The "Know That"/"Know How" application.

The know that/know how argument has been around for some time. I’m not going to get into what I think the proper route to knowledge is, but I would like to argue that the “know how” is much more important in life than the “know that” to an extent. I could know that Barack Obama is President, but what does this do for me unless I also know that this knowledge might be useful somewhere in my in everyday activities? To know that people might judge me based on the fact I don’t know this is the reason I would care to know. The real reason I’d want to know that would be because I’d like people to think I’m not stupid, and to know that is likely because of a prior interaction that taught me to know how people will treat me if I didn’t know that information. Obviously there’s a number of situations we come across in life where we lack experience and we’ll create abstractions of what we think will happen under certain conditions and be wrong. That’s because we don’t have true knowledge. The argument however, is that “knowledge that” is only useful if it can be used as “knowledge how”, and the way we reach “knowledge how” is only through the pain of not “knowing that” in a prior altercation where we didn’t “know how” to use “knowledge that” we had or lacked the knowledge in the first place that made us learn “knowledge that” we could apply later to spare future embarrassment, failure, or loss. To know that Barack Obama is President is because we either believe or know how this information will possibly be useful in action and interaction with others. The belief of some things may not be true, but the reason we believe anything in the first place is because of some prior know how that made us question a potential later action that could bring about a consequence we’d see in our favor. In other words, a life of action and practical application is the best life lived. Some act too much without thinking, while others think too much without acting. Aristotle would argue for the mean, which a lot of people have confused for moderation. The mean is a little different. It means to know how to act in the right situation at the right time. It’s kind of like building the right kinds of reflexes. If we have excesses or deficiencies in a given situation, we need to adjust closer to the mean. It’s good to be very angry sometimes or not too angry in other cases. Moderation would mean we always act a certain temperament in most situations. One more Ancient idea that appealed to me was the idea of happiness. Today we think of happiness as a psychological state that can come or go. For Ancients it was an activity that took place over an entire life, and if one was living a virtuous life they’d have a happier life overall.

For myself, the virtuous life is the life of action. Life shouldn’t be about contemplation or how much one can know, because nobody cares what one can know without an ability to produce actions from them. I can’t really say that producing actions will always make us happy. I question if even doing the “right” actions in our lives will really make us happy. From a sociobiological perspective, life isn’t about being happy, but passing on genes and survival. That means if being miserable helps us survive in certain environments it’s the proper way to live. I personally lean toward the sociobiologists. Looking back on my own life I can only see struggle, misery, and conflict, and I believe it’s only through struggle and conflict that we actually become better people. These are not happy experiences, but the outcome always makes us better people who are better able to survive in more kinds of environments. Going back to Aristotle, I can say I agree that finding the mean is and building the right reflexes to fit new situations is the proper mode of living. Even if we don’t find happiness, we’ll learn to live better. These virtue ethics part from the deontologists like Kant, or the utilitarians like Bentham. It’s more about developing a character for as many seasons as possible. Maybe we won’t be happy in the ancient sense for an entire life, even if we do all the right things, but we will be more adaptable and therefore more powerful in new situations where we need to know how to survive and overcome knew obstacles and competition.

We want the “know how” reflexes that will give us the most control in our situations with others. There’s so many kinds of people in the world, and so many different cultures, and subcultures, that it might be a question of where to start, but I’d say the starting point is rather easy. You just have to think about what interests you and attempt to get good at it, and through that experience you’ll likely gain more interests. The harder part for some people is that they might find things they like and never unlock the potential to use their “know that” and create a “know how” out of it. Let me put it this way. There are five activities that stand out to me as the activities people do because they’re bored. They are to eat, sleep, get wasted, watch movies/TV, and masturbate. These five things don’t take any skill. Some of them are things we’ve been born with a natural inclination toward, and the others are just passive activities. We know how to do these things, but they’re simple action skills, because they never took struggle or conflict to acquire them, and as I said earlier, it’s the struggle and conflict in life that force us to be better people. Someone might argue that watching movies is a good way to become cultured and to understand things about life better through the stories it teaches, and I’ll say that to “know that” about culture and life is worthless unless we can apply that knowledge to action, and it’s because most people don’t apply the watching of a movie to action that they fail to use the knowledge for anything useful. If we became good at deconstructing the meanings of movies as we watched them to have conversation and/or debate about the meanings of them with others, we’d be engaging in an activity that could be a “know how” activity, because we’re using it as a tool to get better at interacting with others and possibly having the ability to gain control over the direction of the interaction, because of the power of our knowledge and the ability to use it. Once we find something we enjoy, we need to seek out others who enjoy the same so we can use the thing we enjoy as a tool to get others to inquire about what they’re doing and thinking when they interact in the activity as well. A movie doesn’t have to be passive and some of us can be the catalyst to set the viewing of such into action with others in our own lives. I myself don’t relate well to movies, so I find more enjoyment in reading textbook style knowledge I think will help me in a career or debate, but I believe most activities that are passive for most can be turned into power tools for some. Those who can “know how” to turn the knowledge of “knowing that” into a weapon or tool the shape the direction of interaction have gained a tool or weapon of power. This parts from modern philosophy in some ways in the sense that moderns tend to think the best way to come to an understanding of knowledge is to keep to be an individual who wanders in the wilderness or hides in dim lit rooms reading away, but I’m more of an ancient that believes the best place to gain knowledge is right in the city, because we’re social creatures by nature, and through dialect with others we gain the most knowledge. Through conflict and struggle with others we become the best adapted for survival.