Abstract

The argument of this paper is that one person's knowledge of another depends largely on the perception of Gestalten that cannot be fully described by that person, that is, on the following of rules that are known in the sense of "knowing how," not in that of "knowing that," and that it is therefore likely that empirical science will never be able to give a complete account of all of these perceptions: "If it should turn out that it is basically impossible to state or communicate all the rules which govern our actions, including our communications and explicit statements, this would imply an inherent limitation of our possible explicit knowledge and, in particular, the impossibility of ever fully explaining a mind of the complexity of our own. Yet, though I am not able to supply a strict proof, this seems to me indeed to follow from our considerations." The suggestion is made that a kind of generalization of Gödel's theorem may apply here, so that the explicit awareness and statement of a set of rules always requires a system of rules that cannot be described in terms of the former set. This idea seems worth developing, although a clearer distinction should be drawn between rules and regularities than Hayek draws.—J. J.