What are the 4 Kinds of Knowing?
I'm writing to introduce a framework for understanding knowledge which I have found quite illuminating. It’s useful for understanding the human psyche, for personal and business development, and for effective communication. For me, this model has particularly refined the way I see faith, belief, understanding, and truth!
The “4 kinds of knowing” is a framework developed by cognitive scientist John Vervaeke through extensive analysis and research. It groups "knowing" into 4 categories which are distinct, yet connected. These 4 kinds of knowing are: Propositional knowing (facts), Procedural knowing (skills), Perspectival knowing (awareness), and Participatory knowing (identity). Let's consider each one…
Propositional Knowing
Propositional knowing is able to be articulated in propositions — it's the knowing we have in describing things or proclaiming facts: "the earth is round," "I am human," "words have meaning."
Propositional knowing is very helpful and powerful! It gives us a strong sense of conviction (that something is true). It allows us to share with others things we’ve learned.
In our modern culture (by which I mean post-Enlightenment and spiral Orange), this Propositional knowing is the most emphasized, and often over-emphasized to the exclusion of other forms of knowing. When used well, propositional knowing can facilitate our other forms of knowing — it can be used to strengthen them and communicate them. However, many people today, often without realizing it, are under “propositional tyranny” in which propositional knowledge dominates and overly restricts the other forms of knowing, often because it is seen as “superior” or “more real.”
Procedural Knowing
Procedural knowing is knowing how to do something. It's procedures and skills. When someone asks you, "Do you know how to swim?" they are not asking if you know the facts about how swimming works, but if you have the skill of swimming.
In life it’s not enough to get by with theoretical knowledge — there must be an instantiation of knowledge — applied knowledge — which is itself a deeper kind of knowledge. It’s not possible to perfectly “translate” procedural knowing into propositions. Scientists could analyze every muscle movement of Tom Brady’s football throws and let you know every detail, but that doesn’t mean you can throw even remotely like him.
Procedural knowing doesn’t have to be conscious — there’s “muscle memory” by which our bodies hold knowledge that we may or may not be aware of. When I sit down to play a memorized piano piece, I can relax and let my body play out its knowledge — in fact, if I think too much about what note comes next, I’ll mess up!
Procedures -> Propositions: Our propositional facts emerge from our procedural processes. More specifically, Propositional knowing is gathered and organized through our Procedural knowing. How so? If I want to know a fact, I get to it through a procedure: I search the internet, I talk with a friend, I perform an experiment. Science is a procedure through which we generate facts.
Mental procedures also fall under Procedural knowing, and these are required for organizing our propositional knowing. If you hear a new proposition (anything from “5 times 4 is 20” to "becoming religious increases happiness"), then you are likely to perform some mental procedures to consider its validity: "Does this line up with what you've heard before?," "Does it seem plausible?," "Does it conform to logic?," “Does it matter?” If the proposition is something you want to remember, it takes procedures to store it in your memory: involuntary memory procedures, voluntary mental attempts to think about or associate the fact, and voluntary actions like writing it down or telling it to others. Thus, all our propositional knowing emerges from our procedural knowing.
Perspectival Knowing
Perspectival knowing is knowing through seeing things a certain way or taking on a perspective. It’s the lens through which we see and the felt experience of the life we’re living.
When someone asks, “Do you know what it’s like to work in customer service?” they are not asking if you know the facts of customer service, or even if you can “do” customer service, but if you have the felt experience of customer service… perhaps the stress, dealing with rude/angry customers, being underpaid/undervalued, etc.
Do you know what it’s like to be a five year old? Maybe. You were one once, but are you able to put yourself back in that perspective? Personally, I find that sort of thing fairly difficult, but some people are excellent at it! There’s many advantages to being able to take on the perspective of a child, of other versions of yourself, of other people… to see things from different angles. Moving between perspectives is a powerful tool for self-correction, adaptability, insight, rationality, and flexible fittedness.
Perspectives -> Procedures: All of our procedural activities are only made possible because of a certain kind of awareness we have. Every perspective generates a "salience landscape" for us, where some things are "foregrounded" and other things are "backgrounded," and each notable object is visible only because it’s able to be used in some way — aka it affords procedures for us — or it obstructs our options/procedures.
That might sound a bit abstract, but it’s quite practically how our vision/perception works. Things that are not-relevant for you are screened-out from your perception and relevant things are highlighted for you. Have you ever learned a new word, and then suddenly started hearing/reading it everywhere? (it was perceptually highlighted) Or been looking around for something that you’re actually holding in your hand? (it was perceptually screened-out)
Perspective sets the frame. It determines what's accessible to us consciously. You know how when you're in a room with a bunch of people having their own conversations, you can shift perspective to focus in on one conversation or another, but to do so, you have to tune out the other ones? All the time in life, you're choosing to ignore some information and focus on other information. You're being bombarded with limitless things to perceive at all times: the feeling of your clothes on your skin, the air in your lungs, how your pinky toes are doing, the background smells and sounds, the tip of your nose… most of life you're "tuning out" most of the data so you are not overwhelmed.
Our values and objectives shape our framing, and this in turn opens up certain actions for us, while closing off others.
Ten people enter into a coffee shop… and each “sees” dramatically different things, because of their "framing" (perspectival knowing). One person notices the aesthetics of the coffee shop and looks for a pleasing place to sit, hoping they get some pretty latte art. Another notices the floors look dirty and keeps an eye out for any uncleanliness. One looks for the most attractive people, another for any friends (or enemies) who may be around, and another for where there aren’t many people so they can work undisturbed. One is hyper-aware of where the exits are in case of an emergency. Another, being short on cash, notices the coffee is a bit expensive but the tea is affordable. One is disappointed in how inaccessible the place is for a wheelchair, another is immediately enamored with the music that’s playing, and another is relieved the place serves paninis so their hunger can be satisfied.
There’s a huge variety of ways the coffee shop looks and feels to people depending on their wants, needs, objectives, mood, and quality of awareness!
Our framing has a huge affect on our communication with others. If I have a low view of someone, I’m going to read more of their behaviors as “bad” or coming from “poor intentions,” while screening-out many of the indicators of them being kind and authentic. If I’m already irritated with someone, and they start humming, that’ll probably provoke anger… but if I’m feeling affectionate towards them, the humming will be endearing. Many of the non-verbal aspects of our communication are communicating our perspectives/awareness — how we feel, the status of our relationship, and the roles we see ourselves in for the interaction. Often this is the function of greetings and small-talk: it sets the frame of the interaction while restricting or opening up possibilities for further interaction.
Finally, perspectival knowing includes altered states of consciousness (which are just extreme examples of our capacity to “frame” things differently). Being drunk or having a psychedelic trip offers a new framing — a state of consciousness with its own advantages and disadvantages. Many times, these experiences open us to to being shaped in deeper ways, affecting the next, and deepest form of knowing…
Participatory Knowing
Participatory knowing is the most foundational and deepest form of knowledge, which is knowing through participation. It is what you know through being and becoming, through connection and relationship, through character and identity. This is the hardest form of knowing to "grasp" because it's pre-perceptual. It exists before our awareness of it. We can reflect upon it but never escape from working within it.
Participation -> Perspective: Our perspectival frames arise from participation in the world — the fact that we are always embedded in relational contexts. For instance, the "fatherly" perspective arises from being in a father-child relationship. Or the "drunk" perspective arises from a particular human-alcohol relationship. We are affected by our world and affect it — a two-way street of participation.
Participatory knowing is knowing how to be an “agent” in an “arena.” If I was dropped into a soccer game, I’d know what to do (since I’ve been an agent in that arena). But if I was dropped into the arena of an ancient Roman sport I’ve never heard of… I’d be lost… but as I engage/participate in the game, I’d slowly come to know what to pay attention to, and then could develop my skillfulness at playing the game.
Social scripts are another example of something we “know” through participation (through they can also be propositionally known and taught). If you are dropped into a totally different cultural arena — if you, for example, wake up one day as a Mongol warlord — then you’ll be stumbling over yourself to figure out how to act, to avoid offence, follow social cues, etc. Even seemingly obvious social proprieties (like how far away to stand from someone) is culturally dependent and typically learned not through propositional teaching but participation in the societal arena.
Your identity forms largely through participation with other people and social groups (your identity as a child, sibling, friend, and citizen) and through participation with concepts and values (your identity as a 'good person,' creative, or open-minded (or as unlovable, wrong, selfish, etc.)). And of course these two (the horizontal and vertical identity markers) are inter-connected, your values affecting who you seek out to associate with and the people you associate with affecting your values.
Character traits are a kind of participatory knowing, for they are the qualities of how we participate in the world — relating generously or through grasping and hording — relating with courage or with cowardice — relating with balanced justice or imbalance/immoderation. It goes deep to the core of us, preceding our perceptions. For instance a deeply unselfish, altruistic person interacts in a generously loving way because their character/disposition generates frames of how to do good for others (and it doesn’t even generate the perspectives of “fake altruism” to look good or get something out of it).
Our knowing other people is also participatory knowing. The closer you get to someone, the more you “know” them in a way which is deeper than any knowledge “about” them, or even seeing things from their perspective. As parts of them “rub off” on you, and change who you are becoming, you participate in them (and them in you). You only know someone in a participatory way insofar as you are changed by them.
We internalize people around us, starting from a tiny baby as we internalize our parents/caretakers which shapes our earliest self. As we grow, we keep internalizing parts of more and more people, which is a huge part of our developing sense of self.
This is the way of all things: to receive and then to give and thus to co-create. This is what it means to truly participate.
All of our human relationships should therefore, I believe, have a participatory element. (This seems to be analogous to Kant’s proposal to treat everyone as an “ends” and not just a “means.”) But there are many levels (and qualities) of participatory knowing. I may know my local baker, but not in the same way that I know my friends, and I don’t know my friends the same way I know my lover. I might participate with all the members of my family in different ways, and thus they know me in unique ways, and I know them in unique ways. No relationship is the same.
We can also be changed by, and have a level of participatory knowing, of people we haven’t met in person. Vervaeke talks of “internalizing the sage,” developing a transformative relationship with someone you’ve spiritually met, such that they come live in you. But we can also look at a more mundane example. Taylor Swift is known and loved by millions who haven’t met her. Obviously there’s a way her friends know her that her fans cannot, but those fans can still participate in her and let her participate in them. How so? It’s not just that they know facts about her, but that they relate with those facts in a transformational way. It’s not just that they may be able to sing all her songs exactly like her (procedural knowing), but that they love her as they do it. It’s this love which grants participatory knowing.
Love, and relationship, enables all of us to relate in a participatory way with just about anything.
The final thing I’ll share about participatory knowing is that just as love is essential to doing it well, so is faith. You see, there is always an element of faith and trust in choosing to participate. Since participatory is pre-perceptual and inherently transformational, I can’t know what it is like to have a new participation (a new identity or relationship) until after I have already been changed by it.
This is often the difficulty with making big life decisions: Should I get into this relationship? Should I take the job? Should I move to the new city? Should I convert to this religion? …all of these are questions of identity and who you will become. You know that if you say “yes,” you will be changed — you will be different because of it. But you don’t know exactly how. You can (and should) try to discern the best course of action with the knowledge you can access — learning the facts you can, making a pros/cons list, talking with mentors, and doing visualization exercises to get yourself close to “knowing” what it will be like. But ultimately, it takes a leap of faith to bridge the gap between what you know and what you can’t know until you’ve participated.
Summary Table
Conclusion
So we know things in these 4 distinct, yet connected ways. I look forward to discussing this framework and its applications more in future posts (I’ll have one soon on faith vs belief!).
Hopefully you found this interesting! And helpful! Perspective-shifting perhaps? Even transformational? :)
Whatever level of knowing this may have hit, I appreciate your reading and considering. Feel free to discuss, comment, and ask questions below!
Photo Credits:
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