Four Kinds of Knowing
Why facts alone are never enough — and the three other ways humans understand the world
John Vervaeke • Awakening from the Meaning Crisis
John Vervaeke's framework distinguishes four kinds of knowing that humans possess. These go beyond the traditional focus on "knowing that" — facts, propositions, information — which is what most education, science, and certainly AI systems are built around.
Understanding all four is essential for wisdom, transformation, and addressing what Vervaeke calls the meaning crisis — the pervasive sense that modern life is rich in information but impoverished in meaning.
This framework, drawn from his lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis and his Cambridge talk on Rationality and Ritual, offers a map for understanding what knowing really means — and what we lose when we reduce it to facts alone.
1. Propositional Knowing
Knowing that. Facts, beliefs, assertions about the world. Statements that can be true or false, expressed in language and communicated directly.
"Ottawa is the capital of Canada." This is what most education and science focuses on — accumulating correct propositions about the world. It's also what AI systems like LLMs handle remarkably well.
The limitation
You can know all the facts about something and still not truly "get" it. A medical textbook contains propositional knowledge about grief, but reading it doesn't mean you understand what grief is.
Propositional knowing is necessary but radically incomplete. It's the tip of an iceberg whose mass lies beneath the surface in the other three forms.
2. Procedural Knowing
Knowing how. Skills, abilities, competencies — knowledge that lives in practice rather than in statements. It requires embodiment and repetition to develop.
Knowing how to ride a bike, speak a language, play piano. These can't be fully captured in propositions. You know more than you can say — the knowledge is tacit, embedded in your body and your trained responses.
Gilbert Ryle first drew the distinction between "knowing how" and "knowing that" in 1949. Vervaeke builds on this, arguing that procedural knowing is just the beginning of what propositions miss.
3. Perspectival Knowing
Knowing what it's like. First-person experience, situated awareness — the knowledge you have from a particular perspective. It can't be transferred through description alone.
Knowing what it's like to be a parent. To be in love. To face death. No amount of propositional or procedural knowledge gives you this — you have to occupy the perspective.
Salience landscaping
Perspectival knowing involves what Vervaeke calls salience landscaping — what stands out as relevant, important, or meaningful from where you stand. A parent walking through a park notices different things than a landscape architect. Same park, different salience landscape.
This is why travel, relationships, and novel experiences matter for wisdom. They don't just add facts — they shift your perspective, reshaping what you notice and what matters to you.
Connected to phenomenology, consciousness studies, and the concept of qualia — the same territory explored by Nagel's Bat and Mary's Room in philosophy of mind.
4. Participatory Knowing
Knowing by identification. The deepest form — a mutual shaping between knower and known, where you and the world co-create each other.
The way a dancer "knows" the dance. A craftsman knowing their material. It's not knowledge about something — it's knowledge through becoming. The knowing transforms you as much as you shape what you know.
Related to the ancient concept of gnosis — not intellectual understanding but transformative, participatory knowing. Also connected to intimacy, craft mastery, and contemplative practice. When people speak of "finding meaning" in their work or relationships, they're usually describing participatory knowing.
How They Interrelate
These aren't independent categories. They form a cascading dependency:
Propositional depends on the others — you can only articulate what you can first perceive and do. Facts emerge from experience, not the reverse.
Procedural shapes perspectival — your skills determine what stands out as relevant. A trained musician hears structure in a symphony that a novice hears as pleasant noise.
Perspectival enables participatory — your situated awareness opens you to transformation. You can't be changed by what you can't perceive.
Participatory feeds back into all — who you are determines what you can know. Transformation reshapes your skills, your perspective, and the propositions available to you.
Why This Matters
Modern culture over-emphasizes propositional knowing. We accumulate facts, data, credentials, information — and wonder why it doesn't add up to meaning. Vervaeke calls this the meaning crisis: we have more information than any civilization in history, yet meaning, purpose, and wisdom feel increasingly scarce.
Education that only transfers facts misses procedural, perspectival, and participatory development. Rituals, practices, and deep relationships engage the non-propositional forms of knowing — and these are precisely the cultural practices that modernity has hollowed out.
The alignment problem takes on new dimensions through this lens. We aren't just trying to align AI with our stated preferences (propositional). We need it to be sensitive to the things we know how to do, what the world feels like to us, and who we're becoming — forms of knowing that resist formalization.
Practical Applications
Learning
Don't just read about it — practice, experience, participate. Real understanding requires engaging all four kinds of knowing, not just accumulating propositions.
Therapy
Insight (propositional) alone rarely transforms. "I know I shouldn't feel this way" is propositional knowing that hasn't reached the other three levels. Effective therapy engages experiential and participatory practices.
Spirituality
Ritual engages all four kinds of knowing, not just belief. This is why reducing spirituality to a set of propositions ("Do you believe X?") misses its function — rituals are technologies for participatory transformation.
Relationships
Love is participatory knowing — mutual transformation. You don't just know about the other person; you become someone different through the relationship.
Creativity
Artists develop perspectival and participatory knowing of their medium. The painter doesn't just know facts about color theory — they see color differently, and the medium transforms them as they transform it.
Key Takeaways
- Humans possess four kinds of knowing: propositional (that), procedural (how), perspectival (what it's like), and participatory (by identification)
- Modern culture and AI both excel at propositional knowing — but wisdom requires all four
- Procedural knowing is tacit and embodied — you know more than you can say
- Perspectival knowing shapes what stands out as relevant — your salience landscape
- Participatory knowing is the deepest form: mutual transformation between knower and known
- The meaning crisis stems from reducing knowing to propositions alone
- Practices, rituals, relationships, and embodied experience engage the non-propositional forms
