Knowledge: Not "What It Is" But "How To Think"

Most people think of knowledge as "what", e.g., pieces of information. Polanyi may have helped to confuse the matter further by creating the term "tacit knowledge" instead of simply clarifying knowledge as the process of how to think. By "think" I do not mean simply logical reasoning but the process a sentient being determines or distinguishes patterns from all sensory and stored information.

If we compare the mind to a manufacturing plant, the plant creates "things" and the plant runs processes which are performed by "things." The processes the plant may go through may be described as well by "things." The plant takes resources in the form of "things" and transforms them into other "things."

Just as when one looks at the mind as a plant manufacturing information one would not describe its processes as "tacit things", so one should not describe knowledge as "tacit knowledge." If the plant is not running, there is no on-going process. If the mind is not running, therefore, there is no knowledge despite all the information that have been stored in its brain. Simply put, knowledge is the process itself that the brain performs.