Final answer:
Tacit knowledge is knowledge that people have and cannot easily articulate, often gained through personal experiences and practice, like the skill of riding a bike or knowing cultural norms.
Step-by-step explanation:
Tacit knowledge is knowledge that people have but cannot easily articulate. It is quite different from formal or propositional knowledge, which can be written down, codified, and shared. Tacit knowledge is personal and context-specific; it's rooted in context, experience, practice, and values. Examples include knowing how to ride a bike, cultural norms, and various practical skills. It is closely associated with procedural knowledge, which involves knowing how to perform certain tasks. On the other hand, propositional knowledge, also known as declarative knowledge, involves knowledge of facts or truths and can be expressed through language as propositions or statements with truth values.British philosopher Bertrand Russell highlighted a key type of tacit knowledge, knowledge by acquaintance, which refers to direct cognitive awareness of something through experience, without the need for inference. This knowledge is a posteriori, meaning it is derived from experience, as opposed to a priori knowledge, which is derived from reason alone. For instance, one has knowledge by acquaintance of pain when directly experiencing it, without needing to reason or infer that one is in pain.