June 5: Yagoo. John M. Bennett made an amusing reply to my Still-Definitive & Unanswered Statement of yesterday about the verbal, signing off as "he who knows nothing." Here's what I said back:
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Egad, thought I--this fellow doesn't realize that in claiming to know nothing he is
indicating that he knows something: that he knows nothing. Then I thought, I bet he
knows where to go when he needs to pee! Unless he's in his "spitter" mode, in which he
knows which window to aim through. But that would not be verbal knowledge. Verbal
knowledge would come into play if he inadvertantly hit someone on the other side of the
window whom he, even in his spitter mode, admired, such as the Queen of England. He
would know to say, "Excuse me." Hours later, this line of thought had led me to the
question of just how we know we know, or how we recognize knowledge as knowledge.
Answer: knowledge is any solution to a problem, whether it works or not. It needn't be
verbal. The problem of what to do about a painfully full bladder is solved by a trip to the
toilet. The brain will experience pain followed by some action and label the latter
"knowledge" (averbally). If one were chained to a fence and told one would be executed
if one wet one's pants, and one's bladder got painfully full, one would find no solution, and
experience a state of ignorance. Saying "Excuse me" after one has accidentally pissed on
someone else would be an action in response to a problem, therefore knowledge--verbal
knowledge because words are involved. One necessarily must know the "meaning-in-
context" of the locution, too. Hence, its existence for use in keeping from being beaten to
a pulp when one accidentally pisses on someone proves that words have meaning.
Please let me know of any mistakes in the preceding, anyone. I hope to get it into the
Journal of American Philosophy. Later, a full book on the subject.
He Who Knows
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