Lost in Transcription
Friday, August 22, 2008
Sheldon Richman
Following rules, such as the rules of language, of the market, or of just conduct, is more about “knowing how” than “knowing that.” This is a lesson taught by many important thinkers, among them, Gilbert Ryle (who used these terms in the title of chapter 2 of The Concept of Mind), F.A. Hayek, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. On many matters, we know more than we can say. Yet we are tempted to identify knowing with saying. It’s a temptation best resisted. (Wittgenstein distinguished between knowing the height of a structure and knowing how a clarinet sounds. We use the same word know, but we don’t mean the same thing. Do you know the height if you cannot say it?)
Language, economic activity, and law did not begin when someone published a grammar book, an economics text, or a political treatise that people then used to guide their actions. On the contrary, the books were written after the fact to codify what people had long been doing. And, importantly, the books could never fully describe what people had been doing or would do in the future. At best they were imperfect codifications (abstractions) that couldn’t possibly capture all the details involved in applying the rules to the varied circumstances of everyday life. In truth, they weren’t rules — in the formal, self-conscious sense that we usually define that term — until the books were written. Yet they governed behavior.
“For not only do we not think of the rules of usage — of definitions, etc. — while using language, but when we are asked to give such rules, in most cases we aren’t able to do so,” Wittgenstein writes. And elsewhere: “One learns the game by watching how others play. But we say that it is played according to such-and-such rules because an observer can read these rules off from the practice of the game — like a law of nature governing the play.” Think how children learn something as complex as language and social roles.