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From: alasdt@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Alasdair Turner)
Subject: Re: Is Common Sense Explicit or Implicit?
Message-ID: <CvKC9v.Lr2@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
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Reply-To: alasdt@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Alasdair Turner)
Organization: Dept of AI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
References: <1994Aug19.113304.22524@unix.brighton.ac.uk> <332jo9$8cr@ux.cs.niu.edu> <1994Aug22.042736.25458@news.media.mit.edu> <CvFMAI.3qG@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 3 Sep 1994 16:53:54 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:24068 comp.ai.philosophy:20268

In article <CvFMAI.3qG@festival.ed.ac.uk>, cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
> In article <1994Aug22.042736.25458@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
> 
> >What I'd like to see is an attempt to discuss
> >the relations between **three or more** categories of knowledge types
> >because I consider the explicit-vs.-not" to be evidently unproductive.
> >A first step would be serious proposals about such triads.  Any
> >offers?
> 
> EXPLICIT, IMPLICIT, and TACIT.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Explicit knowledge: you could (in principle) find the representation
> of the knowledge in the creature, and it is used by the creature in
> generating the observed knowledgeable behaviour, i.e., knowledge as in
> Brian Smith's Knowledge Representation hypothesis.
> 
> Implicit knowledge: not explicitly represented, but capable of being
> made explicit by the available reasoning machinery operating on the
> explicit knowledge. It is a design choice (space/time trade) whether
> deduced implicit knowledge is left explicit once deduced, or deduced
> afresh whenever needed.
> 
> Tacit knowledge: designed into the structure of the creature
> (algorithmically, physically, etc.), and so correctly governing its
> behaviour, but not available as meaningful knowledge to the creature
> (unless it conducts a scientific investigation of its own nature of
> course). [...]

Surely this still does not remove the `unproductive' Implicit vs
Explicit?  What you have done is tacked a third `enviromentally
determined knowledge' group onto a PSS format, leaving the old
implicit / explicit distinction in place.  Effectively this is simply
adding the constraints of the hardware of the machine to
the equation.

You may argue that this is all that is required to force a reasonable
interpretation of implicit and explicit knowledge.  Not true.
Although it is clearly true that the knowledge within the being
includes its physical structure, I think that that your explicit and
implicit knowledge assume an internal program within that being, a
program which claims no relation to the tacit knowledge.  However,
tacit knowledge (as defined) must play some part in the determination
of implicit and explicit knowledge (is your knowledge not affected by
the way your brain is structured?).  In this case, [I'm afraid I've
missed a few of the steps to this conclusion --- see sig] implicit and
explicit knowledge become part of the tacit knowledge of the machine
and our three separate catagories are destroyed.

> [...]
> Note that whenever we (i.e. people who discuss not just human
> knowledge, but robot knowledge, beetle knowledge, and the knowledge
> known by component parts of knowledgeable creatures) use the term
> "knowledge" we should make it clear who (or what) is the knower, since
> what kind of knowledge it is, or whether it is knowledge at all, may
> depend on the knower in question. Knowledge categorisation is knower
> relative. This is a very important point, all too easily forgotten
> since our epistemological history has been for milennia concerned only
> with human knowledge.
> [...]

Noted.

Paf

(I have to write up before 12 Sept, so I am sorry that I do not have
the time to express myself more clearly, or comment more fully)

--
Paf Turner (Alasdair Turner) alasdt@aisb.ed.ac.uk
MSc student, Dept AI, University of Edinburgh

