On knowing how to do what we do
On knowing how to do what we do

Summary/Abstract: As implied in previous chapters, when just doing what we do, we by and large follow rules and regulations and customs and norms, without our mind having consciously to take them all into account. Mind just leaves body – or better, bodymind – to do what it does by way of Polanyi’s tacit knowing, which is in part the produce of implicit learning, in part perhaps learned by explicit instruction, and in part a matter of entrenched experience and practice – the case of ‘degenerate’ signs. Tacit knowing includes both focal attention and subsidiary attention on conscious and nonconscious levels, and their coalescence, which involves the five senses plus kinesthetic, proprioceptive, somatic behavior. Peirce’s fluctuating, flowing categories guiding everyday living and his basic sign types are germane to this process. But then,… something seems lacking, something that calls for further words on rule following, to be discussed Chapter Seven.

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