What is Know What?

‍Ideas—those clear and distinct concepts—are abstractions that are a big part of our more clear and distinct thinking practices—and living in general. We are interacting with these kinds of abstractions all the time—they are wonderful, important, and necessary things. 

This form of thinking that involves the clear and distinct knowing of things—facts, concepts, and abstractions of all kinds—is a type of thinking and knowing that we can term “Know What.” 

This form of thinking is not representative of all thinking but only the forms of thinking that works with things that are definable, that are clear abstractions—here there is a clear “what.” 

But, most of the time, our thinking is far more vague and nebulous—much of thought is more like a feeling—a pull—what we might understand as a “hunch” or an “intuition." And the problem becomes when we (1) conflate the “know what” forms of thinking with all thinking and (2) when we no longer connect this form of thinking to its genesis in embodied worldly activity.

“Know what” emerges from far more tacit and implicit forms of doing-thinking. And we need to trace back “know what” to its creative genesis in the form of thinking called “know how.”

See:

Further Reading on Know What:

• Vol 65 - Knowing and Not Knowing — Creativity Outside‍
• Vol 70 - Begin Again, Forget Again
• Active Not Knowing
• Know How