I know!
People like it when you break down an issue into a numbered list. It gives the illusion of progress, and the appearance of the auther's lengthy consideration of the topic. I think it's a similar impulse that drives people to dance in unison in large gymnasiums. Actually, that probably has nothing to do with it. Anwyay, the topic of the day is "knowledge". I think this problem can be approached in four distinct ways: 1) known knowns, 2) known unknowns, 3) unknown knowns, and 4) unknown unknowns. What do I mean by this?
Known knowns are the easiest class, and probably the only one worth writing at length about. As the name might suggest, they are phenomena that are known to our limited apprehension, and are understood as known. I know I'm typing at a computer right now; I am aware of staring at the back of my right hand. I am aware of the pain I might be causing the reader with the previous sentence's shoe-gazer-esque tendencies. My point is not that there are some first principles we derive this knowledge from, but they fit quite neatly with our everyday functioning. What could be more natural to me than my eyesight? My emotional response to music? What I hear? These phenomena just fit. More distant, but still plausible forms of knoweldge are reports of other people and the laws of nature; they do not impinge on my awareness incessantly, but they satisfy another part of me with the sense they induce. There are a lot of questions we may legitimately pose about all this. But we move on.
Known unknowns we are still capable of discussing with some clarity. They are either 1) phenomena we should stop trying to pin down and decide on, because we will never do it (I suggest most metaphysics falls under here; for example: is reality made of many things or one thing?), and 2) the much more mundane matters of things we could figure out, given the chance (or sometimes the funding). For example, if I did not know whether a lion cub was born with its eyes open or closed, I could go and take a look. Similarly, if I wanted to know the three-dimensional structure of some protein, I might be able to sweet-talk a funding committee into it. The point is, these are known unknowns.
Unknown knowns. I can't make much sense of this, and so will not touch it. But there are those who appeal to categories like these as "ineffable" or "mystical". They are wrong. Those things belong in the second category. This category is not-talk-aboutable. Just like the next category of unknown unknowns.
After all this: have I made any progress in breaking things down into categories? I think not. Myabe I pushed the bounds of what we can cram into the struture of language. Are the terms "known unknowns" and "unknown knowns" different? So maybe ategorical thinking is misleading. I'm becoming more and more in favour of the "fluid" character of what I know I know. But I have to do it in my own way. Bah! Tomorrow, I'll write about kittens, or bunnies, or Hamtaro; something like that. That would be nice.
Bulgarian Proverb: "За вълка говорим, а той в кошарата. (Talk of the devi, and the devil appears.)"
I don't actually speak Bulgarian.
Known knowns are the easiest class, and probably the only one worth writing at length about. As the name might suggest, they are phenomena that are known to our limited apprehension, and are understood as known. I know I'm typing at a computer right now; I am aware of staring at the back of my right hand. I am aware of the pain I might be causing the reader with the previous sentence's shoe-gazer-esque tendencies. My point is not that there are some first principles we derive this knowledge from, but they fit quite neatly with our everyday functioning. What could be more natural to me than my eyesight? My emotional response to music? What I hear? These phenomena just fit. More distant, but still plausible forms of knoweldge are reports of other people and the laws of nature; they do not impinge on my awareness incessantly, but they satisfy another part of me with the sense they induce. There are a lot of questions we may legitimately pose about all this. But we move on.
Known unknowns we are still capable of discussing with some clarity. They are either 1) phenomena we should stop trying to pin down and decide on, because we will never do it (I suggest most metaphysics falls under here; for example: is reality made of many things or one thing?), and 2) the much more mundane matters of things we could figure out, given the chance (or sometimes the funding). For example, if I did not know whether a lion cub was born with its eyes open or closed, I could go and take a look. Similarly, if I wanted to know the three-dimensional structure of some protein, I might be able to sweet-talk a funding committee into it. The point is, these are known unknowns.
Unknown knowns. I can't make much sense of this, and so will not touch it. But there are those who appeal to categories like these as "ineffable" or "mystical". They are wrong. Those things belong in the second category. This category is not-talk-aboutable. Just like the next category of unknown unknowns.
After all this: have I made any progress in breaking things down into categories? I think not. Myabe I pushed the bounds of what we can cram into the struture of language. Are the terms "known unknowns" and "unknown knowns" different? So maybe ategorical thinking is misleading. I'm becoming more and more in favour of the "fluid" character of what I know I know. But I have to do it in my own way. Bah! Tomorrow, I'll write about kittens, or bunnies, or Hamtaro; something like that. That would be nice.
Bulgarian Proverb: "За вълка говорим, а той в кошарата. (Talk of the devi, and the devil appears.)"
I don't actually speak Bulgarian.
posted by A. D. at 9:33 PM
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