Blake Daniel Brown

Philosophy Senior Seminar

27 January 2009

Possessivity, Performativity, and Proactivity

Perkins discusses forms of knowledge and understanding in the three essays we read. He talks about ways we obtain and use knowledge and how it correlates to understanding, and he does it in a nice, systematic fashion.

To begin, Perkins describes a sort of rudimentary form of knowledge/understanding, which he terms as possessive. The possessive form of knowledge consists of essentially information storage. This type of knowledge is exemplified by such phenomena as mathematical knowledge, political knowledge, knowledge of ethics, etc. What I mean by these exemplifications is that we know that there is a thing that exists called mathematics, and there are rules that govern the discipline, and it is the same with each other discipline and myriad other data bits. Possessive knowledge precedes performative knowledge; it is the building block upon which understanding is built.

Performative knowledge is the sort that allows for responses to questions. So what is the answer to 2 plus 2? Four. Pretty straightforward, I would say. When we perform knowledge, we express the possessive knowledge that we have. But what differentiates performative knowledge from proactive knowledge?

Proactive knowledge demonstrates a more well-rounded and full understanding of the information stored in the brain. Proactive knowledge sees problems that performative knowledge misses. This explains to some extent the difference between knowledge and understanding—when we know something we don’t necessarily use that knowledge, whereas understanding occurs when we apply the knowledge we have to some phenomena to cultivate further knowledge. What this means is that given 2 and 2 equal four, we can recognize that 2 consists of 2 one’s, and therefore, 3 consists of 3 one’s and we can perform higher functions to quandaries we may not have known existed previously. This is still obtuse.

Rather than continuing to unfold my understanding of the difference between knowledge and understanding, let me get back to Perkins’ point of his essays. Perkins advocates teaching for understanding rather than for the purpose of stockpiling data. While compiling information can be useful, we should try to teach and learn in a manner that is conducive to proactive knowledge—knowledge that can apply to many more circumstances than mere possessive or wrote performative knowledge.

I must say I concur with Perkins admonition. When I feel like I know something best, I feel like I can apply that knowledge to many situations rather than typical situations. So I read Philosophy and try to gain a deep understanding of the idea asserted, and try to understand the idea from many angles for the purpose of a more enriched understanding, which corresponds to a more rich life (I hope). These are some preliminary considerations.