The Implicit/Explicit Strategy

On the proposed solution to the puzzle, we recognize the correct formulations of our thoughts by relying on our implicit knowledge of what we are thinking. After discussing an analogous puzzle in the case of basic perceptual classification and constructing a model of implicit knowledge for the simpler case of color recognition, the chapter extends the model to the trickier case of thought. On this model, our implicit knowledge of an item consists in its stored signature—the invariant aspect of experience that its instances share. On the proposed solution, the process that mediates between implicit and explicit knowledge is not itself wholly sub-personal. Instead, it is best understood as straddling the personal/sub-personal divide. A deeper source of the puzzle that emerges from this chapter’s discussion of our involvement in articulation lies in the conflation between two types of freedom (or control) that we may have over a response.

Introduction

In articulating our thoughts, our attention rarely goes to the formulation itself. What we evaluate are not sounds or inscriptions but ways in which other competent users of our language would interpret them. But how do we arrive at words that would elicit precisely the needed interpretation? And why does the other person enter into the picture at all? Why do we need to know what some other person would think we think, and realize that that is, in fact, what we think, to know what we ourselves think? Why do we take the other person’s response into account in trying to come to know our private thoughts? Although these questions span several different areas of philosophy, their most natural home is the subject of self-knowledge. This chapter sketches the territory of the subject from a distinctive perspective and indicates the place of the book’s project in it.

Reasoning with Unarticulated Thoughts

This chapter looks closely at another important aspect of the articulation process: the kind of reasoning that we engage in when we articulate a thought. Although we often articulate our thoughts without engaging in any reasoning, a certain kind of reasoning does sometimes play an ancillary role in our assessment of a formulation. In articulating a thought, we are often cognizant of various attitudes that we have in reaction to it. The thought may seem true or false, hopeful or alarming, frivolous or serious, and so on. We reject formulations that do not support such attitudes in any way. This chapter shows that these attitudes pass through a kind of “normative filter”, or a rapid normative evaluation, and goes some way toward understanding the character of this evaluation using the previous account of implicit knowledge. Understanding how we reason with unarticulated thoughts can enhance our understanding of reasoning, more generally.

Reasons Theory

After rejecting deflationism, the central further question is whether our rejections and acceptances of words, in the articulation process, are based on reasons. Reasons-theorists say “yes” and look for some mental state that gives us a reason for accepting/rejecting a formulation. One kind of reasons-theorist argues that our reasons come from some knowledge we have of our thought. Another kind of reasons-theorist argues that our reasons come from feelings that result from sub-personally matching our thought with our words. Contra the reasons-theorists, this chapter maintains that we cannot make sense of the bulk of our responses in the articulation process by assimilating them into the reasons framework. Resolving the puzzle calls for an alternative model of rational control—one that may be implicated in learning and numerous other epistemologically central activities, ranging from basic perceptual categorization to sophisticated mathematical discovery.

Conclusion

Once we are done articulating the thought, we can easily articulate it again, using different words with the same meaning. But the thought may become difficult to articulate again, with time. In many such cases (for example, during teaching, job interviews, and exams), our knowledge of the thought does not dissipate altogether, but switches back to an implicit format. We can regain our explicit knowledge by engaging in an effortful process of recollection. The memory process shares the key features of the process of articulation and lends itself to a variant of the initial puzzle. Placing the memory puzzle alongside analogous puzzles in the case of thought and perception brings out the general form of the puzzle that pertains to our knowledge of all foundational facts. Our knowledge of such facts, in all these cases, could be underwritten by our possession of certain bits of implicit knowledge.

A Puzzle

The chapter introduces a new puzzle—albeit one that is reminiscent of Meno’s famous puzzle about investigation. The puzzle that Plato formulates challenges the possibility of inquiry in general, whereas this puzzle concerns the special case of inquiry into our thoughts. Our puzzle is that, in the difficult cases of articulation, coming to know what we are thinking seems to require knowing the words that capture our thoughts; yet, at the same time, having the latter knowledge itself seems to require already knowing what we are thinking. After characterizing the cases that give rise to the puzzle and honing its presentation, the chapter addresses several lines of response to it, including the worry that the puzzle simply reduces to Meno’s original paradox and the worry that it does not constitute a genuine philosophical paradox at all.

Deflationism

Deflationists seek to reinterpret the puzzle cases so that the puzzle never arises. On this type of view, what we do in the difficult cases of articulation does not consist in articulating thoughts already in place, but rather in using language to form new thoughts. A moderate deflationist draws an analogy between what we do in these cases and the elaboration of a plan, whose detailed implementation we work out later, as we go. A radical deflationist denies that we search for any fixed type of formulation at all, arguing that our acceptance of a formulation is either a free choice or a consequence of reaching a natural stopping point in our thinking. Examining a wide range of deflationary views helps bring out many of the key features of the puzzle cases and map out the variety of ways in which we can think in words.