What's "to know"?

Thursday, 29th July. Semliki Time: 04:29pm

Straying, somewhat, from the topic of bio-anth, I’ve recently been having a rather extended debate with a friend about the meaning of the term “knowledge”. Both definitions are based on the assumption that there is such a thing as “true” and post-modernists, ontological relativists and the criminally delusional can take a seat in the naughty corner for the remainder of this blog entry. My friend, a philosopher of some renown, argues that for something to be knowledge it has to be “true”, as opposed to “belief”. I, on the contrary, think that knowledge does not have to be true, but just has to be a piece of information that is justified, somehow.

Okay, so by my definition, one could have knowledge about ‘God’ based on reading the bible. One would know what made God angry, what made God tick, how many days God created the world in and anything else that could be gleaned from various sources about what God was like. I would argue that, even if God doesn’t exist, knowledge about God would still be knowledge. Replace God with Harry Potter, homeopathy or Lady Gaga’s adherence to ‘normality’ if the deistic example is distasteful to you. One both has knowledge about what is written about God, knowledge about what he did and knowledge about God himself. Whether he exists or not is moot.

The esteemed philosopher would argue, however, that this knowledge about God, assuming that God (/Harry Potter/Acupuncture/L. Ron Hubbard’s sense of shame) doesn't exist, would not be knowledge about God at all. It would only be knowledge about what has been written about God (/Harry Potter/Peter Pan), not knowledge about God himself.

Got that? Let me give you another example, just to drive home the distinction between our two opposing definitions. Let’s take Isaac Newton, a fellow who reputedly knew a lot. While gravity and ‘the cat flap’ are still considered fairly sound concepts in this day and age, not all of Newton’s beliefs still hold much water. For example, Newton was a firm believer in alchemy and he knew, through rigorous empirical tests, that it was possible to turn base metals into gold. Ignoring the obvious issue of hyperinflation and the irreparable devaluation of gold in seventeenth century Britain, I would argue that all the techniques that Isaac had recorded all constituted knowledge. Isaac knew that if he mixed certain chemicals, he could get gold. We now know that he was completely wrong. Despite not working, however, I would argue that Isaac's many methods of creating valuable metals constitute knowledge of alchemy, despite the fact that none of them work.

My philosophical friend, let's call him “Socrato”, would argue that, while knowing what Isaac thought about alchemy would constitute “knowledge”, Newton’s techniques themselves would not be knowledge of how to turn base metals into gold because they did not turn base metals into gold. I would argue that his techniques would be knowledge about how to turn base metals into gold, just fairly useless knowledge, due to the fact that they didn’t turn base metals into gold. In the same way, I would argue that the knowledge that Australia’s capital is Sydney is knowledge about Australia and the knowledge that the world will end in 2012 is knowledge about the end of the world. It doesn’t matter to my definition that the two previous statements are entirely fallacious (we hope).

So, there you have it. Does knowledge have to be fact, or can knowledge be fiction? Would you use knowledge in either of these two ways? Would you define it as something completely different? Which definition fits yours the best? Please give an answer as unbiased as possible and ask your friends, acquaintances, colleagues, spouses, cellmates, life-partners and sugar-daddies to do the same! E-mail your answers to dnes2@cam.ac.uk or slap them in the comments.

Then, we shall know!