It has sometimes occurred -- usually in some such informal setting as a party -- that someone, on hearing my job title or just the general nature of my work, says "Well, you must know everything!" To which there is no rational response; one can only look smug or try for a becoming modesty, depending on one's mood or chemical state at the time. But sometimes a demonstration will be required that I "know" things. The someone may be inspired to test me by saying, for example, "So, you'd know about the War of Jenkins' Ear, right?" And if I accept the challenge and say, with studied casualness, "Oh, yes -- 1642, wasn't it?" my opponent (for that he is, this being a kind of game, one in which I stand to win or lose some temporary social standing) will react with surprise and a little disappointment (for he has lost) and maybe a touch of respect. Why? Because he's done this before. He's played this game in one form or another many times because he knows that almost no one has heard of the War of Jenkins' Ear, hence he will usually win. (One challenge for him, obviously, is to find a way to initiate the game. I was a sitting duck. Another challenge is to keep getting himself invited to parties, despite this behavior.)

But what has actually happened in this exchange that has to do with knowing? A phrase is uttered -- "the War of Jenkins' Ear." Another phase is offered in return -- "sixteen forty-two." Both players agree that the response is appropriate. At this level it does not much differ from many other social rituals like cheering at a football game or singing along with television commercials.

Apart from knowing a correct verbal response to this especially obscure call, what else is it supposed that I know? Suppose that this game actually leads to a conversation about the War of Jenkins' Ear. My opponent (though possibly he is now my teammate, if others are still listening) might say "West Indies, right?" And I might nod (knowingly, of course) and respond "Spanish and English colonists, I think" (I am being charmingly modest.) One of us might go on to mention who this unfortunate Jenkins was. (Or not; we will surely have lost our audience by now.)

We all recognize this category of information as -- in a social setting, anyway -- trivia, and there are more formal games that employ it. One may even win large sums of money this way (not to mention meeting Regis Philbin), though I have not. Some people are quite adept at trivia. The requirements for success are fairly simple -- a retentive memory and a large amount of factual data input over the years. One then is in position to enliven almost any situation by noting that President Grover Cleveland's actual first name was Stephen, or that the peanut is neither a pea nor a nut.

But again, apart from the mental associations that permit me to link "1642" with "War of Jenkins' Ear," what do I know? Even as I add phrases like "South Carolina" and "Spanish colonists," drawing on further associations stored up years ago, what do I show of knowledge? Do I really know something here? And, taking a different tack, what would count as knowledge of the War of Jenkins' Ear? Being able to recite the casualty count? Naming the participants? Explaining the causes and results, as I may have read about them in some history book? At what point could I claim to actually know something? (Fairness obliges me to concede, on the other hand, that this sort of thing can be a part of knowing. A colleague of mine who is far better at it than I am and who is widely and truly knowledgeable about many things holds that it is a matter of knowing not just the generalities but "the details.")

Suppose that the War of Jenkins' Ear actually took place in 1645 and that I misremembered the date. In the trivia game, my opponent may have the correct date in mind and may be confident enough to challenge me; or he may also have an incorrect date in mind, though a different one, and be confident enough nonetheless to challenge; or he may have either the correct or an incorrect date in mind but lack the confidence to challenge; or he may have the same incorrect date in mind as I, and unjustifiably concede the point. Clearly, the game does not depend on information alone, or even on correct information alone. If challenged, I may or may not concede, depending on my degree of subjective certainty -- my confidence in my own memory. Eventually we may appeal to authority -- perhaps there is a set of Britannica nearby.

Now suppose that I confess to you that in inventing this imagined social encounter I knew all along that the War of Jenkins' Ear took place neither in 1642 nor in 1645 but really in 1739. I lied. If you stopped reading before this paragraph, if perhaps you put down the book to get ready for a party, and if at that party you fell into conversation with someone who brought up the War of Jenkins' Ear (it could happen!), and if you decided to enter the game and said "Ah, yes, 1642, wasn't it?" then maybe you lost the game, for which I apologize. But maybe you didn't lose. Either way, you didn't know what you thought you knew. You believed it, but you didn't know it.

But you know it now, right? Or do you? Maybe you should look it up before the next party.

It isn't what a man knows, but what he thinks he knows that he brags about. Big talk means little knowledge.
--George Horace Lorimer

Let's take another look at "I know that something or other." First, there is the factual proposition, the something-or-other part, such as "Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland." Given that we agree on the meaning of this sentence (easily given for many conventional matters, such as the Edinburgh case, but not always so readily managed), it is either true or false. Then, there is the assertion "I know that...." This one lives on two levels. There is first the level on which I report truly or not on the state of my knowledge: I am sincere in claiming to know, or I am not. Then there is the matter of whether the proposition matches the actual case. Letting k stand for the candidate factual statement, the various possibilities may be listed this way:

Of the four cases, I state a falsehood in two (2 and 3) and in a third (4) I state the truth accidentally and unawares. In two cases (2 and 4) I think I know what I don't know. In three out of four either I am mistaken or I mislead, or both. Not good odds if you are trying to decide whether to believe me or not based just on probabilities. This analysis is reasonably straightforward when x is, in fact, true; but watch what happens when it is false. Let's let x = "Elvis was born in Memphis." Now the two cases where x is true drop out, leaving cases 2 and 3 -- the ones in which I mislead you. But our concern here is not with deception but with knowing, whatever that may be. Case 3 is one in which, whatever I may think to be so, my intention is to persuade you that I know x, which implies that x is true, when in fact I know that it is not, or, in the notation of symbolic logic, I know ~x. This leaves case 2, in which I sincerely...what? Know? Surely we don't want to say that I know something that is not the case. So I sincerely believe, not just x, but that I know x. My belief is so sincere that I no longer think of it as belief but simply as knowing.

But I'm wrong. I am in error. And it is of the essence of being in error that I don't know it. Not only do I not know that I am in error, I positively believe that I am not. I believe that I am correct, that I am possessed of the truth. No -- I don't merely believe that I am correct, I know it! For me, belief doesn't enter into the matter. I damned well know.

But I'm still wrong.

back to the How to Know page

© 1998, 1999 by Robert McHenry