Today’s episode begins own journey proper through my book, Knowledge By Acceptance: a New and Practical Means of Identifying Knowledge, 2nd Edition (2019), with Chapter 1, "Knowledge in What Sense?" 

The 10-chapter book, Knowledge By Acceptance (KBA), will reveal the solution to the Gettier Problems and thus show us how we can analyze the concept of knowledge into a set of conditions that must be met in order for a person to *know* something, rather than merely believing it. The book is part of an intended three-book series to construct a complete theory of knowledge.  In this episode, I provide audio of the full text of today's chapter,  read by a quite-good computer voice. For those who wish to read along, a full-text version of the chapter is available to my Patreon supporters  via my website, JamesGraf.org. Just find today's episode and follow the links.   

The following is a summary of today's chapter. In Chapter 1, I explore the different senses of the word ‘know’ that we use in English, in order to locate the sense or senses of the word most relevant to our project. Based on the senses of the word ‘know’ we deploy in our English-language speech, I identify and distinguish four types of knowledge. I draw distinctions between propositional knowledge, acquaintance knowledge, ability (also known as procedural) knowledge, and understanding. 

I argue that, while these types of knowledge are not mutually exclusive and are often interdependent, the primary type we need to focus on is propositional knowledge. However, I do note that we will find a very close link between the concepts of propositional knowledge and understanding, and that we will be forced to explore the concept of understanding if we are to achieve our end goal of demystifying the concept of propositional knowledge. 

As for what propositional knowledge is, while I do not provide a precise definition of it within this chapter, I imply it is the knowledge of such ‘knowing-that’ sentences as, “All my students know that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit.” I thus refer to it as the knowledge of facts. 

I conclude the chapter by clarifying a related and important concept – that of rationality, and the sense of this word that will be most relevant to the book’s project of developing a theory of propositional knowledge. I draw the important distinction between theoretical rationality and practical rationality. Theoretical rationality concerns believing the right thing, i.e. the thing most likely to be true. Practical rationality, in contrast, concerns doing the right thing, i.e. taking the action most likely to achieve that which one considers to be good. 

The present book, Knowledge By Acceptance, is Book 1 of an intended three-book series on the nature of propositional knowledge. I clarify that since in the present book series we are seeking to understand the nature of propositional knowledge and not of goodness, the type of rationality we will need to clarify along the way will be theoretical rationality and not practical rationality. I intend that we will turn our attention to practical rationality in a subsequent book series, both within a larger book collection, when we seek to understand the nature of goodness. 

For more information, including a link to Amazon to buy the e-book or paperback editions of Knowledge By Acceptance, 2nd Edition (2019), see https://JamesGraf.org.