Pencil ready? To mark the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, here’s a brief quiz (essay format, of course) on the epistemology lesson embedded in his comments from a February 12, 2002 Department of Defense news briefing. The comments, poetically transcibed by Slate, are as follows:
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
Questions:
1. From this passage, can you draw any conclusions about Rumsfeld’s analysis of knowledge? (For example, does he agree with the traditional analysis that says knowledge is justified true belief, or do his comments fit better with some other analysis of knowledge?)
2. Rumsfeld’s comments here suggest, but do not explicitly mention, a fourth category, unknown knowns. Elaborate on the properties of this category and give two examples of unknown knowns that may have played an important role in foreign policy decisions or the recent election.
Extra credit: Extend the analysis a level. For example, are there unknown known unknowns (things that we, somehow, don’t know that we know are unknowns)? Work out all the options at this level of analysis, then suggest the conditions (of inattention, debauchery, willful ignorance, senility, etc.) that might account for each sort of knowledge.
Dr. Free-Ride, you are evil! Now I’m going to spend all day thinking about epistomology and trying to dig out my notes from that class instead of, you know, answering phones and things.
Well, I have been talking about how much I miss school….
No, no. When I don’t think about what Rumsfeld said I kind of understand what he was possibly driving at. When I start thinking about it in more detail my head starts to hurt and I see spots…I’ll leave that kind of analysis to the professionals!
Fingers-in-ears “la-la-la” I don’t know I know anything!
His problem, and the fatal flaw of this entire administration, was leaving off the “things which we think we know, but which are in fact false” category. I’ve got my model, this data must be mistaken.
Hey, no fair, I’m going to be using that poem in a talk tomorrow on the practice of science! It’s a pretty good quote, actually. (Sorry for not actually answering the questions.)
As much as I see the appeal of making fun of Rummy, it is not as if he made up the distinction between known unknowns and unknown unknowns. I learned it from a geophysicist several years earlier. It is a natural way of expressing the difference between things that a model leaves out which you can try to correct for in some crude way and the things that you are not even self-consciously leaving out. So:
1. The distinction seems compatible with any account of knowledge which is compatible with model building science.
2. Unknown knowns would be things that you unwittingly account for in your model of some phenomenon. Although possible in principle, it doesn’t seem like the useful corner of the rubric.
Since I am also procrastinating on grading, I will skip the EC question.
Much as I despise the man, I actually think this quote sums up the intelligence business – almost. As Craig said, the fourth thing isn’t unknown knowns, it’s wrong knowns. Or, as Mark Twain said, it’s not what you don’t know that gets you, it’s what you do know that isn’t so.
But allowing for Rummy’s constitutional inability to believe he could be wrong, in intel you have (a) what you know and (b) what you don’t know and want to know. E.g., (a) they have a division here, and (b) we don’t know what their orders are. There is also (c) – things you just don’t know, and you don’t even know that they exist, e.g., ummm… err… okay, the division commander is crazy. I’m not even sure what an “unknown known” would be … but what bit us in the butt was “knowing” that the division had nukes – when in fact it didn’t.
Wouldn’t an “unknown known” be something that you are aware of, but don’t recognize the significance of, or how it fits into the whole? Kind of like a jigsaw puzzle piece. Or perhaps, in a large organization, an “unknown known” is a piece of information that someone in the organization “knows”, but hasn’t disseminated, or it hasn’t been recognized by someone else as a useful piece of information.
Hmmm, They missed “This is not about that.” a quote from Rummy that wound up in a recent post of mine. It works the same [which is not at all] in any context. Just acting as if things worked and making it stick because you are the boss: that is what I know about Mr. Rumsfeld.
I’ll suggest two more categories of knowledge:
(a) Knowns which one’s underlings must be deliberately deceived about in order ensure one’s underlings remain loyal and patriotic.
(b) Knowns which one knows to be false, but which one must treat as true in order to keep one’s underlings deceived in pursuit of (a) …
I never did understand why Rummy was so widely vilified for seemed to me to be a reasonable analysis. Can’t be bothered with (1) because it requires too much research in epistemology, or the second part of (2) because it requires some knowledge of US politics which I do not possess. But for extra credit….
The key to this is the way in which “we” is being used. Did Rumsfeld mean it to be used such that each of us individually was saying, for instance, “things I know I know” (such that the sum of these positions could be described as “things we know we know”. Or did he mean it to apply collectively; “things that it is generally known within this group that at least one person within the group knows”. This is (IMHO) a more plausible analysis, since it is a common situation; for instance, in an office setting there is one person who knows how the computer network works and everyone else knows he/she knows this, without themselves knowing how it works.
In (2) unknown knowns are things we don’t know we know. Things I don’t know I know are probably things that I learned once, have forgotten about such that I were asked I would say I don’t know them, but which swim back up out of the unconsciousness when required. But things WE don’t know WE know might also be things that someone in the group does know, but the rest of the group aren’t generally aware of this fact.
I’m not sure that the extra level of analysis is sustainable in the first (summative) sense. But it works to some extent making use of the collective sense (and without resorting to coma states and so on, which may provide alternative analyses which I have not yet explored).
Unknown known knowns – things that we don’t know we know we know. I know x and I know I know it. You also know x and you know you know it. But we are each unaware of the other’s position of knowing we know it (ie collective at level 2: things that we don’t know, collectively, that we know we know individually). We might, for instance, be competing scientists who are both about to publish the same results at the same time, whilst each thinking that the other has not yet correctly made the interesting deduction from the data which is staring us in the face.
Known known knowns – things that we know we know we know. Each scientist has had the eureka moment, and each knows that the other has.
Unknown unknown knowns – things that we don’t know we don’t know we know. I learned something once, have forgotten about it, but would in fact recall it from the unconscious if prompted. You are in the same position. But we are mutually unaware of having forgotten (although we might each know that the other once knew, perhaps if we were in the same class at school)
Known known unknowns – things we know we know we don’t know. I know I don’t know x. You know you don’t know x. We both know that we are equally ignorant and probably up a gum-tree without a paddle if x is something that our group is supposed to know.
Unknown known unknowns – things we don’t know we know we don’t know. I know I don’t know x. You know you don’t know x. But we are both in a state of blissful ignorance for the time being, until external events mean that the team needs to demonstrate its knowledge of x.
Known unknown knowns – things we know we don’t know we know. I know x but am not aware I know it. You know x but are not aware you know it. However, I know that you know x, and you know that I know x. This is pushing the definition of “know” somewhat, but works if we were both in the same chemistry class at school and can recall learning (say) the atomic weight of iodine, such that we assume the other one remembers this fact (plausibly “assume” = “know”, because we are right) whilst believing that we ourselves have forgotten it, incorrectly because if asked to take a wild guess we would in fact dredge up the correct answer from our unconscious.
Unknown unknown unknowns. – things we don’t know we don’t know we don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know x (probably because I think I do, but I am wrong). You ditto. But I believe, incorrectly, that you DO know that you are wrong (but just won’t admit it), and vice versa.
Known unknown unknown – things we know we don’t know we don’t know. Becoming less coherent. I don’t know I don’t know x (because I think I do, but I am wrong). You are in the same position. I can’t really “know” you are in this position, even if we have different wrong explanations for the same thing. But he could know we are both in this position, perhaps because he has just discovered the right explanation. So we collectively know; not too unreasonable if we are a team.
I am supposed to be doing something else. I am not going to go back and re-read this for fear that the something else will fade away entirely. I hope you will mark this (heh – I’m hoping for detailed comments, or just an A-grade) and that I get a lot of credit for effort at least.
please give the science quiz………..
i like it ….
because it so very fun to quiz that science quiz…..
please give it