Polanyi and Langer: Probing the Epistemological Roots of Culture
Part I: Structure and Dynamics of Meaning
Walter B. Gulick
Montana State University-Billings
“Rationality is the essence of mind and symbolic transformation its elementary process. It
is a fundamental error, therefore, to recognize it only in the phenomenon of systematic,
explicit reasoning.” (Susanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 99)
“All meaningful actions, whether cognitive or practical, whether tacit or articulate, are
the work of our imagination, labouring on machineries over which we have no direct
control. Mathematical calculations and other formal inferences are no exception to this . .
.” (Michael Polanyi, “From Perception to Metaphor,” Polanyiana 15:1-2, 73)
The philosophies of Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) and Susanne Langer (19851985), roughly contemporaries, overlap in many intriguing ways. As the above quotations
indicate, each thinker understands human reason to be much broader and deeper than has
been the case in most twentieth century Anglo-American thought. Formal logic and
systematic reasoning are viewed as special examples of a wide range of embodied mental
processes. Both see themselves called to develop an embodied epistemology understood
in terms of its evolutionary development and as having both logical and psychological
dimensions. Each grants emotion a central place in cognitive development, although
Langer gives feeling a much more significant place in her philosophy than Polanyi does.
Each is influenced by Gestalt thought and opposes positivism and behaviorism. Both
emphasize language as what distinguishes human from other forms of animal
consciousness. And each pays attention to meaning as being of special importance not
only for epistemological theory but for understanding human existence as such.
However, in spite of the many common themes in their thought, the backgrounds
and factors motivating their broad ranging philosophical inquiries are rather different, so
that the theoretical content of their overlapping interests is sometimes quite divergent.
The first sections of this paper describe the distinctive approaches of each thinker with
special reference to the way each understands meaning. Subsequent sections mull over
what is at stake insofar as their epistemological schemes clash or don’t seem to offer
entirely adequate conceptions of knowledge or meaning. What is problematic in one can
frequently be corrected by insights from the other. I believe a thoughtful integration of
their most fruitful ideas will produce a robust hybrid understanding of meaning having
broad interpretive power. So my third and overarching goal is to produce the outlines of
an integrated epistemological vision that a) builds on the strengths of each philosopher
and b) makes a significant contribution to contemporary discussion of meaning and mind.
I see this essay as laying the epistemological grounding for a subsequent discussion of the
different forms that meaning takes in a person’s life and in culture.
I.
2
Susanne Langer’s philosophical writings may be analyzed as falling into three
periods. Her two earliest works, The Practice of Philosophy (with an introduction by her
teacher Alfred North Whitehead) and Introduction to Symbolic Logic, were thoughtful
studies concerning the topics indicated by the titles, studies that would be useful as texts.
Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (PNK),
published originally in 1942 followed by editions in 1951 and 1956, was a philosophical
best seller that inaugurated Langer’s second philosophical stage: a focus on the
psychological origins and philosophical meanings of art. It was the first book of
philosophy I ever owned, but it took me some years before I appreciated its powerful and
compelling presentation of symbolism. Feeling and Form (FF), Problems of Art (PA),
and Philosophical Sketches (PS) all belong to this stage of Langer’s development. The
three volume Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (M I, II, and III) is the product of the
third period of Langer’s writing. This dense work, packed with an impressive array of
quotations from psychological and biological works, can be seen as Langer’s biological
and epistemological version of Whitehead’s process thought. Feeling is understood to
pervade all levels of consciousness, and the act is taken as a basic unit of evolutionary
advance. This essay will attend only to the works from Langer’s second and third periods
of writing and draw most of the material to be integrated from the second period. 1
In Philosophy in a New Key, Langer indicates that meaning has both a logical and
a psychological aspect. “Psychologically, any item that is to have meaning must be
employed as a sign or a symbol; that is to say, it must be a sign or a symbol to someone.
Logically, it must be capable of conveying a meaning . . . Both aspects, the logical and
the psychological, are always present . . .” (PNK 53). Both aspects of meaning deal with
relations between a term, the object it means, and the person to whom it has the meaning.
When a symbol is taken as the determining term, so that it conventionally means an
object, one has a logical relationship. It means an object to some person, but the person is
an implied, background figure in logic. But if one starts with the person, who means an
object by a symbol, then one has a psychological relationship.
In this essay our focus will be on the psychological dimension of meaning.
Ultimately Langer views the active, biological user of symbols as more important to
understand than logical relationships. The psychological structures and processes are
certainly more important for Polanyi, whose whole understanding of personal knowledge
quite naturally starts from the actively knowing person. Indeed, by insisting on the
participation of the person in all expressions of knowing and other forms of
consciousness, Polanyi has offered a compelling and, I think, persuasive alternative to the
dominance of logicism and objectivism in twentieth century Anglo-American philosophy.
He counters the all too facile charge of psychologism by placing his thought in a context
of biological evolution punctuated by emergent realities. A philosophy of responsible
persons placed within natural and historical processes offers a far firmer grounding for
engaging the social, moral and environmental issues of our times than most alternative
philosophical stances.
3
Langer’s investigation of meaning is also set in an evolutionary context, but her
thought lacks the moral and political urgency that characterizes Polanyi’s overall
philosophical project. 2 Langer’s philosophy per se can perhaps best be seen as a probing
of the structure of a person’s experience, and as such it is a quintessentially American
project. However, the sources she calls upon are equally as much Continental as
American; she was raised in a household of German speakers (M II 353). Cassirer as well
as Whitehead: Langer acknowledges her indebtedness to each, and draws upon a most
varied collection of other sources, including ethologists, biologists, and psychologists.
Yet I think it fair to say that nobody has articulated the new key to philosophical
understanding of meaning and symbol as clearly and exhaustively as Langer.
Proceeding with the psychological notion of meaning, then, we can see that
meaning is a mental product of a person’s (an animal’s) active manipulation of or
response to psychic materials. What is meant frequently refers to entities and events
outside the mind, but meaning itself is a mental experience. Apart from a person making
use of a term, that term has no meaning, although it may have a conventional usage ready
to be appropriated in the construction of meaning by a person. Langer stresses that
meaning is “a function, not a property, of terms” (PNK 56). There are two major
functions to be distinguished: signal meaning versus symbol meaning. 3
“A [signal] indicates the existence – past, present or future – of a thing, event or
condition. Wet streets are a signal that it has rained. A patter on the roof is a signal that it
is raining. A fall of the barometer or a ring around the moon is a signal that it is going to
rain” (PNK 57). A signal is a notable feature of a state of affairs that orients a person to
what is real in a given environment. Humans share signal awareness with all animals
complex enough to have an internal center that registers feelings – feelings existing
where those of the many impacts upon an organism are felt. Because different species
have different receptors and unique ways of dealing with or ignoring environmental
forces and properties, Langer shies away from speaking about an organism’s relationship
to the environment as such. Rather she follows Jakob von Uexküll and refers to speciesspecific environmental situations as ambients (M I 282-283). She does not spend a great
deal of time in discussion of how signals enable persons or animals to function in their
ambient worlds, but it cannot be overemphasized how vital signals, in the broad sense of
the term, are to survival. They are the primary sources of information concerning
dangers, feeding, reproduction, and efficient functioning in the world. Signals, in fact,
constitute the pragmatic empirical world – the ambient – for an organism. As Langer
states, “The term ‘signal’ is stretched, of course, to cover not only explicitly recognized
signals – red lights, bells, et cetera – but also those phenomena which we tacitly respect
as signals to our sense, e.g. the sight of objects and windows whereby we are oriented in
a room, the sensation evoked by a fork in a person’s hand that guides him in raising it to
his mouth” (PNK x), and so on.
A certain looseness in Langer’s use of the term “signal” should be noted. In the
broadest sense of the term just noted, all the impacts upon one’s body that are responded
to in some way are called signals – the pressure on one’s feet that allows one to keep
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one’s balance while standing, for instance. 4 Signals in this broad sense alert us and guide
us in our ambient reality.
But in a narrower sense that Langer generally employs, signals involve a pair of
items, one of which is of interest to a subject and the other more accessible one being the
signal that can easily draw attention to the item of interest. Here her analysis links up
with classical association theory of Locke and others, only her interpretation provides
new depth to the old theory. Association theory interpreted much mental functioning in
terms of remembered correlations and similarities. Signal theory, however, in
incorporating the notion of interest, furnishes epistemology even at a pre-linguistic level
with an intimate connection to purpose, value, and emotion. 5 When an employee asks for
a raise from an employer, the employee reads the signals inherent in the employer’s face
in order to ascertain the likelihood of the request being granted. The expression on the
employer’s face is easily accessible; the employer’s state of mind is not. The expression
is a signal pointing to the object of interest, what the employer’s state of mind is
regarding the request.
The learning of signals that are important to an animal’s welfare is one key facet
of the animal’s maturation process. But signals are not infallible guides. Storm clouds can
gather and thunder can rumble, but no rain need follow, as we know all too well in
Montana. Nevertheless, signals of all sorts, from the feeling in our hands and body as we
negotiate a turn in a car, to the artificial signal of a stop sign, orient and guide our
embodied selves as we engage in the practical affairs of life. The interpretation of signals
is the simplest but most indispensable form of knowledge. Signals allow animals to read
what of interest to their well-being is happening and to respond appropriately.
Symbols are quite different from signals. Signals announce a past, present or
likely future state of affairs; symbols allow persons to think about affairs. “Symbols are
not proxy for their objects, but are vehicles for the conception of objects. To conceive a
thing or a situation is not the same thing as to ‘react toward it’ overtly, or to be aware of
its presence” (PNK 60-61). A language is by far the most important type of symbol
system used by people, and a word is the simplest sort of symbol. A sentence or a
proposition is a more complex sort of symbol. Perhaps a name is the simplest sort of
word to understand. A “basketball” denotes the spherical object used in the game of the
same name. But in naming empirical objects, one does not, counter to one’s expectation,
inhabit the same triad of subject, term, and object that is employed in signal
responsiveness. Langer stresses that a subject uses a naming term to refer to a certain
conception that then refers to an empirical object. Thus there are four components in
denotation: subject, symbol, conception, and object. But many symbols do not refer to
empirical entities; rather they conjure up possibilities, fantasies, or abstractions. In such
cases, the symbol user is involved in a three term relationship between subject, symbol
and conception. The relation between a term and its associated conception is its
connotation. Hence there are two sorts of meaning that symbols make possible:
denotation and connotation.
5
So far we have examined symbols in their linguistic form, that is, as discursive
symbols. But what of a logo, a map, a statue, or a diagram? Such items refer beyond
themselves and elicit conception. They are commonly recognized as having symbolic
functions, yet they are not part of a language. A realistic picture is not simply a duplicate
of what it pictures, but a symbol causing us to conceive the objects it represents. Even the
sense-image conceived and remembered in personal experience “is not a direct copy of
actual experience, but has been ‘projected,’ in the process of copying, into a new
direction, the more or less stabile form we call a picture. It has not the protean, mercurial
elusiveness of real visual experience, but a unity and lasting identity that makes it an
object of the mind’s possession rather than a sensation” (PNK 144). Langer calls all such
items – logos, maps, pictures, sense-images – presentational symbols. Sense-images enter
symbolically into our conceptual worlds particularly as elements in story and fantasy;
they are the stuff of imagination.
At this point we are ready to appreciate what Langer sees as the most basic
contributor to the construction of both perception and conception: abstraction that allows
for a fixation of objects and engagement between concepts.
The power of understanding symbols, i.e. of regarding everything about a sensedatum as irrelevant except a certain form that it embodies, is the most
characteristic mental trait of mankind. It issues in an unconscious, spontaneous
process of abstraction, which goes on all the time in the human mind: a process of
recognizing the concept in any configuration given to experience, and forming a
conception accordingly. . . . Abstractive seeing is the foundation of our
rationality, and is its definite guarantee long before the dawn of any conscious
generalization or syllogism. (PNK 72)
For Langer, concepts are the building blocks of conceptions. Concepts are typically
correlated both with some type of abstract form and with words, which are often public
tokens of the mental concepts. In ordinary mental life, concepts “no more figure as naked
factors than skeletons are seen walking the street. Concepts, like decent living skeletons,
are always embodied” (PNK 61). Concepts in their combination may be subsumed under
the rules of grammar and thus be discursive in nature. But they may also contribute to the
formation of an intelligible object, like a picture, “before the mind’s eye.” Langer
understands a picture to be a comprehensive whole – a presentational symbol. Language,
based upon a shared vocabulary, typically has a shared reference, whereas a picture is just
what it is. It has elements – lines, colors, forms, etc. – but no vocabulary. And yet it exists
in conception and encourages further conception, which is the defining function of
symbols. That is, a picture or a perception (sense-image) does not just give us a mass of
amorphous sensations, nor does it call for an adjustment to the real empirical world like a
signal requires. It is a presentational symbol, a non-discursive sort of symbol (PNK 97, M
I 156).
II.
Do non-human animals consciously perceive the world, or are they tied to it in
some necessary, almost automatic way? Well, surely they can recognize objects and
respond to the world in ways that promote their survival. Do they do so only in terms of
6
some sort of automatic signal responsiveness? That is, are the birds and the bees, the
chimps and the chipmunks, alike trapped in worlds of stimulus and response but no
further meaning? As a whole, this is what Langer believes. She denies that animals other
than humans possess the abstractive seeing that humans enjoy. “Beasts do not read
symbols; that is why they do not see pictures. We are sometimes told that dogs do not
react even to the best portraits because they live more by smell than by sight; but the
behavior of a dog who spies a motionless real cat through the window glass belies this
explanation” (PNK 72).
Does Langer overstress what she calls the “deep gulf between the highest animal
and the most primitive normal human being” (PS 97)? Surely animals do not comprehend
graphs and pictures, nor do they participate in a world of discursive symbols. Through
observation they may understand words, however not in their symbolic function, but
rather as signals. My dogs respond to their names and to such words as “walk,” “sit,” and
“dinner.” But for them words are pointers to actual things, or to actions and expectations
tied to issues of immediate interest. They function as signals. For animals, words do not
evoke thought about items that are neither present nor expected (PS 98). Langer cites
studies of a number by ethologists indicating the “obliviousness of many animals –
insects, birds and mammals – to do what we would consider the goal of behavior, when
that ‘goal’ is displaced or removed” (M II 51). For instance, she quotes from an old study
by Watson and Lashley regarding a tern foraging and then returning to its home nest. If
the nest was moved 6 to 10 inches away horizontally, the bird returned to the spot where
it had built the nest and sat there instead of in the immediately neighboring nest.
By all these examples of what animal psychologists today call the ‘place habit’ or
‘position habit’ we are really forced to the conclusion that animals do not live in
the same sort of spatial milieu as man. . . .Animal perception is more intimately
bound to overt action than ours . . . In other words, the primary characteristics
which animals see are values, and all the qualities of form, color, shape, sound,
warmth, and even smell, by which we would naturally expect them to recognize
things, enter into their perceptual acts only as they enter into their overt behavior
as values for action. (M II, 54-55)
That animals exist in different ambients than humans is surely the case. That
animals perceive things in terms of their currently ongoing activities seems well
documented. But there also seems to be good evidence that Langer goes too far when she
writes, “The animal brain is above all a cybernetic organ controlling the organism’s overt
responses to the opportunities and obstacles which the environment offers” (PS 27). For
all animals, just like humans, have to abstract forms from the continually shifting
plethora of receptor reports in order to recognize enemies and seize opportunities.
Animals seem to dwell in a meaningful perceptual world that allows, certainly among the
apes and other higher forms, for a type of planning, for clear signs of empathy, for
dreaming, and for curiosity. Empathy might be described as a kind of signal awareness,
but the other sorts of mental activity suggest some degree of conception.
Langer is consistent and relentless in her restriction of animal psychic activity to
values for acting and in her opposition to any sense of social communication among
7
animals. Surprisingly, in her third period of writing she does not even accord much of a
place, if any at all, for signal responsiveness among animals. “I am inclined to believe
that signals, and especially communicative – intended and interpreted – signals, play a
very minor part among even the highest non-human beings, if such devices occur at all;
and that directly felt inward and outward acts, springing from impulse and ambient
pressions and opportunities, are sufficient for all animal needs” (M II 137-138). It should
be noted that by a “pression” Langer means “relations that determine the form of an act in
the course of its development” (M I 370), so that pressions seem roughly identical to
signals in the broad sense of the term noted above. She stresses that a sophisticated notion
of instinct can account for the sorts of behaviors – planning, empathy, curiosity, etc. –
that I just mentioned as part of what I, in harmony with Polanyi, see as part of an
animal’s learned, meaningful but not conceptual, world. Langer’s treatment is expansive
and nuanced, but I find it opens up a chasm between the ape’s mentality and human
consciousness that I do not think she successfully bridges.
My claim, then, is that Langer’s account of animal perception needs to be
reconsidered. She does not draw clear lines between abstractive seeing, perception, and
presentational symbols in humans; she seems to suppose that that concepts (and therefore
human conceptions) are identified as part of the process of abstractive seeing. But
animals need to fix the amorphous flow of sensation by abstractive seeing just as much as
humans if they are to respond intelligently to the world, as they do. My thesis, contra
Langer, is that the role of signals, which in their collectivity form an animal’s ambient, is
of great importance among animals. No doubt among the less developed species, signal
responsiveness is largely, if not entirely, instinctual rather than learned. However, those
animals able to learn from empirical experience must form some type of presentational
symbols to imprint the form of that which is learned: a species-specific kind of senseimage above all else. There surely needs to be some remembered formal psychic entity
that carries over from experience to experience and supports animal learning. Animals
may often not respond in ways to problems that humans would deem intelligent – witness
the tern just described – but they do learn from experience, and the mechanisms and
dynamics of such learning call out for explanation. According to the general principle
that previous gains of evolution (like signal-responsiveness) remain in place even as
“higher” functions (like symbolizing) come into being, we may expect that that signal
responsiveness and sense-images, and therefore presentational symbols, are carried over
to human consciousness from pre-symbolic forms of consciousness we share with other
animals.
III.
At this point we may profitably turn to Michael Polanyi’s thought for some
assistance. Polanyi, like Langer, assumes that language creates a chasm between animal
and human intelligence. But he also seeks to show, in agreement with the claim just
made, that “our articulate utterances can never altogether supersede but must continue to
rely on such mute acts of intelligence as we once had in common with chimpanzees of
our own age” (PK 70). What are these acts? Polanyi identifies three types of animal
learning. The two basic kinds of inarticulate learning are rooted in the activity and
8
sentience of the animal, while the third type of learning allows an animal to achieve a
map-like understanding that is inclusive of both motor and perceptual learning.
Polanyi terms the first, manipulative type of learning “trick learning” (his
discussion of the three forms of animal intelligence is taken from Personal Knowledge
71-77). Trick learning involves the accidental discovery of a useful means-end
relationship. Langer’s example of a cat learning to pull a cord to obtain food (M II 57) is
an example of trick learning. Langer notes that uninitiated cats watching a knowledgeable
cat pull the cord do not learn from their observation how to get the food; trick learning is
a skill vested in muscular action, not in observation.
The second sort of learning Polanyi describes is exactly what Langer has
discussed in terms of signal responsiveness in the narrower sense of that term. Polanyi
indicates that what he calls sign learning (but we’ll continue to call signal learning)
begins with an animal’s recognition that something of interest cannot be obtained
directly, but that there are clues that help satisfy the drive to obtain the desired object.
“The whole process clearly shows the animal’s capacity to be intrigued by a situation, to
pursue consistently the intimation of a hidden possibility for bringing it under control,
and to discover in the pursuit of this aim an orderly context concealed behind its puzzling
appearances. The essential features of problem-solving are thus apparent even at this
primitive level” (PK 73). In signal learning, the sensitivity to abstract forms that are
involved in perceptual recognition is transferred to a larger context involving both an
item of interest and a problematic situation. In Polanyi’s terms, a coherence embracing
more subsidiaries is discovered, and the animal’s understanding of real relationships is
enhanced.
Latent learning, the third type of animal intelligence, encompasses both trick and
signal learning by including them in a reorganized map of the animal’s ambient world.
Thus if a usually accommodating route is blocked for some reason, an animal can refer to
its latent learning to determine available alternative routes. The animal utilizes a kind of
inarticulate inference to achieve its end.
It can be seen that Polanyi’s account of animal’s intelligence is more richly
developed than Langer’s and acknowledges the existence of true intelligence rather than
mere responsiveness to stimuli. “Trick-learning may be regarded as an act of invention;
sign-learning as an act of observation; latent-learning as an act of interpretation. The use
of language develops each of these faculties into a distinctive science to which the other
two contribute subsidiarily” (PK 76). The use of language involves learned skills
including a contriving of symbols, an observation of how they fit into the dynamic world,
and an interpretation of their relationship. It thus builds on inarticulate knowing. Polanyi
notes that although animals possess each of these three types of inarticulate intelligence,
that animals, unlike humans, cannot combine them (PK 82). Their combination requires
conception, which in turn requires the use of symbols. Symbols can effect combination
because they can continue to be held in mind apart from situations of immediate or
impending pragmatic urgency. Signals participate in the pragmatic world; symbols reside
in the intelligible world.
9
So what, then, is the formal psychic entity that captures the heuristic discoveries
of trick, signal and latent learning? In other words, what makes them available for future
use? A somewhat glib though still helpful answer is that what is learned is captured in
memory. Yet it is not entirely satisfactory to pretend to have advanced understanding of
structure and dynamics by papering over complexity with a word, even if that word
elicits as powerful connotations as “memory.” Can more insight be gained? Furthermore,
what are the processes by which these psychic structures and processes contribute to the
experience of meaning? Neither Langer nor Polanyi gives a full and precise answer to
these questions as a whole. But each provides insights that when thoughtfully integrated
and gently supplemented further develop an understanding of the nature and dynamics of
meaning. Let us first examine and critique the processes and structures Langer postulates
as giving rise to human intelligence.
IV.
Langer argues that abstract forms or Gestalts are the basis for perceptual
recognition and mental processing. Abstraction is the basic mental process that creates
these forms. She claims there are “at least four or five independent sources of abstractive
techniques” (M I 154), but for her the important distinction is between “generalizing
abstraction” and “presentational abstraction.” Despite the fact that she only vaguely
develops her claim that there are many techniques of abstraction, she recognizes that
characteristic of all abstraction is that it reveals a form or trait by “suppressing or
canceling all obscuring factors so the intended form comes to light” (M I 156).
The abstraction inherent in perception as such results (if our current theories are
right) from the elimination of countless possible stimuli; so the simplification is
effected as in a lithograph, by eliminating everything but the features that will be
left to function. It is not a process of emphasizing anything, but essentially of
simplifying, lightening the load before its impact on the nervous system has gone
very far. This process is not usually felt. (PS 71)
Generalizing abstraction is a discursive process that yields the laws and relations found in
math, science, and logic. “Scientific concepts are abstracted from concretely described
facts by a sequence of widening generalizations” (M I 153). Presentational abstraction is
not discursive like generalizing abstraction is; it is involved in the messy creation of
works of art, themselves often terribly complex symbols. She says of artists that they
begin with a main Idea or primary illusion they seek to express and explore.
The further development of the vital image, however, to the degree where its
internal rhythmic relations appear more than just organic, more like the free play
of thought, its immediate qualities like the warmth of emotion, its newness like an
advancing awareness of its own, requires indirect and subtle orders of abstraction:
isolating, metaphorical, secondary, transcending and perhaps others for which one
could invent suggestive names. (M I 157)
While further clarification of different abstractive processes in art is promised, perhaps
because “in the study of expressive form, abstraction and creation are not always
separable” (M I 197), no clearly articulated set of abstractive processes is ever enunciated
by Langer so far as I am aware.
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Langer’s account of abstraction does not seem entirely satisfactory. On what basis
is the plenum of sensation simplified into usable abstractions? To put it crudely, how
does our mind know which of the countless impinging stimuli to ignore during the
process of abstraction? My suggestion is that Polanyi’s signal form of inarticulate
learning, when augmented by latent learning, is sufficient to explain the role of form in
both inarticulate and articulate perception. It is well known that one of a baby’s first tasks
is learning to perceive the world coherently. Object relations need to be correlated with
visual, aural, and tactile (the oral stage!) cues. Similarly, blind people whose vision is
restored need to learn how to perceive the world. Polanyi does not explicitly identify
perception as a form of inarticulate learning, 6 but of course a baby, like a non-human
animal, learns to perceive recognizable elements in her environment prior to learning to
speak. This inarticulate form of perception is signal learning in the narrow sense
previously discussed. It is built upon signal learning in the broad, feeling-based sense.
And it leads, once the magic of symbolism is learned, to perception in the ordinary sense
of the term as applying to adult human focus upon the empirical world.
But we have not yet answered how in abstraction the proper form-producing
stimuli are retained and the losers are eliminated. The answer is provided by signal
learning, and the answer has four components. First, what precedes the fixing of
perceptual focus is a subject’s interest at a given moment. Often what is of interest is
gaining an understanding of a situation so that one can be in control. But there are many
sorts of interests. The baby is interested in having that empty feeling replaced by a happy
full stomach, and the instinct of sucking would satisfy this interest in the proper
circumstances. So, second, in the pursuit of satisfaction, a correlation is noted between a
certain presence (in our example, what we would understand to be the mother’s smiling
face) and the sought satisfaction. The signal relation between easily viewed presence (the
face) and hidden satisfactions (the milk, or perhaps stimulating interaction, removal of
irritating soiled diapers) is soon established. This is signal learning in the narrow sense.
Interest aroused, the baby is motivated to identify the source of satisfaction and develop
techniques to ensure its presence – cooing, smiling, and the like.
How is signal learning achieved? Recent advances in security techniques that
allow for the positive identification of persons through eye scans or patterns of face
recognition indicate that recognizing all objects is based on pattern relations of a
relatively simple sort: the relation of eyes to cheekbone and chin, hairline curve, shape of
eyes, etc. 7 Thus it appears that initial identification of an object begins with interest – a
reason to invest the mental effort needed for knowing something. It then, secondly, notes
an apparently reliable correlation between a perceived form and what is of interest.
Thirdly, this significant correlation is so promising that the pattern by which the
correlation is recognized is internalized – learned. The pattern that is recognized as being
auspicious, usually through its relevance to items of interest in several instances, is
schematized and thereby embedded in long term memory. This is a type of heuristic
achievement, a notion that is essential to Polanyi’s thought. Often the pattern is not only
schematized for recognition, but given a name or otherwise classified within our world of
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symbols. It thereby becomes a concept. The initial internalization is a heuristic act;
subsequent recognitions of the same pattern are routine performances (PK 106).
The fourth component in perceptual knowing involves identifying in raw
sensation identifiable patterns so that understanding or some other interest of the moment
may be satisfied. The actual act of perceptual recognition involves a process of matching
a pattern in the sensations provided by our senses with a similar but previously learned,
internalized schema. There is no need to explain why some stimuli are eliminated; they
are simply not part of the recognizable pattern. The tacitly known sense images that result
from pattern recognition represent the pre-conceptual animal perception Polanyi calls
signal learning.
Langer’s emphasis on generalizing and presentational abstraction lacks the
explanatory power of the process just described. In mid-career, Langer, like Polanyi, and
also like Merleau-Ponty, J.J. Gibson, and before them Gestalt psychologists, viewed
perception as a basic, trend setting pattern of thinking. But even in the second period of
her career, her understanding of perception was rendered murky by her reliance on the
mysterious process of abstraction. She states that seeing “is not a passive process, by
which meaningless impressions are stored up for the use of an organizing mind, which
construes forms out of these amorphous data to suit its own purposes. ‘Seeing’ is itself a
process of formulation; our understanding of the visible world begins in the eye” (PNK
90).
Langer’s “explanation” does not indicate how the eye magically abstracts relevant
forms with its system of lens and optic receptors. Neither is it clear why she rejects the
role of an organizing mind. On the interpretation offered here, the mind, the carrier of
interests and schematized patterns, carries out the selective, organizing functions needed
to bring to conscious focus those aspects of its already differentiated (not amorphous)
sensations that are of interest. But the mind does not willfully impose forms on sensation;
a make-believe world would hardly allow for survival. Rather, adults live in familiar
worlds for the most part, and our latent mapping of what might be seen in a typical
setting allows for speedy pattern matching between sensation and schemata anticipated to
be relevant.
Thus it is that Langer’s intuition that forms are the basis for perceptual
recognition is borne out by the explanation offered here, but a matching of patterns using
schemas seems better able to account for the phenomena than Langer’s processes of
abstraction. Eventually her stressing that abstraction is the primary mental act leads her to
sunder primary abstraction from perception. Langer reacts against Eliseo Vivas’s analysis
of one of her articles where he “imputes to me the tenet that ‘In one case abstraction goes
from part to whole and in the other from whole to part’” (FF 379fn). Langer says this is
nonsense. “Abstraction has nothing to do with wholes and parts; it is perception, on
whatever level of abstraction it may be, that proceeds in these different ways. Abstraction
in science is effected by successive generalizations, and in art without any such
intellectual steps” (FF 379fn). Thus Langer, unlike Polanyi, effectively denies that the
basic cultural categories of science and art evolve from perceptual learning. It is now
12
time to present and reflect upon Polanyi’s account of the processes and structures of
human intelligence. We will pay special attention to the way he extends the Gestalt
notion of perception to deal with all forms of consciousness. We seek to determine which
approach, that of Langer or Polanyi, more adequately accounts for the phenomena.
V.
Polanyi’s notion of the “from-to” model of consciousness is rooted in the Gestalt
model of perception, but it is placed in a dynamic framework of inquiry and passion. This
is what Polanyi calls the structure of tacit knowing. The way he is indebted to Gestalt
psychology, yet alters it, is brilliantly summarized in the following passage:
My theory of meaning differs from gestalt psychology by including the effort of
achieving a solid real coherence and also the risk of going astray in our judgment
of coherence. It was clear from the start that the effort to recognize coherence or
to contrive it must lie in the force of the imagination. We can see now that this
force is always combined with spontaneous integrations, that can be called
intuitions. So the original conception of gestalt appears now to cover only the case
when integration occurs without any marked effort of the imagination. Though
even so, intuitive integration would in general differ from a classical gestalt
formation by claiming to be meaningful and true. (“Works of Art,” Polanyiana
15:1-2, 93)
I will put aside Polanyi’s discussion of imagination and intuition for now. Because his
article in Knowing and Being entitled “Sense-Giving and Sense-Reading” has especially
obvious affinities with Langer’s account of meaning, I will begin by centering the
exposition of Polanyi’s thought about tacit knowing on this article.
Polanyi begins his article by describing “the triad of tacit knowing” in these
terms: “A person A may make the word B mean the object C” (KB 181). Polanyi, in
speaking of a word and an object, is in Langer’s terms using a symbol to denote an
object. For Langer this involves a four term relationship: subject, symbol, conception,
and denoted object. I find Langer’s construal to be superior to Polanyi’s triadic account
because conception is always present in human mentality, whereas denotation is a further
use of conception, and the denoted object is not the same as the conception. Langer’s
description fits better with Polanyi’s commitment to empirical realism than his own
scheme does. (Of course, Polanyi’s notion of the real is not restricted to the empirical
realm.)
Polanyi continues by saying, “But to integrate a thing B into bearing on some C
amounts to endowing B with a meaning that points at C.” Langer would talk about the
sort of meaning-creating function B has: signaling, connoting, denoting, or presenting.
Polanyi continues: “An obvious way to do this is to choose as B a finger pointing at C.
Suppose a lecturer points his finger at an object, and tells the audience, ‘Look at this!’
The audience will follow the pointing finger and look at the object” (KB 181). The object
is the focal item of interest. The finger has a symbolizing function in that it directs our
conception to a particular object. Polanyi calls such a use of a symbol a case of
“indication” (M 70).
13
The passage continues as follows:
There is a fundamental difference between the way we attend to the pointing
finger and its object. We attend to the finger by following its direction in order to
look at the object. The object is then at the focus of our attention, whereas the
finger is not seen focally, but as a pointer to the object. This directive, or vectorial
way of attending to the pointing finger, I shall call our subsidiary awareness of
the finger.
It is our subsidiary awareness of a thing that endows it with meaning: with a
meaning that bears on an object of which we are focally aware. A meaningful
relation of a subsidiary to a focal is formed by the action of a person who
integrates one to the other, and the relation persists by the fact that the person
keeps up this integration.
We may say, in slightly more general terms, that the triad of tacit knowing
consists in subsidiary things (B) bearing on a focus (C) by virtue of an integration
performed by a person (A); we may say also that in tacit knowing we attend from
one or more subsidiaries to a focus on which the subsidiaries are brought to bear.
(KB 181-182)
Polanyi’s discussion of subsidiary awareness represents an important and helpful advance
beyond Langer’s use of Gestalt thought, which attends to Gestalts as forms and does not
emphasize Gestalt thought about the structure and process whereby the forms come into
being. But both Polanyi and Langer understand the experience of meaning to be a
purposeful and vectorial affair. In his last book, Meaning, co-authored with Harry Prosch,
Polanyi emphasizes the role that subjective interest has in shaping the course of meaning.
Langer, in emphasizing how signals connect one with items of interest, also imputes a
controlling purpose to the subject.
In the second and third brief paragraphs quoted above, though, it seems careless
of Polanyi to speak of a single subsidiary as being integrated to a focus, and this for two
reasons. First, the word integration suggests a combining in which the product is more
than the sum of the parts. A finger is not combined with the object to which it points.
Second, tacit knowing would always seem to require many subsidiaries being combined.
In the example of the pointing finger, the observer following the finger would need to
integrate knowledge of what pointing means as a symbol with the innumerable embodied
skills involved in perceiving. A dog observing the pointing finger and being incapable of
comprehending its symbolic function, would just look at the finger, but even in doing so,
it would integrate all the embodied components involved in the skill of perceiving.
There is a difference in kind between a finger functioning as a symbol and the
many biological contributors to such a skill as forming sense-images. Many of the
embodied contributors to an experience of meaning – the linking of neurons, coordination
of muscles as we turn our head, adjustments of the eye as we change depth focus, etc. –
we have no awareness of. These occurrences are activated by all sorts of internal signals
– chemical and electrical, in particular. When Langer speaks of signal meaning (in the
broader sense of the term) most of her examples are but macroscopic versions of many
bodily signals that in their coordination or integration contribute to purposive behavior.
14
Human and non-human animals alike are actively responsive to these networks of
signaling. These sorts of integrations result in a two term structure of behavior: from
bodily integrations to the skill or behavior that is the culmination of these biological
actions. The to level in more complex integrations would generally involve consciousness
but not be conceptual in nature. Conception only arises through the use of symbols, and
this use, Langer and Polanyi agree, is distinctively human.
This example offers support for a distinction I’ve been making for many years. To
appropriately indicate the unique conceptual nature of ordinary human consciousness, in
which symbol usage builds upon signal awareness, I have suggested that we speak of the
from-via-to structure of consciousness in its symbolizing function. 8 This formula should
be understood to functions as follows: from embodied skills and various indwelt entities
functioning as tools via symbols, typically language, still functioning in a subsidiary
manner to conception focused on linguistic meaning (connotation), or conception related
to specific objects (denotation), or human perception and imagination, which are based
upon but go beyond the pattern recognition of all animals and are infused with symbols.
In “Sense-Giving and Sense-Reading,” Polanyi goes on to describe four examples
of tacit knowing: the use of a skill, the reading of a physiognomy, probing with a stick,
and playing chess. What sort of meaning does each have, and how is the from-via-to
structure employed? A well developed skill in use will likely be a routine performance
not at the focal center of attention. A person multi-tasking might be driving a car while
putting in a CD to play and talking to a friend. The conversation would presumably
require the most focal attention and be issued from within the from-via-to structure. The
person would undoubtedly direct occasional bursts of focal attention to the process of
driving, but it is likely that as a whole the acts of putting in the CD while driving are best
analyzed as routinized, two-term skills: for example, from subsidiary attention to internal
embodied signals to the act of insertion and from perceptual signals from the highway to
the skill of driving.
Earlier we interpreted the expression on a person’s face as a signal to the
interesting but unperceivable state of a person’s mind. A signal response per se requires
no conception and has a twofold structure: from signal to recognition of a state of affairs.
However, the reading of a physiognomy, a signaling function involving a subject of
interest, would likely be followed quickly by speculation – symbols are not excluded
from items of interest for long. The reading of a face to interpret a state of mind thus has
a more heuristic nature than the routine identification of a known person. Indeed, the
from-via-to structure is characteristic of human consciousness at almost all waking
moments and during dreams (at which time it is generally disconnected from perceptual
signaling). Embodied and empirical signals provide food for thought.
The playing of chess is a case of a speculative skill. Knowledge of the possible
moves of the chess pieces plus knowledge of chess strategy are dwelt in as conceptual
subsidiaries to the planning of subsequent moves with interest centered on winning the
game. The chess player acts from relatively unimportant embodied skills (except as they
15
underlie and support thinking) via a rich array of symbol-based conception to meaningful
moves of the chess pieces.
VI.
We are now at a point where we can move beyond the cognitive preliminaries and
attend to the theory of meaning as such. We have already done this for Langer. We now
are ready to further explore Polanyi’s theory of meaning, describe its problematic aspects,
and move on to the integrated theory we have been seeking.
Let’s begin by describing what Polanyi says about meaning in Personal
Knowledge, which is where he first treats meaning as an important thematic issue. Early
in Personal Knowledge Polanyi speaks of two kinds of meaning, which he correlates with
two kinds of wholes.
The more clear-cut cases of meaning are those in which one thing (e.g. a word)
means another thing (e.g. an object). In this case the corresponding wholes are
perhaps not obvious, but we may legitimately follow Tolman in amalgamating
sign [signal?] and object into one whole. Other kinds of things, like a
physiognomy, a tune or a pattern, are manifestly wholes but this time their
meaning is somewhat problematic, for though they are clearly not meaningless,
they mean something only in themselves. . . . We may describe the kind of
meaning which a context possesses in itself as existential, to distinguish it
especially from denotative or, more generally, representative meaning. In this
sense pure mathematics has an existential meaning, while a mathematical theory
in physics has a denotative meaning. The meaning of music is mainly existential,
that of a portrait more or less representative, and so on. All kinds of order,
whether contrived or natural, have existential meaning; but contrived order
usually also conveys a message. (PK 58)
It can be seen that Polanyi’s existential meaning has many affinities with Langer’s
understanding of the non-discursive meaning of a presentational symbol such as is found
in a sense-image or in a musical composition. It seems dubious that she would go so far
as to say that any kind of order is a presentational symbol, though. In fact, it seems
inconsistent for Polanyi to claim that all kinds of order have meaning, for basic to his
notion of meaning is that is embedded in a certain state of mind (SM 22). While it makes
sense to say that any perception of natural order has a meaning, it does not make sense to
claim that a natural unperceived state in itself has meaning.
Polanyi calls the other kind of meaning he mentions above denotative or
representational. Langer’s emphases on conception and connotation are unfortunately
missing here, and thus the key difference between human and non-human animals is not
articulated. After all, signals as well as symbols can have a denotative or (perhaps better
stated) a representational meaning. Equally troublesome is Polanyi’s claim that a sign and
an object can be amalgamated into one whole. The problems inherent in his claim
become clear when his thought is interpreted in terms of the more nuanced terms Langer
uses to speak of meaning. If by a sign Polanyi means a signal in the broad sense, that
which is experienced causes a possible bodily adjustment; it creates no objective whole.
16
If Polanyi means to refer to a signal in the narrower sense of the term, the signal has a
pointing function. Again, it does not form a whole with the object of interest referred to.
If by a sign Polanyi means a symbol (as suggested by the sentence before the claim being
referred to), the word identifies the object but, inasmuch as the object continues to exist
whether or not the symbol is applied to it, it does not form a whole with the object in
denotation. (It does in connotation.) Regarding skills, of which perception is the leading
example, indwelt, coordinated acts do contribute to a whole action. I conclude by
questioning Polanyi’s use of perceiving (as of a physiology) as the prototype of all acts of
meaning. That is, his extension of Gestalt part-whole analysis beyond perception does not
work in all cases. Langer’s separation of perception from abstraction is validated for at
least some cases. Polanyi’s unbudging allegiance to Gestalt-dependent analysis leads him
to a series of incoherent statements as he describes meaning. For instance, mathematical
theory in physics does not denote any object as he claims. Rather it is descriptive of
certain kinds of relationships.
Later in Personal Knowledge Polanyi claims that “by acquiring a skill, whether
muscular or intellectual, we achieve an understanding which we cannot put into words
and which is continuous with the inarticulate faculties of animals” (PK 90). It is not clear
what Polanyi means by an “intellectual skill” – playing chess or solving a math problem
would presumably be examples – but it is hard to imagine such not involving symbols
and conception and thus being discontinuous with animal consciousness. However,
Polanyi is aware of the need to make such a distinction. He states that all animal meaning
is existential (PK 90). This is puzzling, because Polanyi says that signal learning is
primarily grafted on perception (PK 73), which involves denotative meaning and
anticipation beyond the present context. He says signal learning is “only the first step
toward denotation” and is thus “a special case of existential meaning” (PK 90-91). This
makes sense if it is understood that signal meaning occurs within a relatively holistic
context of latent learning, in other words, a fixed context that has temporal as well as
spatial extension. Human conception made possible by language is not limited in this
manner.
Unfortunately, when Polanyi speaks of conception in Personal Knowledge, his
descriptions sometimes seem off target. Here is an example:
When I receive information by reading a letter and when I ponder the message of
the letter, I am subsidiarily aware not only of its text, but also of all the past
occasions by which I have come to understand the words of the text, and the
whole range of this subsidiary awareness is presented focally in terms of the
message. This message or meaning, on which attention is now focused, is not
something tangible: it is the conception evoked by the text. The conception in
question is the focus of our attention in terms of which we attend subsidiarily both
to the text and to the objects indicated by the text. (PK 92)
How strange it seems to claim that the whole range of the reader’s past experiences with
the words of a text are evoked when reading it. Most of our experience enters short-term
memory and then fades away. However, it does make sense to surmise that when symbolbased learning takes place and is schematized in long-term memory, this past experience
may contribute to the connotations of the symbol. In any case, the message of the text is
17
to be understood through the reader’s imaginative projection of the circumstances of the
writer as the reader thinks about what the sender might have meant. It seems just as
strange to claim that the reader attends subsidiarily to the objects indicated in the text.
Are not the things or events discussed imagined focally by the reader? To be sure, the
reader’s own relevant experiences will hover as faint subsidiaries to the reader’s
imaginative projection.
Often neither of Polanyi’s epistemological pairs – subsidiary-focal and tacitexplicit – works well when set in contexts other than perception. His reference to the
knowledge gained when he, facile in several languages, reads a letter starts off by
illustrating nicely the difference between subsidiary and focal awareness. “I no longer
knew in what language it was written, though I knew its content perfectly” (PK 91). But
then his analysis seemingly veers off course. “The knowledge that I had acquired was the
meaning of the message. This kind of knowledge, or meaning, resembles in its tacitness
the kinds of knowledge that I have described as ineffable, but differs from them
profoundly by its verbal origin” (PK 91). Why is the conceptual knowledge gained by
reading called tacit and ineffable? It is conceptual and therefore not tangible, but it seems
to be a prime example of knowledge that is both explicit – straightforwardly expressed in
language – and focal – the object of our thought. Polanyi continues: “After putting the
letter down, I lost my conscious awareness of the text, but remained subsidiarily aware of
it in terms of my inarticulate knowledge of its content” (PK 91-92). I interpret him to say
that he continues thinking about the text’s meaning even though no longer looking at the
letter. I would claim he continues to be focally aware of its articulated meaning. The
unspoken words in terms of which he thinks about the meaning would be subsidiaries,
but the meaning thereby expressed would surely be both articulate and focal. Shortly after
the sentence just quoted, Polanyi says, “Even while listening to speech or reading a text,
our focal attention is directed towards the meaning of the words, and not towards the
words as sounds or as marks on paper” (PK 92). Here meaning is found to be the object
of focal, not subsidiary, attention. But why then does he at other points regard meaning as
tacit and inarticulate? His inconsistency presents us with a mystery to be solved.
It might be suspected that Polanyi’s strange usage is found only in the exploration
of the 1958 Personal Knowledge, but not in later refinements of this thought. But no. In
his 1964 Preface to the Torchbook edition of Personal Knowledge, he makes the
following claims: “Things of which we are focally aware can be explicitly identified; but
no knowledge can be made wholly explicit. For one thing, the meaning of language, when
in use, lies in its tacit component” (PK x). When we choose to use certain words in a
grammatical structure, it is to produce and focus upon a specific meaning. Now surely
this meaning is articulate, being based on words, and explicit, capable of being spoken or
written in the same form as it is thought. Elsewhere Polanyi notes that the “essential
logical difference between [tacit and explicit] knowledge lies in the fact that we can
critically reflect on something explicitly stated, in a way in which we cannot reflect on
our tacit awareness of an experience” (SM 14). We can critically reflect on what we think
or what is spoken, which would indicate that meaning based on language should be
regarded as explicit rather than tacit. The mystery of Polanyi’s usage continues unabated.
18
In his 1969 lectures on meaning, Polanyi offers some comments that help reveal
the source of his confusing usage of “meaning.” He says, “In a gestalt the parts have a
meaning and the whole which they form is their meaning. . . . Words and sentences have
a meaning in the message which is their meaning” (“From Perception to Metaphor,”
Polanyiana 15:1-2, 74). It is clear here that he is mixing together two senses of the term
“meaning.” Recall that Langer distinguished the logical from the psychological use of the
term by showing how they represent different emphases within the three term analysis of
conception. From the triad of subject, symbol, and object the psychological analysis
considers meaning as something achieved by the subject. The logical analysis uses the
symbol as its point of reference. Polanyi uses both sorts of analysis as if they were
interchangeable on the same plane of interpretation. They are not.
In claiming that in a gestalt the parts (or the words and sentences) have a
meaning, Polanyi privileges the symbols as the reference point of analysis, which is a
logical analysis. But in saying that the conception is the meaning, he switches to a
psychological interpretation featuring the subject as the integrator-creator of the focal
meaning. As previously suggested, the psychological interpretation is the appropriate
type of analysis to be used by one elaborating upon the active role of the person in the
emergence of knowledge.
The importance of limiting discussion of meaning to the product of integration is
more than just a matter of consistently focusing on the subject. If the parts or words are
subjected to a logical analysis, they are treated as individual entities and pulled out of
their subsidiary status. The parts lose their status as parts and become themselves
miniature focal entities supported by other subsidiaries. This sort of analysis introduces a
surreptitious objectivism into Polanyi’s theory of meaning. From here on I shall restrict
my usage of meaning to that which is produced by a subject.
Two further problems in Polanyi’s discussion of language and conception may be
noted. In “Sense-Giving and Sense-Reading,” Polanyi makes this claim: “The conflict
between the view that denotative language bears on objects and the classical view, which
holds that language bears on conceptions, is resolved here by admitting both possibilities
and establishing a continuous transition between the two” (KB 190). Here at least Polanyi
acknowledges the importance of both denotation and conception (connotation), but the
idea that there is a continuous transition between the two misses the proper relationship
that Langer so persuasively exposes. A person using psychic material as symbols either
uses them to refer to objects (denotation) or does not so use them. It makes no sense to
say a thought is partially denotative and partly conceptual.
Polanyi also discusses what he calls the ancient problem of “how one general
word can cover a multitude of disparate things” (KB 190). He “solves” the problem by
citing the conception of a tree which “arises by the tacit integration of countless
experiences of different trees and pictures and reports of still others: deciduous and
evergreen, straight and crooked, bare and leafy. All these encounters are included in
forming the conception of a tree; they are all used subsidiarily with a bearing on the
conception of a tree . . .” (KB 191). But surely this is not how a word either comes into
19
being – a slowly evolving social process – or is learned. Our older son learned the word
“bear” for his teddy when he was about 16 months old, and he set out to categorize the
world in terms of his new learning. On the basis of a commonly perceived form, the next
door dog was also a “bear” until we helped him refine his vocabulary. This example
illustrates how a word is typically learned. We hear a word and see it applied and guess at
its extension. Through observing usage and through being corrected (often indirectly), we
learn the commonly accepted meaning of a word. Language is a social phenomenon. We
don’t create words by some individualistic act of tacitly integrating experiences of a set
of objects having some identifiable common form. 9
Here again Polanyi attempts to solve a logical problem with a psychological
understanding of meaning. The result is something like mixing milk with grapefruit juice.
The logical problem is this: on what basis can a single word appropriately cover many
diverse instances? This is a logical issue because the symbol has a privileged status in the
discussion. But then he switches to a psychological framework and speaks of a multitude
of integrations of different trees, which begs the questions of how one knows the
particulars are trees. How a word comes into being and how it is learned are
psychological issues that don’t address the logical issue of universals and the limits of
their extension.
VII.
Next, the way Polanyi interprets tacit knowing raises important issues for a theory
of meaning. “This is the dynamics of tacit knowing: the questing imagination vaguely
anticipating experiences not yet grounded in subsidiary particulars evokes these
subsidiaries and thus implements the experience the imagination has sought to achieve”
(KB 199-200). This quotation brings up for consideration several important issues. Let us
begin by considering the very important role Polanyi assigns to imagination. “I call all
thoughts of things that are not present, or not yet present – or perhaps never to be present
– acts of the imagination. When I intend to lift my arm, this intention is an act of my
imagination. In this case imagining is not visual but muscular” (“Creative Imagination”
in SEP, 258). These plausible sounding statements harbor some puzzling enigmas when
subjected to careful scrutiny. Must not the questing imagination be supported by
subsidiaries? How are the subsidiaries of the imagination related to the subsidiaries of
discovery or action? Aren’t many actions carried out without any imaginative forerunner?
I shift my car’s gears and shift position in my seat without consciously intending to do so.
What explains the difference between intended and unintended action on my part?
The answer Polanyi provides to such questions is that humans indwell many tacit
skills, and these underlie both explicit and implicit knowledge. True enough. But what
provides greater depth of understanding is to speak of the realm of schemas, the
embodied programs that presumably are specific networks of neurons that have an
ongoing integrity either gained through learning or hardwired as instinct. Humans have
no explicit and clear access to the realm of schemas, but we do know them through
feelings. The notion of feeling is not as central to Polanyi’s thought as it is to Langer’s
philosophy, but it is present and it is ripe for further development. Thus Polanyi can state
20
that “Authentic feeling and authentic experience jointly guide all intellectual
achievements” (PK 321) – no small claim. He also asserts that “science, by virtue of its
passionate note, finds its place among the great systems of utterances which try to evoke
and impose correct modes of feeling” (PK 133). I interpret a correct mode of feeling to
refer to a harmonious correspondence between inarticulate schemas and the concepts
underlying our articulated conceptions.
Here, then, is the way I propose to resolve the enigmas just posed. The questing
imagination represents the employment of conceptual schemas often linked with related
simplifying, form-seeking spatial or temporal schemas that contribute to what Langer
calls sense-images. The almost irrepressible ongoing action of the imagination is thus a
fountain of symbols disconnected at first from external sensation. When not connected
with incoming sensation, it may give rise to dreams, fantasies, or reflections. When
imagination attends to sensation and identifies patterns that objectify it for possible
thought and action, human perception occurs. For our imagination has the power of
fixing our fluctuating sensation into thoughts and images. Gestalt Psychologists interpret
the simplifying actions involved in perceiving in terms of the laws of closure, similarity,
proximity, symmetry, continuity, etc. These laws inform the way imagination assists our
memory as well as our perception to simplify the complexity of life so that it becomes
manageable. Non-human animals possess a limited form of imagination that creates nonconceptual perception (sense-images) and underlies trick, signal and latent learning.
Humans add concepts to the repertoire of imagination, and it thereby becomes a powerful
tool of adaptation and creativity.
Imagination is at best only partially subject to willful control. Langer is on target
when she writes, “Imagination is probably the oldest mental trait that is typically human
– older than discursive reason; it is probably the common source of dream, reason,
religion, and all true general observation” (PA 70). Obviously dreams are far from being
subject to control except when we are almost awake and seek to complete a desired
outcome of our dream. “Imagination” refers in part to randomly produce ideas and
images that function as gifts to consciousness. However, at some of its different levels of
consciousness imagination can be directed; both directed and unsolicited imagination can
be a source of materials that can inspire one or solve problems seemingly out of the blue.
The “aha” experience, whereby a math problem might be solved as one drifts off to sleep,
is called “final intuition” by Polanyi (KB 202). A mathematical solution occurs when a
certain explicit insight, supported by a conceptual schema, is felt to harmoniously
complete a formal arrangement of otherwise incoherently related particulars. That
conceptual schema would be produced by a tacit integration, which is at core what an
intuition is. “Intuition, as I understand it, ranges widely. It stands for integrative acts
taking place at any stage of a scientific inquiry, from start to finish” (KB 201).
Polanyi’s thought about imagination, intuition and conscious processes in general
is motivated above all else by his desire to understand his own experiences of scientific
discovery. His description of this process is extended in a most helpful way.
Discovery is made, therefore, in two moves: one deliberate, the other spontaneous
– the spontaneous move being evoked in ourselves by the action of our deliberate
21
effort. The deliberate thrust is a focal act of the imagination, while the
spontaneous response to it, which brings discovery, belongs to the same class as
the spontaneous co-ordination of muscles responding to our intention to lift our
arm, or the spontaneous co-ordination of visual clues in response to our looking at
something. This spontaneous act of discovery deserves to be recognized preeminently as the creative intuition. (“Creative Imagination,” 261)
This quotation suggests that human cognition depends on a limited arena of intentional
effort backed by a vast array of learned skills and insights that operate in a habituated or
spontaneous way. What has been learned is generally brought into play not by some focal
effort, but rather by evocation. These two – integration of subsidiaries bringing focal
awareness and evocation of subsidiaries bringing a sense of completion and coherence –
these represent the heartbeat of intellectual life.
To return to the questions raised in the first paragraph of this section, what
explains the intentional versus the unintentional lifting of one’s arm? Presumably the first
is an evocative achievement while the second is a spontaneous activity, perhaps triggered
by largely tacit feelings. In the philosophical tradition, thinkers (Kant is an example) have
so emphasized the unity of consciousness that the many simultaneous layers of different
degrees of awareness has passed unnoticed. How are the subsidiaries of discovery or
action related to the subsidiaries of the questing imagination? Here is a stab at describing
a typical problem and how it is solved. First, a person moved to clarify an area of interest
that is not understood. The person may be puzzled by a collection of particular facts and
relations that when indwelt as subsidiaries yields no coherent pattern. Then the person
imaginatively constructs a possible explanation. Do the subsidiaries of the explanation
match up with the items to be explained when jointly indwelt as subsidiaries? If not, then
no discovery is achieved. But if a close match is experienced, then discovery is felt to be
near, and smaller alterations in the imagined solution can be projected until the felt
satisfaction of a match is achieved. I believe this sort of explanation represents an
advance over Polanyi’s metaphor of a heuristic field (PK 403).
An everyday example of discovery is trying to identify the word or phrase that
matches up with what one wants to say. The concept that one wants to publicly express in
language is shown by such an example to be only loosely connected to an identifying
word or phrase. The connection tends to become looser and looser as one ages. The
process of recall can be seen to be not a matter of integration of known subsidiaries, but a
matter of evoking the right term, a search consummated by a feeling of satisfaction when
the desired match is achieved. Evocation, then, has a kind of to-from flow. We indwell a
meaning not just as an item in a flow of information, but with an openness to the tacit
roots that sustain it. Whereas analysis is a determination of parts carried out on an explicit
plane, evocation is an opening to the depths. Once a part loses its subsidiary status, its
emergence into focal status in the process of evocation is accomplished through
indwelling the subsidiaries that support it. From-to is reestablished. Often the subsidiaries
made focal are more deeply embodied in values and issues of importance to oneself than
the original meanings from which one started the process of evocation. Hence evocation
typically produces meaning having greater existential weight than normal progression of
thought does.
22
In sum, meaning arises through both integration and evocation. There is a creative
richness to the varied ways in which these processes may be worked out. Polanyi and
Prosch began the cataloging of these processes in Meaning; in the second part of this
paper I will continue the exploration. But now it is time to assess the results of our
investigation into the thought of Langer and Polanyi. Can the most helpful parts of their
thought be brought into creative synthesis?
VIII
The answer to the question just raised is easy: yes, a synthesis of key ideas from
the thought of each thinker is possible and indeed most attractive. Here is a brief
schematic of some of the important features of the integrated theory of the human
experience of meaning that can be derived from their thought.
1. Ultimately persons create meaning through their mental activity. Meaning,
then, is an aspect of human experience and is expressed both through thinking and acting.
The centrality of the active person in the creation of meaning offers support for making
the psychological rather than the logical approach to meaning that which should be
consistently adhered to when seeking to understand meaning in its broadest sense. The
human experience of meaning is central to human personhood, and its symbol-based
explicitness is dependent upon two lower layers of animal responsiveness.
2. The human experience of meaning, an emergent phenomenon, has as its
immediate antecedent animal learning including skill development, comprehension of the
signals (in the narrow sense of the term) that bear on survival and thriving, and the
development of internal mapping of what is learned. What is learned is internalized in
motor and memory schemas.
3. Animal learning is in turn dependent upon the responsiveness of living things
to the uninterpreted signals (in the broad sense of that term) that receptors provide. These
signals provide restlessly probing living beings with the information about their ambients
that lead them to nourishment, help them avoid predators, satisfy their reproductive
urges, etc. – the most basic, generally unlearned information needed for individual and
species survival.
4. Animals rely on signals (in both senses of the word) to intelligently respond to
the world in which they dwell. The identification of previously schematized patterns in
sensation plus the simplifying mental processes that Gestalt Psychologists have described
provides them with intelligible sense-images. Signal learning involves the discovery of
those sense-images which can serve as significant clues about how to manipulate or
adjust to their ambients so as to satisfy their interests.
5. The way humans use indwelt materials as symbols distinguishes their
consciousness from all other forms of animal consciousness. Langer’s distinction
between signal responsiveness, presentational meaning, connotation, and denotation is
crucial to understanding what makes human consciousness unique. Symbol usage
supports conception, which in turn sponsors free choice arising out of consideration of
alternatives not tied down to empirical realities the way signals are. What motivates
specific choices are interests that are expressions of more pervasive drives or purposes,
that in turn may be tied to long term projects.
23
6. While meaning is created by persons, this creation is not arbitrary, but is
constrained in many ways. The accidents of inheritance, plus cultural and environmental
context, determine what Polanyi calls a person’s calling (PK 322). Langer and Polanyi
each appreciates how the evolutionary heritage of humans both fosters knowledge and
limits it.
7. Langer’s signal-symbol distinction has parallels with Polanyi’s inarticulatearticulate distinction, but Langer’s three-fold notion of conception is an important step
beyond Polanyi’s speaking of existential and representational meaning. On the other
hand, Polanyi’s notion of articulation includes an important component of action that
Langer tends to confine to animal consciousness in contrast to human symbol-based
consciousness.
8. While Polanyi bases his distinction between subsidiaries and focal
consciousness on the gestalt nature of perception, any psychic material may be made to
function in a subsidiary role, and perception-based interpretation is not always a reliable
guide to consciousness and action. Tool usage may be indwelt, and in this manner a
person’s embodied presence in the world is extended. The use of subsidiaries tends to
have a temporary pragmatic character in contrast to the largely irreversible heuristic
achievement of learning, which is internalized and secured through schematization.
Indwelling can be either temporary or relatively permanent.
9. In their ordinary forms of consciousness, humans interpret subsidiaries via
symbols – almost always through language – which supports the notion that it is useful to
speak of the from-via-to structure of human consciousness in contrast to the various
from-to sorts of skills and signal responsiveness we share with all animals. Awareness
may occur at several levels simultaneously (multi-tasking).
10. A fundamental constraint upon meaning creation is social and cultural in
nature. The symbols used in the “via” construction of meaning have a conventional
meaning (in the logical sense). Humans are social animals whose existence is shaped by
traditions and conventions. Humans seek specific sorts of conviviality and social status.
11. The person at the center of personal knowledge is an embodied, biological
being. Humans seek satisfactions in a variety of biologically influenced tracks: through
competition and drive satisfaction, but also through cooperation and increasing
understanding. Fears and desires are especially potent motivators among the range of
emotions that humans experience.
12. Within their milieu of many constraints, humans generally create meaning
through the integration of those subsidiaries that seem most liable to advance their
dominant interests of the moment. Integration is a non-linear process that creates a level
of reality that is not logically reducible to its components. The constructive meaning
resident in human experience is an emergent phenomenon supported by, but not logically
inferable from, its subsidiaries.
13. Sometimes persons feel the need to step back from ongoing integrations and
turn to evocative pursuits. Then subsidiaries may be pulled out of their supportive role
and made focal. Contemplative meaning then replaces constructive meaning. Aesthetic
experience has a comparable contemplative structure.
14. Of special importance to consider when speaking of meaning is what I term
existential meaning (different from Polanyi’s use of this term). All human experience
includes feelings related to the degree to which what is being thought and done advances
24
one’s current interests or, more significantly, one’s basic values and projects. If a person
stopped doing what she was doing and assessed such feelings, she would be measuring
the significance, the existential meaning, of her actions. Developing a greater
understanding of the nature and life history of existential meaning in individuals and even
in different sorts of communities and cultural activities will be central to Part II of this
essay.
Notes
1
In Mind Langer in part attempts an ambitious metaphysical enterprise that mediates between biology,
aesthetics, and psychology. Feeling and the act are taken as basic ontological units and given a vitalistic
interpretation. Peter Bertocci says this of her metaphysical enterprise: “My dissatisfaction with Langer’s
view of feeling has centered on the contention that this reconstructed view, proffered to provide a
continuum between the vital and the mental, actually loses continuity with anything persons experience as
feeling” (“Susanne K. Langer’s Theory of Feeling and Mind,” The Review of Metaphysics 23:3 [March,
1970], 537). I agree and would make a somewhat similar criticism of her use of the act. Consequently, I
abstain from any use of the metaphysical underpinnings she develops in these later works.
2
Part Five, in volume III of Langer’s Mind, is entitled “The Moral Structure,” but it is an evolutionaryhistorical account of human religion and morality. Langer is concerned to account for morality more than
she is interested in developing the kind of political and moral improvement of society that motivates much
of Polanyi’s writing.
3
In the first edition of Philosophy in a New Key, Langer used the term “sign” as the contrasting term to
“symbol.” But in the second edition she said that were she to rewrite the book, she would use the term
“signal” in place of “sign” and reserve the latter term to denote any vehicle of meaning (PNK x). I therefore
have substituted the term “signal” into all passages where she previously used the term “sign” with the
same meaning.
4
It is not germane to the thrust of this paper to delimit the admittedly vague notion of signal in the broad
sense, but generally I will be thinking in terms of impacts from the exterior world upon our bodies when
using this term.
5
Polanyi utilizes the notion of interest in several distinct ways, one of which correlates with Langer’s view
of how a signal in the narrower sense of the term functions. Signals themselves are accessible but not of
intrinsic interest, yet they point to hidden items of basic interest. Polanyi notes the heuristic passion humans
have to discover hidden features of reality which are of great interest. He does not use the language of
“signals,” yet the “intimations of reality” he refers to have the same leading quality that Langer’s “signals”
do.
6
Strictly speaking, ordinary human perception is a conceptual organization of sensation in which symbols
typically play a role in recognizing objects. However, the baby, like non-human animals, perceives the
world before learning language; such perception thus involves a non-symbolic recognition of objects
allowing for signal response. Consequently, it seems permissible to speak of an inarticulate perceptual
recognition as underlying our linguistic ability to speak about what we perceive.
7
When Joseph Atick tried to develop face recognition technology (used for instance in checking those
attending the Super Bowl for possible terrorists), he initially thought he had to develop a process for
processing complex data with millions of components. But he came to understand that “the solution lay in
the opposite direction. It was about using as little information as possible. . . . [His system] looked at a
few dozen point on a face and used those points to create a face print” (O’Harrow 2005, 161). This notion
is consistent with Gestalt laws of organization, which emphasize the human tendency to organize
experience in as simple and coherent way as possible.
8
See my “Polanyi’s Theory of Meaning: Exposition, Elaboration, and Reconstruction,” pp. 32ff for a
description of how the from-via-to framework shapes different modes of meaning.
9
Polanyi understands well the point I am making. “Human thought grows only within language and since
language can exist only in a society, all thought is rooted in society” (SM 60). My criticism is directed
against his flawed attempt at solving the problem of universals, which is inconsistent with his more deeply
held view just referenced.
25
Bibiliography
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Metaphysics 23:3 [March, 1970], 527-551.
Gulick, Walter B., “Polanyi’s Theory of Meaning: Exposition, Elaboration and
Reconstruction,” Polanyiana 2:4-3:1 (double issue, 1992-1993), 742.
Langer, Susanne, K., Feeling and Form. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953. (FF)
________________, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
Press, vol. I (1967), vol. II (1972), vol. III (1982). (M I, M II, M
III)
________________, Philosophical Sketches. New York: Mentor Books, 1964. (PS)
________________, Philosophy in a New Key A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite,
and Art, 3rd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.
(PNK)
________________, Problems of Art. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957. (PA)
O’Harrow, Jr., Robert, No Place to Hide. New York: Free Press, 2005.
________________, Problems of Art. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957. (PA)
Polanyi, Michael, Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi, ed. by Marjorie
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_____________, “Meaning: Lost and Regained” lectures given at the University of
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_____________, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. New York:
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_____________, “Creative Imagination” in Society, Economics and Philosophy, ed. by
R. T. Allen. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1997.
_____________, The Study of Man. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959.
(SM)
Polanyi, Michael, and Harry Prosch, Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1975. (M)