Kanygin G.V., Kononova O.V. Pragmatic Epistemology: Approaches to the Expression of Implicit Knowledge by Social Actors. Sociology of Science and Technology. 2021. Vol. 12. No. 4. Pp. 93-115.

Abstract

Discrepancy between the techniques of people everyday communication made through speech and computer principles of information processing breaks the development of today’s information and communication technologies (ICT). To resolve this discrepancy, researchers are paying more and more attention to M. Polanyi’s concept of dual knowledge. However, the very idea of contradistinction of explicit and tacit knowledge remains internally contradictory despite numerous attempts to reconcile the individualist Polanyi’s view and the collectivist approach of its most cited followers, I. Nonaka and H. Takeshi. Today, ICT developers testify to their dissatisfaction with the possibilities of modern technologies to reproduce functionally the fundamental specifics of dual knowledge. Our work has two main goals. First, to understand which premises allow modern modelers getting around the internal contradiction of the dual theory? Second, how one could rethink existing research views on the problem of expressing tacit knowledge in order to improve the functionality of modern ICTs? Our research method is the analysis of the established practice of expressing tacit knowledge through natural language. As a paper result, we have named four epistemological platforms — meta-theoretical, pragmatic, modelling, constructivist, assumed by modern modelers in search of fundamental basis for applied knowledge management tools. Each platform is an intuitive, but not articulated properly set of promises used to involve the dual concept as a resource to strengthen own epistemological basis. A common drawback of the platforms considered is the insufficient attention of their adherents to the pragmatic expression of tacit knowledge through natural language in everyday communication between people. We have stated a need to integrate knower’s skills of expressing tacit knowledge through natural language into the instrumental tools of modern ICT in order to enrich their functionality.