Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind

by Guy Claxton

  This small experiment thus furnishes us with a neat illustration of the kind of ‘split personality’ phenomenon with which we are all familiar, but which it is often convenient to ignore: the existence in the mind of a second centre of operations which is capable of going its own way, untroubled by what conscious ‘headquarters’ happens to be saying. And consciousness itself can remain unruffled by the discrepancy, by the simple expedient of not noticing that it exists. At the end of a review of his experiments, Pawel Lewicki concludes that ‘our non-conscious information processing system appears to be faster and “smarter” overall than our ability to think and identify meanings . . . in a consciously controlled manner. Most of the “real work” [of the mind] is being done at a level to which our consciousness has no access.’6 This, from the hard-nosed world of cognitive science, is an extraordinary conclusion. Yet it is what these carefully controlled experiments reveal.

  The studies we have reviewed so far demonstrate that the urge to be articulate is a mixed blessing when it comes to learning. But there are other areas of life where the same might be said. What about the execution of a skill that is already well learnt, for example? Does it make any difference to one’s expertise whether one is able to put what one knows into words, or not? In a paper entitled ‘Knowledge, knerves and know-how’, R. S. Masters of the University of York has shown that people who can articulate what they are doing may go to pieces under pressure more than those whose skill in entirely intuitive.7 He studied people who were learning to play golf, focusing particularly on their putting skill. One group of learners was taught how to putt ‘explicitly’ – they were given a set of very specific instructions which they were asked to follow as carefully as they could. Another group was given no instructions – they simply practised – and they were even asked to occupy their minds with an irrelevant task to prevent them thinking about their putting as they were doing it. After their training, both groups were tested on their putting ability by an imposing ‘golfing expert’ whom they had not met before; and there were also significant financial rewards and penalties depending on how well they did. Both the ‘expert’ and the money were designed to make the test stressful.

  Masters discovered that the performance of those who had learnt intuitively held up much better than that of those who had been following instructions. His explanation was that the breakdown of performance under pressure – what sportspeople refer to as ‘choking’, or ‘the yips’ – was due to the instructed group flipping back into d-mode and trying to remember and follow instructions, rather than just play the shot. People who had learnt intuitively were not able to do this, as they had no explicit knowledge to fall back on. They just had to carry on as normal – and this, it turned out, stood them in better stead. Thinking about what you are doing may introduce a kind of analytic self-consciousness which gets in the way of fluent performance – an effect reminiscent of the famous centipede who was rooted to the spot when asked which leg he moved first.

  Know-how is acquired in different ways from verbal knowledge, as we have seen; but it is also ‘formatted’ differently, and is good for different kinds of purposes. For example, Euclidean geometry – the kind we did at school – is an extremely elegant and powerful tool for describing a family of idealised shapes, those that can be made out of straight lines and mathematical curves drawn on a flat surface, and regular three-dimensional objects such as spheres, cubes and cones. In this arcane universe, all kinds of strange and beautiful properties appear, and precise calculations can be made. The areas of circles and parallelograms, for example, can be computed exactly with the aid of certain formulae. However, if you ask geometry about the area of an untidy shape, one that cannot be described by equations, it immediately loses its power and grace. The real, irregular world is too awkward and intractable, and it has to be neatened up, in the way the axioms of geometry demand, before it can be treated. To calculate the area of France, using Euclid, we would have to suppose it to be a badly drawn hexagon, or to superimpose upon it a grid of little squares. Unless we force it into such a priori shapes and categories, we cannot get our strong generalisations to work.

  Now, in contrast, consider a humble device called the polar planimeter, invented in 1854 by a German mechanic, Jacob Amsler.8 It consists of two sticks flexibly joined together as in Figure 4. The top end of the ‘vertical’ stick is fixed to the table. At the left-hand end of the ‘horizontal’ stick is a wheel that sits on the table which can both rotate and skid (if it is pulled sideways). At the right-hand end is a pointer that also sits on the table. The cunning thing about this simple tool is that, if you trace the outline of any shape with the pointer, the wheel will rotate by an amount that is directly proportional to the area of the shape. All you have to do is calibrate the wheel by tracing out a shape with a known area – a 5cm square, say – and then you can use your polar planimeter to measure the area of any shape, no matter how odd.

  Figure 4. The polar planimeter

  The knowledge which d-mode generates, and on which it relies, is more like Euclidean geometry. It tends to be general, abstract and powerful, and to apply it to particular cases you often have to make the world appear neater than it truly is. The polar planimeter corresponds to ‘know-how’. It capitalises intelligently on a curious fact, and uses a ‘trick’ to solve cheaply and easily what for geometry is embarrassingly difficult. Geometry can do lots of things that the polar planimeter cannot, but for the particular job of measuring irregular areas (within a certain range of sizes) the planimeter is much more accurate and efficient. How it does it neither I nor Herr Amsler can tell you – and provided it works, our explanatory shortcomings are of little consequence (though they pose a nice intellectual challenge: the basis for a PhD perhaps). It is said that the painter Giotto could draw perfect freehand circles, and would leave them as calling cards. It is doubtful whether he knew the algebraic formula for a circle, or how to calculate its circumference, and certain that a course in geometry would have not improved his skill, and might well have impeded it.

  Our know-how is in general of this ad hoc, smart, opportunistic kind. The know-how regions of our minds are organised less like the Library of Congress than a well-used kitchen: logic continually gives way to convenience. I do not have to make my kitchen so rational that anyone could come in and figure out where the Tabasco sauce is from first principles. If I did have such a logical layout, I would not be so well set up to cook the kinds of things that I like to cook, and habitually do. Know-how is, as I say, formatted differently to knowledge in that it grows by osmosis (rather than comprehension); manifests itself in specific domains of expertise (rather than in abstractions); capitalises on serendipity (rather than first principles); and is organised idiosyncratically (rather than systematically). No wonder that the ways of knowing that use and create it are very different in their time characteristics from d-mode.

  Western -culture’s over-reliance on d-mode reflects a lack of appreciation of these vital differences between knowledge and knowhow. We tend, as a society, to make what was originally only an academic error: what Pierre Bourdieu refers to as the scholastic fallacy. ‘This fallacy . . . induces people to think that agents involved in action, in practice, in life, think, know and see as someone who has the leisure to think thinks, knows and sees.’9 By assuming that knowledge is similar to know-how, we are led to suppose that knowhow can – even should – be acquired through knowledge, and that knowledge, once acquired, ought to transform itself automatically into know-how. Managers are sent on a five-day course on ‘leadership’, and are immediately supposed to come into work the following Monday and start leading. The frustration with, and frequent cynicism about, such short courses, in the business world and elsewhere, is not due to lack of commitment on the part of participants, nor of skill on the part of the trainer. It reflects a deep confusion about the nature of learning and knowing.

  The confusion makes us promote ‘book learning’ and formal education (and training) as the
proper medium for acquiring everything. Adults pore over the instruction manual for a new computer, afraid to plug it in until they know how it works and what to do, while their children have already discovered, just by ‘messing about’, how to make it do the most complicated tricks. Apprentice midwives used to learn their craft by assisting their more experienced mentors at hundreds of births. Now they have to have a degree. There are even those who argue that couples should have to attend a series of seminars on ‘parenting skills’ before they are allowed to have a baby. The tragedy is that now there may even be some sense to this. If the other ways of knowing have been effectively disabled by the belief that intellect is the only mode we have, or the only mode we need, then the belief becomes the reality. D-mode does then provide the only avenue open to us for learning, however limited or inappropriate it may actually be for the job in hand.

  A MORI poll in 1996 on learning attitudes revealed that two-thirds of people ‘prefer to learn from books’, while another 19 per cent prefer CD-ROM and computers. Nobody, apparently, said that they prefer to learn by messing about, by osmosis, or just by watching. Learning has become something that you do in a special place, with special equipment, under the instruction of experts, using your deliberate, conscious intellect. No other possibilities seem to be catered for: a pity, at the very least, if learning by osmosis is, when faced with certain kinds of complexity, a more intelligent option than d-mode.

  But learning by osmosis has its own limitations, just as d-mode has. Not only may it be deployed at the wrong time, leading to a protracted process of trial and error which could have been short-circuited by a little logical thought; it often cannot be communicated, or only very crudely, and there are many occasions on which this is a definite handicap. The first time I went ice-skating with my twelve-year-old cousin, I strapped on the skates and stood nervously on the edge of the rink sliding my feet backwards and forwards, convinced of the physical impossibility of what dozens of people were doing around me. Eventually I swallowed my pride and asked Dany to tell me how it was done. ‘It’s easy,’ she said, ‘watch,’ and she sped off round the ice. When she got back I was beginning to get irritated. ‘I know you can do it,’ said, ‘but I want to know how to do it.’ ‘It’s easy,’ she said, ‘watch,’ and sped off again.

  Her know-how was completely inarticulate, yet there are useful tips and explanations that can be given. To be a practitioner, it may be best not to be able to think too much about your skill or your art. But to be a coach is different. A whole new phase of learning may be required if the virtuoso wants to become a teacher, for she may have laboriously to unpick her seamless expertise and turn it into the descriptions and explanations that, judiciously administered, help learning to happen.

  The most important limitation of know-how, however, is its relative inflexibility. Practical knowledge that has been learnt without thinking may work smoothly and fluidly within the original domain. But many psychological studies have shown that when the appearance of a task is changed, even if only a little, while the underlying logic remains exactly the same, know-how often fails to transfer. People who have learnt to control the factory process may function no better than a complete beginner if effectively the same problem is now presented as being about the control of ‘traffic flow’. The polar planimeter is useless for determining the volume of three-dimensional objects, while the principles of Euclidean geometry can easily be extended. With know-how, perceiving and doing are wrapped up together in one tightly interwoven package.

  From an evolutionary perspective, the ‘bundling’ of know-how does not matter at all if your world consists of a small number of separate scenarios – looking for food, cleaning your fur, mating, sleeping, avoiding predators and raising your young, for example. If your life consists of such a neat set of discrete jobs, then your main problem, apart from keeping your wits sharpened, is to know which scenario you are in, or which one you need to switch to. To have your know-how organised and integrated under separate headings is economical and efficient. But if your world is more complicated, the scenarios or ‘scripts’ you take part in become more numerous, and they begin to interweave. The same individuals in your community may take different roles in different scripts. For the male black widow spider, or praying mantis, your mate may suddenly turn into your executioner.

  As life gets more intricate, so it becomes a matter of survival to be able to deconstruct situations into familiar parts, and to be able to construct responses to hybrid situations by putting together different facets of different scripts. Parties, for example, may be stressful because they bring together friends and family with whom one has quite different kinds of relationship, and which separately bring out contrasting sides of your personality. If you could only relate to them ‘in context’, and had only a single stereotyped ‘party’ script, you would have no way of solving this intricate social problem. But if you have a sense of your friends that is somewhat disembedded from the contexts in which you usually meet, you may be able to integrate all the pieces that originally came from different ‘jigsaw puzzles’ into a new and hopefully coherent picture.

  This carving of scenarios into recombinable ‘concepts’ is, basically, the ability conferred by language, and by d-mode. When understanding has been ‘articulated’, it has not only been turned into words. Articulated also means ‘jointed; composed of distinct parts which may move independently of each other’. Know-how is not articulated in either sense. It is not capable of being taken apart, reflected upon, or put together again in novel ways when expertise breaks down or conditions change. It can only shift gradually under the influence of learning by osmosis. And because it cannot be discussed, it cannot easily be influenced by what other people may say or bring to it. The risk with fluent know-how is that it will be deployed mindlessly, in a way that takes no account of considerations or information that is held in a different sub-compartment of the mind. The ability to see that some aspect of what you have learnt in one situation is of relevance in another which looks different superficially is a highly valuable one, and it has been shown in several experiments that it can be increased by the use of conscious reflection.

  In one classic study of what has come to be referred to as ‘functional fixedness’, people were set a problem which could only be solved by seeing that a familiar object could be used in an unfamiliar way. The task was to tie together two pieces of rope hanging from the ceiling. The problem was that they were too far apart to be grasped simultaneously. In the experimental room there was a variety of everyday objects, including a pair of pliers. The problem could be solved by seeing that the pliers could be used as a pendulum bob: you tie them to the bottom of one of the ropes and set it swinging so that, when you are holding the other rope, the first now comes within your grasp. Left to themselves, a high proportion of people fail to solve the problem. But if the experimenter waits until they have got stuck and then simply says ‘Think! Think!’, many subjects then spontaneously see the solution.

  Without d-mode, without the benefits that concentrated analytical awareness bring, the lower animals are smart, but within limits. The spider, sphex, the digger wasp, and even the gobiid fish are good at what they are designed by evolution to do: they meet a range of challenges with conspicuous intelligence, but when the world throws a different kind of challenge at them, they are found wanting: inflexible and uncreative. They cannot turn around what they ‘know’ and recombine it in ways that are both novel and appropriate. They cannot dismember their abilities and perceptions – cannot segment and articulate them – and so cannot re-member them to suit an unprecedented present. Their unconscious intelligence is more or less crystallised; they lack the ability to dissolve it and reconstitute it.

  The same is true, initially, of children, but they are able to transcend these limitations. As they develop, the range and complexity of the scenarios in which children take part start to expand dramatically. They go to playgroup and on to school, where they meet different kin
ds of adults with different agendas, and with whom they have very different kinds of relationship from those they have with their parents. They take part in new social groups of various sizes and compositions. They start to meet many different kinds of things to be learnt about, and to discover new ways of going about learning them. And as they do so, they face a choice: whether to keep multiplying the number of separate mental scenarios; or whether to start to seek a higher-order level of knowing that enables these different scripts to be integrated, compared and combined. If they take the former option, their mental landscape develops into a patchwork of separate ‘modules’ of know-how that are unable to share what they know among themselves. If they take the latter they need to develop a new form of learning, one which enables them to ruminate over their experience; to bring back, as the cow does, what has been separately ingested, and by chewing it over make it more homogeneous. They would have to be concerned not just to meet new challenges one by one, but to look actively for points of segmentation and integration.

  And children do start to develop this ability to ruminate, it turns out, around the age they first go to school. Annette Karmiloff-Smith of the Medical Research Council Cognitive Development Unit in London has demonstrated the beginnings of rumination in the context of what she calls ‘learning beyond success’. Across many different kinds of task, she has observed that children will first learn how to ‘get it right’ – and will then, if they are given the opportunity, continue to ‘play’ with the situation in ways that actually reduce their apparent control and competence for a while. In language learning, for example, a child will very often learn to say (correctly) ‘went’, but will then go through a phase of using the ‘regular’ (but wrong) form ‘goed’, before finally reverting to ‘went’. Or they will learn to balance different-shaped rulers on a fulcrum, and then make mistakes, and then get it right again.