2
Kinds of Knowledge

2.1 Data, please

Chapter 1 encouraged us to understand what it really is to have some knowledge. Chapter 3 will engage fully with that challenge. Before we can do so, though, we need data - knowledge-data. We also need to organize those data if we are to find a good theory (of knowledge's nature) with which to interpret them. All of that is this chapter's role: to gather knowledge-data; to start organizing the data; to notice whatever epistemological themes emerge.

This approach to inquiry should seem familiar. Before anyone could have understood what it is to be an elephant, for example, good elephant-data were needed. Over here: this is an elephant. Over there: it looks like . yes, another elephant. Notice any shared features that might matter for classifying and understanding these animals. Observe the animals' behaviour - what they do, where and how they do it. Will this reveal why they act as they do? And look further afield, for a wide range of individuals. Down there: is that a group of them? Yes. Watch how it acts. Now find another group. And another. Continue looking. Collate these data. Then think. Theorize. Interpret. We have given these animals a name: 'elephant'; now embed that name within a theory of their nature. This theory of elephants - elephantology? - could include surprises, as science often does. In fact, science tells us that elephants are most closely related to hyraxes (a kind of herbivorous mammal), dugongs ('sea cows') and manatees (fresh-water versions of dugongs). That is surprising. And only with science - not mere casual observation - could we reach this surprising interpretation of elephants. We are gazing upon the scientific image - not the manifest image - of elephants. (Remember this form of distinction, from section 1.5.)

It could be useful to remember that example while reading this chapter. We are about to venture into the wild, gathering data - knowledge-data. The sweaty task awaits of gathering samples and recording observations: 'That looks like knowledge. Note its details. Add it to the list.' Then the next chapter will return us to the comfort of our studies or offices, as we start interpreting the knowledge-data collected in this chapter. But our initial challenge is to search thoughtfully, finding and organizing instructive examples of knowledge. We will examine these for shared features and distinguishing marks. We will observe how these examples function - how they are used - as knowledge. There are different kinds of elephant, all of them sharing an underlying nature as elephants. Are there different kinds of knowledge, all of them sharing an underlying nature as knowledge? Some zoologists strive for a full theoretical picture of what it is to be an elephant. This is a challenge. Some philosophers - epistemologists - strive for a full theoretical picture of what it is to be knowledge. This is also a challenge.

2.2 Who or what knows?

As section 1.6 mentioned, Western epistemology began in ancient Greece, mainly with two of Plato's dialogues (Meno and Theaetetus). Chapter 3 will discuss some key epistemological ideas bequeathed by those dialogues. In the meantime, we should note something that will feel quite natural: Plato focused on what it is for an individual person to know something. This has continued to be epistemology's central concern; and so it will be ours. You might not expect it to be puzzling. But it is. First, though, let us notice a few more obviously puzzling possible cases of knowing.

2.2.1 Brains?

When we say that someone knows something, are we attributing knowledge only to the person as a whole? Or could a part of a person have knowledge? That sounds odd. But there is a way to make it sound less odd.

You know that you are alive, for instance. For argument's sake, suppose that this knowledge is somehow recorded in your brain, so that you - a person as a whole - have the knowledge. Should we also accord your brain that same knowledge? Perhaps your brain has the knowledge in a different way to how you-as-a-whole do. If so, there are at least those two knowers of that same truth - your brain and you! (Think of hypnotism, a less everyday example. Can it help a person to bring to awareness - now as an object of memory - a version of some knowledge that would otherwise have remained in her brain - 'imprinted' there earlier?)

2.2.2 Extended minds?

Quickly, tell me: what is the capital of Mongolia? You do not know? Perhaps you do - in the sense of being able very speedily to be conscious of it. Inside your pocket is your mobile phone, courtesy of which you can have the answer ('Ulaanbaatar') almost immediately. That phone is practically a part of you. Although it is not your brain, it functions like an extension of your brain.

Quickly again, tell me: what is the population of Benin? You do not know? Again, you are needlessly modest. Your phone is right there, comfortingly in your hand. You can consciously know the answer ('nearly 11.5 million', when I am writing this) within a minute. So, you do already implicitly have the knowledge - because the phone can provide the knowledge almost immediately, and because the phone may as well be treated as an extension of your brain, of your mind. You know, because the phone knows - and because the phone is practically a part of you.

That is an hypothesis, a possible interpretation. Like the picture from a moment ago, of your brain being a knower, this one requires us to think in a new way about who or what has knowledge.

2.2.3 The world?

Might some knowledge exist without being held by an individual thing (a person, a brain) at all?

Imagine a brain, containing some knowledge ('I am alive'), suddenly being removed from its surrounding body. Picture the brain being connected to a machine that allows it to function, staying alive even if no longer sensing the world (such as through eyes linked to it). Does the brain continue having that knowledge ('I am alive'), even while gaining no new knowledge?

Imagine, next, that you leave your phone at a shopping mall. It sits for a few hours, switched on, recharging, in a remote corner of the mall. When you wandered away distractedly, the phone was displaying the population of Benin. We asked just now (section 2.2.2) whether the phone is a knower when in your hand. If it is, does it remain so, once on its own? Can the phone know even when not functioning as an extension (cradled in your hand) of your mind?

Imagine, third, that the world includes (in books and/or online) information that will nevermore be read or brought to mind. To become aware of it would be to gain (personal) knowledge. Yet that will not happen for this information. Is all of this material knowledge, even so? Maybe some was knowledge in a more familiar way, a personal way, when initially formulated after related research. But that was then, and this is now: no one remains aware of the material.

We have imagined three puzzling cases. Each gestures at what could be called unowned knowledge. It would be personally unowned knowledge. But can we think of it as the world's knowledge - 'owned' by the world? It is not possessed by an individual knower, someone among us: it would be knowledge 'out there', independent of us. Following the lead of Karl Popper, a twentieth-century Austrian-British philosopher, it could be called objective knowledge. This is not a way of praising it. The point is that the knowledge lacks subjective existence, in the sense of being present in someone's mind, an object of actual thought. This kind of objective knowledge is in effect an object or artefact, present in public space. It is available to be used as knowledge (regardless of whether this will ever occur).

2.2.4 Groups?

Might some knowledge be owned, but not by individuals? Is knowledge ever owned by a group as a whole (without being owned by individuals within it)?

This could be a vital possibility. Where would societies be without science? Nowhere modern. Where would science be without group research? Nowhere modern. Picture the research for an article in a scientific journal being performed by thirty people across five universities in three countries. This is a realistic picture. Suppose - also realistically - that no single one of those thirty scientists had the expertise to fully understand all aspects of the research. Can the article be knowledge? If so, whose knowledge is it? Just the world's? Maybe - except that there are those thirty names attached to it. If knowledge has been produced by them, and is now possessed by the world, it is knowledge that no single one of those thirty scientists could have possessed or produced. The knowledge comes only from those people when working as members of a group - the entire group. Their work discovered a truth that would have...