What does it mean to KNOW

REQUIREMENTS OF KNOWING

Knowing usually implies the ability to express what is known and how we came to know it. This, however, is not always so. We may not be able to express our knowledge in words. The best we may be able to say is "I just know, that's all" or "I know because I know." Yet these replies are feeble and hardly satisfy those who wish to verify our knowledge or share it.

ASSUMING, GUESSING, SPECULATING

Three mental processes that are sometimes confused with knowing are assuming, guessing, and speculating. Yet they are quite different.

Assuming is taking something for granted – that is, unconsciously holding an idea about something without ever trying to verify it, sometimes being unaware we have the idea.

Guessing is offering a judgment on a hunch or taking a chance on an answer without any confidence that it is correct. It's a common, everyday activity. For students who don't do their studying for exams, it's a last-ditch survival technique.

Speculating is making an "educated" guess, selecting an answer without any confidence that it is correct but with some evidence for believing it is probably correct. It is commonly used in matters that resist close observation. Science offers numerous examples.

Each of the above examples of assuming, guessing, and speculating concerns ideas that were incorrect. It is possible of course, for the ideas to be correct. But even when they are, it is wrong to say the people knew the truth, for as noted previously, to know means not only to have the correct answer but to be aware that we have it.

ACTIVE AND PASSIVE KNOWING

We can achieve knowledge either actively or passively. We achieve it actively by direct experience, by testing and proving an idea (as in a scientific experiment), or by reasoning. When we do it by reasoning, we analyze a problem, consider all the facts and possible interpretations, and draw the logical conclusion.

We achieve knowledge passively by being told by someone else. Much of our learning comes passively. Most of the learning that happens in the classroom and the kind that happens when we watch TV news reports or read newspapers or magazines is passive. Conditioned as we are to passive learning, it's not surprising that we depend on it in our everyday communication with friends and co-workers.

Unfortunately, passive learning has a serious defect. It makes us tend to accept uncritically what we are told. Of course, much that we are told is little more than hearsay and rumor.

Did you every play the game "Rumor"? it begins with one person's writing down a message but not showing it to anyone. Then the person whispers it, word for word, to another person. That person, in turn, whispers it to still another, and so on, through all the people playing the game. The last person writes down the message word for word as he or she hears it. Then the two written statements are compared. What is usually discovered? The original message has changed, often dramatically, by passing from person to person.

That's what happens in daily life. This tendency may be conscious or unconscious. Yet the effect is the same in either case – those who hear it think they know.

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PERFECT KNOWLEDGE

Even the most vigorous active learning and the most critical approach to passive learning, of course, will not bring us complete and perfect knowledge. One reason is that old unanswered questions continue to resist solution, questions like what causes cancer, what approach to education is best for children, and how can we prevent crime without compromising individual rights.

Another reason is that everyday situations arise for which there are no precedents. When the brain operation known as frontal lobotomy was developed to calm raging violence in people, it raised the question of the morality of a "cure" that robbed the patient of human sensibilities. When the heart transplant and the artificial heart became realities, the issue of which patients should be given priority was created, as well as the question of how donors were be obtained.

Still another reason why perfect knowledge is beyond our grasp is that as generation passes to generation, knowledge is often forgotten or unwisely rejected.

In our time the ideas of "sin" and "guilt" have come to be regarded as useless and even harmful holdovers from Puritan times. The "new morality" urged people to put aside such old-fashioned notions are obstacles to happiness and fulfillment. Then Karl Menninger, one of America's leading psychiatrists, wrote a book called Whatever Became of Sin? in which he argues that the notion of "sin" and "guilt" are good and necessary in civilized society. He says, in other words, that our age rejected those concepts too quickly and quite unwisely.

Knowledge is often thought of as dead matter stored on dusty shelves in dull libraries. Unfortunately, the hushed atmosphere of a library can suggest a funeral chapel or a cemetery. But the appearance is deceiving. The ideas on those shelves are very much alive – and often fighting furiously with one another.

To summarize, we can feel confident we know and yet not know. We may be assuming or guessing or speculating instead. We may be confusing erroneous hearsay and rumor with fact. Even when your evidence is solid, it may be incomplete. For these reasons, we should be cautious in asserting that we know something. Only when we have examined the idea critically, verified our evidence, and thoughtfully considered other possible interpretations are we entitled to say, "I know." There is no shame in admitting we do not know something – in saying "I think" or "It seems to me."