HILDUR KALMAN THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWING Existential Trust as an Epistemologica! Category SWEDISH SCIENCE PRESS, UPPSALA. SWEDEN HILDUR, KALMAN THE STRUCTURE OIF KNOWING Existential Trust As an Epistemologica! Category Umeå, 1999 Institutionen för filosofi och lingvistik Umeå universitet 901 87 Umeå Akademisk avhandling som med vederbörligt tillstånd av rektorsämbetet vid Umeå universitet för avläggande av filosofie doktorsexamen offentligen försvaras i Hörsal G, Humanisthuset fredagen den 26 februari 1999 kl. 10.15 ISBN 91-7191-579-6 ISSN 0345-0155 Hildur Kalman The Structure of Knowing: Existential Trust As an Epistemologica! Category Department of Philosophy and Linguistics, Umeå University Umeå 1998, xii + 2 03 pp. Monograph Acta Universitatis Umensis, Umeå Studies in the Humanities 145 ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-579-6 Distributed by Swedish Science Press, Box 118, S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden ABSTRACT This thesis investigates the structure of knowing, and it argues that existential trust is an epistemological category. The aim of the dissertation is to develop a view according to which all human activity is seen as an activity of a lived body, and in which the understanding of the structure of such activity is regarded as central for the solution even of epistemological problems. This view is not rooted in any one philosophical tradition, but circles around activity of the lived body. It connects thinkers who in other respects belong to different "isms" in philosophy. Central to the dissertation are Aristotle, Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Anscombe, Polanyi, and Grene. Michael Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge, and connected concepts like attend to, attend from, and subsidiary awareness, are presented. Different kinds of subsidiary awareness, not noted by Polanyi, are distinguished. It is also argued that Polanyi has not seen all the implicatons of his view that instruments can be interiorized and be part of the lived body. Conversely, parts of the normally lived body can be exteriorized. Nor has Polanyi seen that one has subsidiary awareness of oneself as a certain kind ofperson. This fact, in turn, is shown to have implications for the way we constitute ourselves as agents. Since we are engendered agents, we always attend from gender. In the last decade, the concept of trust has definitely entered epistemology. Mostly, it has been in terms of trusting testimony and/or testifier. This thesis wants to deepen that account. There is a more fundamental kind of trust, namely trust in oneself and trust in the world. It is called existential trust, and it is of epistemological importance, too. Existential trust, it is claimed, is necessary in all acts of knowing. Probably, this fact is hard to discover without having recourse to a distinction like that between attending from and attending to. Existential trust is shown in the way we attend from something. Observation and thinking are central epistemological categories, of course, but they should be supplemented by trust. Without trust they cannot perform any epistemological work. Linguistically, 'to know' is a state verb. Superficially, it describes only a state, not an activity. This fact, however, does not contradict the view of knowledge put forward in the dissertation. To know is to have a disposition to perform successfully either some kind of action (= knowing how), or to perform some kind of true assertive speech act (= knowing that). Basically, knowing is an activity. Keywords: lived body, knowing, existential trust, tacit knowing, Polanyi, subsidiary awareness, experience, gender, epistemology, from-to structure, agency. THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWING ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UMENSIS Umeå Studies in the Humanities 145 THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWING Existential Trust As ail Epistemologica! Category HILDUR KALMAN SWEDISH SCIENCE PRESS © Hildur Kalman Series Editor: Per Råberg Faculty of Arts Umeå University S- 901 87 Umeå Cover picture: Schack matt, by Birthe Wesselhöft Distributed by Swedish Science Press Box 118 S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden Printed in Sweden by Eländers Gotab, Stockholm, 1999 ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-579-6 This is the war of the words, the worst war ever This is the war over who names what and who listens to whom and who says what in which voice who is heeded and who is ignored who interrupts and who listens. Aristotle says that slaves talk indirectly; they circle around the question, and take a long time to come to the point. That's how slaves talk; But you know, you have a servant problem these days: we're insolent and poorly trained in matters of deference and genuflection, and all too likely to talk back. In the Great War of Words for Control of the Naming of Reality we have a bad attitude we're reckless and we're rude, we name things better left unsaid we show things you see in your mind's eye but think we don't know you see we show you things you shut out of your mind's eye as nonexistent, like us, for example. From The Great War for Control of Reality: (Her Voice) by Adrian Piper To my children Teitur and Thor, without whom not Hildur Kalman The Structure of Knowing: Existential Trust As an Epistemological Category Department of Philosophy and Linguistics, Umeå university Umeå 1998, xii + 20 3 pp. Monograph Acta Universitatis Umensis, Umeå Studies in the Humanities 145 ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-579-6 Distributed by Swedish Science Press, Box 118, S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden ABSTRACT This thesis investigates the structure of knowing, and it argues that existential trust is an epistemological category. The aim of the dissertation is to develop a view according to which all human activity is seen as an activity of a lived body, and in which the understanding of the structure of such activity is regarded as central for the solution even of epistemological problems. This view is not rooted in any one philosophical tradition, but circles around activity of the lived body. It connects thinkers who in other respects belong to different "isms" in philosophy. Central to the dissertation are Aristotle, Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Anscombe, Polanyi, and Grene. Michael Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge, and connected concepts like attend to, attend from, and subsidiary awareness, are presented. Different kinds of subsidiary awareness, not noted by Polanyi, are distinguished. It is als o argued that Polanyi has not seen all the implicatons of his view that instruments can be interiorized and be part of the lived body. Conversely, parts of the normally lived body can be exteriorized. Nor has Polanyi seen that one has subsidiary awareness of oneself as a certain kind of person. This fact, in turn, is shown to have implications for the way we constitute ourselves as agents. Since we are engendered agents, we always attend from gender. In the last decade, the concept of trust has definitely entered epistemology. Mostly, it has been in terms of trusting testimony and/or testifier. This thesis wants to deepen that account. There is a more fundamental kind of trust, namely trust in oneself and trust in the world. It is called existential trust, and it is of epistemological importance, too. Existential trust, it is claimed, is necessary in all acts of knowing. Probably, this fact is hard to discover without having recourse to a distinction like that between attending from and attending to. Existential trust is shown in the way we attend from something. Observation and thinking are central epistemological categories, of course, but they should be supplemented by trust. Without trust they cannot perform any epistemological work. Linguistically, 'to know' is a state verb. Superficially, it describes only a state, not an activity. This fact, however, does not contradict the view of knowledge put forward in the dissertation. To know is to have a disposition to perform successfully either some kind of action (= knowing how), or to perform some kind of true assertive speech act (= knowing that). Basically, knowing is an activity. Keywords: lived body, knowing, existential trust, tacit knowing, Polanyi, subsidiary awareness, experience, gender, epistemology, from-to structure, agency. vii Table of contents Table of contents vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Epistemologica! questions 2 Epistemology as explanation of episteme 3 Aristotelian praxis 5 Theoria as a form of praxis 9 Practical knowledge as paradigm knowledge 16 A pragmatic approach to epistemology 18 The knower and the known 25 Epistemology or psychology? 27 Focus on knowing 28 Philosophy and the body 32 Chapter 2: Tacit knowing 34 The structure of tacit knowing 36 Knowing that and knowing what 37 Tacit knowing 38 The structure and shaping of experience 40 Boundaries of the self 41 The self in growth 44 Problematizing the structural relation of tacit knowing 44 Problematizing subsidiary awareness 45 Different kinds of subsidiary awareness 48 Conclusions on subsidiary awareness 53 Attention 54 Summing up 55 Chapter 3: The epistemic conditions 57 Knowers in epistemological communities 58 Communal knowing 59 Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft 62 "Figures of thought" 66 Conclusions on knowers in epistemological communities 69 Language, meaning and making sense 70 Language 72 Observations as theory-laden 82 The corporeal in forms of life 86 Experience 86 Conclusions on language, meaning and making sense 92 The lived body 93 viii Knowing ourselves in action 93 Intentional action 95 Gendered knowing 100 The indeterminate borders of the lived body 102 Semantic aspects of the lived body 109 Selves