Terminology

Question 1

Explain practical knowledge (how)

Answer 1

• Knowledge of how to do something
• For example knowing how to swim or speak Russian
• This knowledge involves a capacity to perform a certain type of task
• However this does not involve the need of having an explicit understanding of what the performance entails
• It is possible to know how to do something without necessarily being able to articulate our knowledge
• However some forms of practical knowledge depend on the ability to know another piece of knowledge
• For example knowing how to use the offside trap in football requires the need to know the offside rule
• Behaviourists claim that all forms of knowledge break down into practical knowledge
• For example, being able to answer a question is a form of knowing how to succeed in a particular task

Question 2

Explain acquaintance knowledge (of)

Answer 2

• Knowledge in the sense of knowing something by experience
• Such as knowing a person,place,sensation or feeling
• For example knowing the taste of a banana by eating it
• It requires no capacity to give a report of what it entails, similar to practical knowledge
• I may know the taste of the banana without being able to describe it
• Some philosophers regard this knowledge with sense data as the foundation of all empirical knowledge
• Without the input of senses and our acquaintance with sounds, shapes colours and tastes
• There would be no knowledge at all
• Our minds would be a blank state or ‘tabula rasa’

Question 3

Explain propositional knowledge (that)

Answer 3

• Knowledge that something is the case
• For example knowledge that 2+2=4 or that the earth orbits the Sun
• When we know a fact, what we know can be expressed in language
• Thus if someone claims to know that the earth orbits the sun
• They are claiming that the statement ‘the earth orbits the sun’ is true
• What is asserted by a sentence is a proposition
• You are proposing the world is one way rather than another