Topics Knowledge

Question Bishop Fulton J. Sheen once told a story that one of his philosophy professors asked, "What is time?" Young Mr. Sheen had responded that he knew what it is but wasn't sure he could explain it, to which the professor responded, "If you cannot explain it then you do not know what it is." Is it or is it not possible to know what something is and not be able to express it in language?

Accepted:
September 13, 2006

Comments

This is not an easy question to answer, in part because it's not clear what it means 'to know what something is'. Still, various sensations may be candidates for things we know better than we can describe, sensations like headaches, the taste of pineapple, or the smell of rotten eggs. The reason is that we know what sensations are like by having them, not by having them described to us. It may seem harder to see how we could know what something like time is better than we can say, since time is not an experience. But there probably are things other than experiences that that we can know better than we can say. For example, I may be better at recognising a person in a crowd than in describing her.