Research hypothesis

From Implicit to Explicit: When Does a Thought Become Truly Inspectable?

A research hypothesis on explicitation, understanding, and revisability.

From implicit to explicit

How does an understanding gradually become explicit enough to be examined, discussed, put to the test, and then transmitted?

I do not have a definitive answer.

What follows is not a conclusion. For now, it is a research hypothesis.

For some time, a question has been recurring in the work of the Aksoydan Laboratory: some conversations sometimes seem to serve a particular function.

Not necessarily to produce a new thought.

But to make progressively visible a thought that was already present, while still remaining difficult to formulate.

This immediately raises a difficulty: what exactly does “making explicit” mean?

Is an implicit thought already fully formed, like an intact content that would then only need to be translated into words?

Or does explicitation itself participate in the organization of what becomes thinkable, distinguishable, and transmissible?

Making explicit may not simply mean revealing

When a thought has to be formulated, something changes.

Words have to be chosen.

Elements have to be distinguished.

Relations have to be established.

It becomes necessary to determine what belongs to the same set and what must be separated.

An order has to be given to what, before that, may have been present in a more diffuse way.

The passage from implicit to explicit may therefore not be only an enrichment of language.

It could also correspond to a gradual evolution of our distinctions.

A thought then becomes not only more sayable, but also more structured for observation.

This leads to a cautious hypothesis:

Explicitation may not be the simple extraction of a content already fully formed; it may participate in the organization of what it makes visible.

This hypothesis remains to be tested.

An explicit thought is not yet a true thought

Making an idea explicit gives it no privilege of truth.

An explicit thought may be:

But something important becomes possible:

it becomes inspectable.

A largely implicit idea is difficult to examine precisely.

Its presuppositions are less visible.

Its articulations may remain silent.

Its possible contradictions are harder to locate.

By contrast, an idea that has become sufficiently explicit can be confronted with:

It can be enriched, corrected, reformulated, or abandoned.

From explicit to revisable

This brings out an additional distinction.

Perhaps an understanding becomes truly shareable only when it also becomes revisable.

Transmitting an idea is not only succeeding in putting it into words.

It is also allowing someone else to:

A transmissible understanding may therefore require more than a formulation.

It may require a form sufficiently explicit to become a common object of examination.

What conversations can sometimes produce

In some conversations, the main function may not be the contribution of an external answer.

The exchange can act as a space in which a thought gradually becomes more discriminated.

A first formulation appears.

Then a distinction.

Then an objection.

Then a word that had been too broad has to be unpacked.

Then a hypothesis is separated from an observation.

Then an analogy is separated from an equivalence.

Little by little, something that was difficult to formulate becomes more accessible to examination.

In that case, the conversation does not necessarily “give” understanding.

It may participate in the conditions under which understanding becomes more explicit.

A question of granularity

The passage to the explicit may also depend on the fineness of the distinctions available.

A word may be sufficient for a long time.

Then, as understanding evolves, that word becomes too broad.

It becomes necessary to distinguish:

What initially seemed to be a single idea then becomes a set of connected but distinct elements.

Explicitation may therefore be linked to an increase in the resolution with which a thought becomes observable.

Why this matters

This question goes far beyond language.

Research

A hypothesis can only be properly put to the test if what it claims becomes sufficiently explicit.

Decision-making

A decision can seem obvious as long as data, hypotheses, criteria, and unknowns remain compacted within the same formulation.

Disagreements

Two people may believe they disagree when they do not give the same meaning to the same words or are not speaking at the same level.

AI systems

A system can produce a convincing formulation without the articulations that led to that formulation being visible enough to be examined.

Transmission

An idea that is difficult to make explicit remains difficult to transmit without transformation or loss.

A methodological consequence

If this hypothesis is relevant, then an important step may precede the confirmation or refutation of an idea:

making it explicit enough to know exactly what needs to be examined.

Before asking:

“Is this true?”

it may sometimes be necessary to ask:

“What exactly is being claimed here?”

“What distinctions does this claim contain?”

“What is observed?”

“What is interpreted?”

“What still remains implicit?”

A visible thought becomes revisable

The important point may therefore not be only:

implicit → explicit

but:

implicit → explicit → inspectable → revisable → transmissible

This sequence remains a working hypothesis.

It is neither necessarily linear nor universal.

The passages can be partial, reversible, or context-dependent.

But it currently provides a fertile research question:

What conditions allow an understanding to become explicit enough to be examined without being distorted by explicitation itself?

Open question

An explicit thought is not yet a true thought.

It has simply become more accessible to observation.

And perhaps it is precisely at that moment that real work can begin:

confronting it with reality, enriching it, correcting it, or, if necessary, abandoning it.

Before seeking to confirm an idea, it may first be necessary to make it explicit enough for it to become an object of observation — and revision.

— Serpil Aksoydan