust, without having explicit knowledge of it and without having certainty. With pragmatic modesty Wittgenstein says:
My life consists in my being content to accept many things. (Wittgenstein
1969: § 344/44e)
And:
And substantiation comes to an end. (Wittgenstein
1969: § 563/74e)
One could say that Wittgenstein re-pragmatises the Cartesian argument. Both agree that something like a transcendental process (see below) serves as condition of possibility of skepticism and radical doubts. Our acceptance of many things makes possible our doubt in the first place. But in contrast to Descartes, Wittgenstein locates this transcendental ground and process not in an ontologically separated sphere of pure cognition, but in praxis. Everyday life practice and performance in all its manifold bodily and sensory potentials serves (a) as condition of possibility of skepticism as such, and (b) as axiom or transcendental ground (or condition of possibility) of any form of knowledge and scientific research:
That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted. (Wittgenstein
1969: § 342/44e)
Certain things (“Gewisses”) are not doubted
in deed (“in der Tat”). “In deed” means in concrete practice and performance. Having doubts is itself a process or practice. Descartes attends to this doubting. But in contrast to Descartes, Wittgenstein has a sensory and bodily technical understanding of this process. For scientific research, for instance, this means that there is also trust in the technology used:
If I make an experiment I do not doubt the existence of the apparatus before my eyes. (Wittgenstein
1969: § 337/43e)
The apparatus—the technology as tool and device, or as the assemblage of tools and devices—here points to science as a
technological practice which enables experimentation. In a modern understanding of experimental sciences, which today also include performances in high tech laboratories and computer models, this technological embedding of succeeding or failing experiments serves as a solid ground and process for methodological reasoning. It is not the logical sentence or natural law as such.
Our talk gets its meaning from the rest of our proceedings. (Wittgenstein
1969: § 229/30e)
It is precisely this counter-skeptical movement in combination with the classical Wittgensteinian argument about language (linguistic meaning is generated in practice) that enables not only conceptual links between philosophy of language and philosophy of technology, but also bears
methodological potentials for philosophy of technology as discipline. We already used the term “conditions of possibility” here; in the last part of this paper, we will further develop this argument as a
transcendental argument. But let us first further show the implications of this epistemological analysis for thinking about technology.
Embodiment, Situated Knowledge, Implicit Knowledge and Know-How in Technology Use/Performance as Technique: Implications for Thinking about Technology (Act 3, Scene 2)
What does it mean to say that technology, understood as technique and technological practice (and not only as artefact or “thing”), involves the kind of implicit, embodied knowledge and skill Wittgenstein wrote about? Learning to use technology requires learning a skill. Perhaps we need instruction in the beginning, but as we gain mastery, we have more implicit knowledge, know-how, which is in turn embedded in games and forms of life. The latter cannot be made entirely explicit but “live” in the socially shared know-how and performance.
Let us offer the example of music to explain this. Music is a form of life and involves more than only adding some isolated techniques or handbook knowledge to an already existing game of life. Learning music includes a broad range of trainings: body movements, harmonic theories, scores, very material perceptions, finger styles or aural training. Social aspects also play a crucial role. Often music is embedded in common, transsubjective performances in rehearsal rooms, studios, stages etc. Skills are shared and succeeding ways of talking about those skills are shared as well. Music is always more than scores and it is embedded in a grammar which is more than harmonic theory. Aural training changes sensory skills such as finger training. At the same time perceptions changes, we feel, hear or see more things or at least in a different way. And this can succeed or fail. Not the score serves as a truth and meaning criterion here, but the performance and the way of life which includes adoptions of how to interpret the score in a succeeding performance. Succeeding repetition, for instance in many training sessions, is the basis of implicit knowledge. No-one can become a musician without practice and rehearsal (And beginners need instruction). Moreover, even if music is not literally performed with others, music as technique is embedded within a larger form of life, which includes patterns and culture that shape the practice, for instance rock music-culture.
Some references to Wittgenstein and technology can be found in philosophy and social sciences
1 of music, especially when musical
instruments are analyzed and not only scores with a theoretical or historical interest. For example, Trevor Pinch uses Wittgenstein in order explain how applicability in several user situations challenged the design process of early Moog synthesizers and their transformation into keyboards: “Just as Wittgenstein famously argued that the meaning of language comes from use—so too the meaning of musical instruments is to be found in their use” (Pinch
2006: 58). In another study Pinch and Trocco argue:
Wittgenstein famously argued that the way to understand language is from its use. Similarly, the way to understand musical instruments is not from their essences—what their theoretical possibilities are—but from the way people who actually make the music put them into practice. (Pinch and Trocco
2004: 10)
We propose to generalize this claim to technology use in general: we can only understand technologies in and from their use, that is, in technological practice, which is also culture-in-practice.
This use orientation also enables us to point to the link between the materiality of technologies and cultures of use. Artefacts in use are material carriers of forms of life. If they do not fit into or further develop an already existing set of practices, technological innovations will fail. Innovation, technological use and success, and material embedding of cultural habits belong together. Again Moog synthesizers are examples for that. They have been successful partly because of their material embodiment: their materiel representation/embodiment of Classical music as the keyboard follows exactly the geometry of black and white keys as it can also be found in usual pianos. Similar to typewriters and computer keyboards (David
1985) synthesizers and pianos are linked by a material developmental path: the keyboard as constant user interface that enables successful innovations fitting into already established forms of life.
In his study of
Listening and Voice, Don Ihde also sees musical technologies as practice in concrete cultural situations. He refers to Wittgenstein when he describes the ways in which philosophers and artists discern different possibilities and variations in relation to the phenomena:
There is a sense in which Wittgenstein in particular was sensitive to such nuances of differences in a very “phenomenological” way. The notion of family resemblances […] is an attempt to recognize the noncommon relatedness of many phenomena in the mesh of ordinary language that does not display simply some clear “logical” structure. (Ihde
2007: 33f.)
This remark on language takes us back to the insights of the first part of this paper. For philosophy of technology, this Wittgensteinian approach means that part of its central tasks must be the hermeneutic work of relating particular uses of technology to activities, games, and larger social-cultural wholes, forms of life—which include material aspects as well. If we must put this in dualistic terms at all: the “material” must be related to the “cultural”. This approach does not mean that we must give up an interest in the material aspects of technologies, in ‘things’, but rather that we must relate the particular use of particular things, including their material aspects, to activities and games, and more generally to a social and cultural context. Understanding technology, then, means understanding a form of life, and this includes technique and the use of all kinds of tools—linguistic, material, and others. Then the main question for a Wittgensteinian philosophy of technology applied to technology development and innovation is: what will the future forms of life, including new technological developments, look like, and how might this form of life be related to historical and contemporary forms of live? Moreover, we can merge this Wittgensteinian question and approach with a more pro-active approach, which is increasingly popular in contemporary philosophy of technology and largely constructed in response to Heidegger rather than Wittgenstein (starting, e.g., with Dreyfus
1972; Ihde
1979): can we re-design, develop new, technologies that lead to a kind of form of life we think is valuable and meaningful for humans? This development includes trial and error: we can perform more sentences and perform more technical actions, than those, which we would call “meaningful” or associate with a succeeding technical move. Furthermore, others also perform, make moves, use words, and so on. The interesting question is then how to respond to others, for instance: how do we learn to enfold/bear out of ourselves a point of view, which links our personal linguistic and technical potentials to the many sometimes strange and interesting, sometimes trivial things performed by other persons? The question how to relate to technology then means: how do we relate to the games and form of life in which we perform and live? How is success in human life possible? What are the conditions of possibility? This question leads us to a transcendental argument, which recognizes that we are always carried by a form of life, which makes possible technological and other uses and performances, and which cannot easily be changed.