On Knowledge

Day 43

I'm fond of saying “we know” something, but what is the significance of that statement? Speaking in the vernacular: I don't know. It's just that knowing seems to be something which we say a lot, which we seems to sort of understand in a functional way – at least enough that we can use it in regular speech to get a meaning across. It's a word we use a lot. It seems to be appropriate for many uses and in many ways that I talk about things. I use it because I'm used to it, and I talk about things using 'to know' because nothing else seems quite appropriate. I could, I suppose, come up with a technical term which would have the same function in world aspect talk, but this would also have the effect of divorcing talk of the world from normal everyday life, and push the world, just a little, into becoming something like a picture of the world, which is a step away from what it is. After all, one of the points of any of this talk is to learn something about lived life, the universe, and everything. I use 'to know' without always clearly knowing what I mean by it. This is, of course, what I have said we can already do, investigate and learn about ourselves. Why do we use certain words, or receive certain meaning from certain symbols? Partly, its probably our language, hence why 'to know' comes out, because its English and I speak English. However, that isn't quite right, and doesn't quite explain what the meaning is, the shape of it in the world and not just its function in a limited logic field.

What we started saying first of all is that is is, and that things – like pieces of grass – see to have a jewel-like shape, or that gems exist in the world. Since knowing is something, even if we aren't clear on what it means, then knowing, to know, knowledge, is some sort of gem in the world, different aspects of the world, but an aspect that talks about the world – to know something is to know of it.

There seems to be three major points in the world, three legs to stand upon, to hold and balance the space of the world. Thus, as knowledge is a part of the world, knowledge stands between the three of force, will, and world. Remember that the solipsistic theory says this doesn't mean that knowledge is a separate thing from any of those, just that it might be. Knowing is a gem, so what we are saying about knowing could be said of anything. We could for example speak of seeing something, and many philosophers have used this term before in a similar sense to knowing. To see, perceive, sense, feel, something can be done, even if we know not what that something is, just like how we can know something without clearing out exactly what knowing is.

What do we mean by 'know' x as opposed to just x alone? That we stand in some relation to x. X says that x exists in the world, but to know x is for there to be some relation between us and x in the world. We recognize knowing as a sort of relationship between us and something else, a relationship which may or may not have a force or an effect, may be seen or may be invisible at this angle, or may be a truth or a lie. We incorporate knowing x into our decision, but we can also decide to act as if we don't know x when we make other decisions. We seem to have the ability to ignore or blind our knowledge of something, to not admit to it or not care about it, which is just like what we can do to other things, other gems in the world, depending on what logic field we are using, what angle or color the world seems to be in. Knowledge and awareness are similar to each other, but not quite the same thing. We can also sometimes be confused about what we know or don't know, after we investigate the concept of 'knowing'. For example, what it it to know that we know? Is knowledge a justified belief? Is knowledge what we call useful information, or truth-serving information? There are many ways to think about this, to analyze this, That sort of investigation is a tried and true method of learning about knowledge, but I also feel that its a bit of dead end. We can categorize what we know into different levels or types of knowledge, knowledge o knowledge, knowledge of beliefs, justified and unjustified knowledge, necessary or tautological knowledge, and so on and on. This is expanding the gem, looking into the gem of 'knowing' in the world and figuring out all its connections. I feel though that this sort of thing is an almost inevitable circular or limited, that we either stop because we've gone far enough or we don't stop and end up trying to understand the whole world, losing sight of what we wanted to figure out about the gem of knowing in the first place. What might we be able to do in order to avoid this path?

We started to investigate knowing because we weren't satisfied with what we had about knowing, what we pictured about knowing, with our pretend knowing, because that leads to an unstable world. We want to know, not just believe; one is before the other. Indeed, there seems to be something between belief and knowledge – being wrong. We can thing of this as the existence and force of the world being at odds, of stoppable force and immovable object. The us that is not us, that belies not, that is the world, will not have them be what they are not. Another way of saying we doubt is to say that we are not sure that something will be, that: x>p and ~x>p in W. Only some actual tings, a ?>a will reveal which possible is right, which is knowledge and which is belief. This is precisely why we can doubt everything, because we have an open world, and don't have access to sure and exact formulations of any ?>a's, so we mostly deal with x>p's. It is the arrival of some actual x>p or ~x>p, in w which can decide the point, which is when we think that something can be possible – and yet we we often feel that we have to accept the x>p or ~x>p, or be pushed to accept it, by force of Reality on W, by choice of Will, or by force of W in W, the concluding logic fields and limits on possibility spaces.

I want to say that it seems as if these strange forces, these is's on is's, which are presumably somehow connected to R, self Will, and W - But this of course is the world. Which is why I talk about W as if it made sense, was detached and separate as a structure I could gaze upon from afar in wonder. It is not. We are right there with it and the W is with us. We aren't separate, and this is why talking about the world is so self-referential, and I commonly arrive at it through a personal path. Working, learning, or gaming, all the paths can run through you. Like Bowling Paul once said to Blue, “You are the ball. The ball is you. Without the ball you are nothing. You are the pins, the pins are you, and without the pins you are nothing. ”* I bring the world along with me and find myself in it, just as I find myself in the world, because no matter where you go, there you are. We find ourselves at the edge of all our knowledge, and running into, or being run into by, something forceful moving in the world at the center of us. Knowledge, being part of the world, is perhaps also something like this, and like the world, the basis is trust.

What we know and what we believe to be the case are often the same thing. Our knowledge and beliefs are all wrapped up with each other, and we get so tangled in the maze that we close our eyes, shut off some part of our senses, or focus our concerns in smaller and simpler things, on parts of the world which we can maybe deal with and make sense out of. Things like material science, social mores, moral laws, history or the moment, all of these are examples of things which we do know something about, or think that we know. We know about them because as long as we limit our knowledge of them to them, to being within a certain logic field or only being concerned with certain angles, then these things are graspable. We presume that the world, while we deal with these things, is theoretically closed and that we can gain knowledge of something by access to an x>a, to definitive information.

We presume this because its useful to do so, or we think it is, and that allows us to focus and clarify smaller and simpler things then the world entire, all at once. We can, maybe, deal with these things and maybe, at least for a little while, make a solid rock out of them. World that stagnate slumber and shatter. All worlds we've ever run into before have shattered, but which each new world we again aren't sure if it will or it won't, and we can maybe know something here. All knowledge could be wrong, but we don't know that for sure – or is that a circular sort of answer? I'm not sure it is. As long as we are moving, working, playing and dancing, we are not lost – here we are. We justify our knowledge by existing.

*Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Season 2, Ep 2, 'The Big Lablooski”