Personal and Shared Knowledge

We can make a distinction between shared and personal

knowledge

The subject Guide makes a broad distinction between personal and

shared knowledge (page 17). These correspond to the forms of the

verb ‘to know’. Personal knowledge corresponds to ‘I know’ while

shared knowledge corresponds to ‘we know’. TOK is concerned with

both types although more attention might be usefully given to Shared

Knowledge since this type predominates in the IB Diploma

Programme.

Shared Knowledge

Shared knowledge is assembled by a group of people. Most of the

subject disciplines studied in the Diploma Programme are good

examples of shared knowledge. Here are some more examples:

• _Chemistry is shared knowledge. It is a vast discipline built up over

the last few centuries by a large number of people working together.

Individual chemists can contribute to this knowledge base by

performing experiments (although these days the experiments are

usually too complex to be undertaken by individuals). The results of

this research is then written in the form of research papers and

presented to peers to review. If there is enough corroboration of the

results according to standards set by the Chemistry community they

are accepted and become part of the corpus of Chemistry knowledge.

This knowledge is passed on through technical articles written in

specialist Chemistry journals.

• Information technology is also shared knowledge. The Subject

Guide mentions how it is almost certainly impossible for a single

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individual to know how to construct a computer from scratch (page

17). The task of building and delivering a computer to your home is a

group effort involving literally thousands of people cooperating

worldwide. It draws heavily upon the lessons of the past. Knowledge

about building computers is being refined continuously based on

learning from past experience. This past experience is carefully

documented in the relevant academic fields: electronic engineering,

materials science, software design and so on.

• Religion might also be an example of shared knowledge. The system

of practices, concepts, ritual, history, values and interpretations of

sacred texts that make up a Religion is shared by its devotees. These

practices are also documented and transmitted using language. If we

stay with our view of the production of knowledge as being an

attempt to solve a set of problems it might be interesting to think

about to what sort of problem religion is the answer. Perhaps these

are questions that address man’s relation to the Divine.

• Similarly, the integrated worldview of Indigenous Knowledge

Systems also seems to be shared knowledge. These systems deliver

answers to practical or technological problems such as those of

agriculture, social problems such as how to structure society, cultural

problems such as how to generate shared meanings and values

through shared cultural practices and existential problems such as

what is mans relation to nature or the rest of creation. In some sense

these systems of knowledge are the most all-encompassing that we

shall encounter and rightly deserve the label ‘holistic’.

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It is easy to come by other examples.

What these examples all have in common is that they can share their

knowledge through the use of language.

Let us now turn our attention to the group sharing the knowledge. By

participating in the ownership of shared knowledge an individual

belongs to a particular group possessing a particular perspective on

the world. The Subject Guide states that we belong to many such

groups (page 18). Examples are:

• _Family groups

• _Religious groups

• _Groups associated with particular academic fields such as

mathematicians

• _Groups associated with particular views within an academic field

such as neo-classical economists

• _Groups sharing a particular culture

• _Groups sharing particular artistic knowledge such as sculptors

• _Groups sharing particular interests such as fishing

• _Political groups

• _National groups

• _Ethnic groups

An international-minded perspective is one, which acknowledges

two things:

1 Membership of each of these groups might provide a particular

perspective on the world

2 A given problem might be solved using quite different systems of

knowledge.

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The Subject Guide also suggests that shared knowledge is not static.

As our methods of inquiry change and develop so the knowledge they

produce changes. These changes might be gradual but there are

occasions when they might be sudden shifts in thinking. These

sudden shifts could be called paradigm shifts.

Examples of Paradigm shifts

• Shifts in the visual arts from representational Western art of the

19th century to impressionism to cubism to abstract expressionism

• The paradigm shifts in music from the polyphonic music of the

Renaissance to the homophony of the Baroque or the harmonic

paradigm shift between that Romanticism of the 19th century to the

breakdown of tonality and the new paradigm of serialism in the early

20th century.

• _The paradigm shifts in economics from the classical economics of

the 19th and 20th centuries stressing the rationality of the individual to

the behavioural economics of the late 20th and 21st centuries stressing

the systematic irrationality of the individual.

• _The paradigm shift from deterministic Physics of Newton and

Galileo to the indeterminacy of Quantum Theory.

• _The paradigm shift from Freudian views of mental processes to the

modern cognitive perspective.

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Shared knowledge can be summarized by the following diagram:

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Personal Knowledge

Personal knowledge, on the other hand, is not so easily shared. This

might be because it is not so easily put into words. The Subject Guide

stresses that this type of knowledge depends crucially on the

experiences of the individual while shared knowledge does not.

Examples of personal knowledge are:

• Skills and abilities I gain through practice and habituation, such as,

being able to play football, ski, play the piano, dance, paint portraits

and so on

• Knowledge of my own personal biography through my memory.

• Knowledge of myself – how I might react in certain situations

• Knowledge of my mental states including emotions

•Certain (but not all) knowledge required in personal decision-

making processes – why I decided to do X

• Knowledge of other people – what they might be thinking and how

they might react

• Quasi-Systematic knowledge of the world around me gained

through my senses

• Internal maps of practiced acts of sensing – for example making

sense judgments such as those made by an experienced tea taster

• Knowledge that is possible to share in principle but there are good

reasons (say commercial ones) for not sharing it. An example here

might be Antonio Stradivari and his ability to build violins. Perhaps

this sort of knowledge cannot be formulated using language

(digitalized let us say). But it might also be true that Stradivari had a

strong disincentive to share what was, to all intents and purposes,

highly commercially sensitive knowledge.

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These types of knowledge do not naturally lend themselves to being

communicated to others. It may be logically possible for aspects of

this knowledge to be shared but this will generally be difficult for the

items in the personal category.

It should be pointed out at this stage that instructors often use

language to help their students learn a particular skill. So a teacher of

piano might shout out: “wrist up, fourth finger on the Bb”. But the

point here is that these are instructions they are not the same as the

knowledge itself, which is only gained after sustained practice

following the instructions.

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Relations between shared and personal knowledge

The Subject Guide focuses specifically on the two way street between

shared and personal knowledge (page 19). Personal experience,

vision and inspiration can contribute to shared knowledge. Shared

knowledge can help the individual answer the question ‘what does it

mean for me?’ and can give the individual a particular perspective on

the world.

Here are some examples of how personal knowledge can contribute

to shared knowledge:

• Individual research can contribute to advances in the natural

sciences. Paul Dirac’s personal insight led to his discovery of the

equation for the electron. The form of the equation suggested the

existence of a particle that was the counterpart of the electron

bearing a positive charge. But Dirac’s work had to be validated by the

established procedures in theoretical physics first before it was

accepted as knowledge by the scientific community.

• Individual artists can contribute to the development of a genre.

Steve Reich’s accidental discovery of the effect of two recordings of a

violin going out of phase with each other led him to use this

technique in his creation of minimal music. This technique is now

widely used in many different musical genres.

• Mushtaq Mohammed’s development of the reverse sweep stroke in

cricket was a personal idiosyncrasy that has now become a standard

part of the batsman’ armoury thanks, in part, to it being championed

by Bob Woolmer.

• Adam Smith’s perceptive realization that the market was a

mechanism that, under certain conditions, could transform the self-

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interest of producers and consumers into a socially optimal allocator

of scarce resources became a standard method of analysis in Classical

Economics. His insight may have been intuitive and triggered by his

own highly individual style of thinking but it passed the test of peer

scrutiny and is now economic orthodoxy.

But the Subject Guide also states that shared knowledge can

influence the personal (page 19). After all this is at least one of the

objectives of education – that individual students become familiar

with some of the shared knowledge that is on offer in the modern

world. The thinking goes, at least in theory, that having access to this

knowledge is advantageous in living a life and makes one a better

citizen and better able to contribute to the common good.

Here are some examples of shared knowledge influencing personal

knowledge:

• Exposure to current artistic trends might influence the creative

experiments of an individual artist (or musician or novelist)

• Immersion in the biological sciences and medicine might enable one

to understand better ones own medical conditions.

• Access to the fundamentals of psychology might allow an individual

to develop a deeper understanding of his own states of mind.

• Having done a course in ethics or moral theory might allow a

student better insights into her own ethical and moral outlook.

• Reading a history of one’s own nation might give a deeper

understanding of one’s own past.

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It is stated in the Guide (page 19) that, from an individual point of

view, shared knowledge appears in the form of an authority.

Knowledge has authority because it is validated by the procedures

and methods of inquiry of the subject concerned. The individual

without recourse to these same procedures might feel that she has to

take the authority on trust. An example here might be a patient

trusting the judgment of the medical profession.

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