Resident Philosopher Shottenkirk’s reply to Thanddness, given to him at a end of season POPc Party:
Dear Thanddnes,
When you sat down with me at a POPc event, we started talking about metaphysics but quickly switched into the morals and epistemology of work. It was a fascinating conversation between us because I had never thought of working with one’s hands as a form of knowledge-acquisition, but when I considered it many things came to mind. First of all, of course, Aristotle’s distinction between intellectual virtues about which we only contemplate and intellectual virtues about which we don’t (only) contemplate. The latter include “practical wisdom” and “the arts”. I think you were talking about the latter – about how one learns things though, so to speak, one’s hands.
Wittgenstein also comes to mind with all of this, and the larger issues of knowledge through induction. And that inductive knowledge can’t be directly translated to linguistic symbols. But this we didn’t discuss too much, and I’m not sure it’s the thing about which you were most concerned. I think what you’re concerned with is how one comes to know the world, form oneself and thus know oneself.
I wrote a book chapter a few years ago with a neurologist from UPenn because I was interested in how difficult it is for artists to talk about their own work. They can talk about others’ work, or they can discuss their own processes, but to talk about the meaning of their own work always seems difficult. I speak from experience on this, and I have gotten agreement on this principle from other artists. The neurologist (Anjan Chatterjee) directed me to some research on memory systems in the brain, the low and behold, Aristotle had called it right: there is a part of the brain (basil ganglia) that records procedural memory (like what we do with our hands) while another part of the brain (neocortical) records semantic memory i.e., naming, as well as other kinds of “declarative” kinds of knowledge. In other words, sometimes we know things that we can just contemplate and then understand, but other times we need to not only contemplate the thing outside us also do the work with our hands, get our bodies involved, and do the process over and over. Procedural memory is just that: it is the memory of procedures and procedures always involved doing something with our bodies, especially our hands.
Interestingly, it is probably procedural memory (I think this was your point) that is really the thing that makes us who were are. This is true even though episodic memory (i.e., what I ate last night) is stored in the neocortical part of the brain. People often think individual identity is made up of our memories of the past, but that may not be completely true. Because when I speak of “me” I am thinking, in large part, of the me that is defined by the things I know how to do – for me, the writing philosophy, painting a painting, or working with my hands to repair something. My memories of what I did in the past or who I know or love are important, but I would bet that my definition of “I” is dependent in a great way on all that inductive/hand knowledge. I am what I do. Or in Aristotle’s version, habits count.
We are embodied creatures, and our awareness of the world and our creation of ourselves is, as you were arguing, something that we do, not just something that is pointed out to us. The stereotype is that knowledge comes in through perceptual experience, but perhaps it comes in through the hands…
I think you may be on to something here!