Really knowing someone

As a philosopher, David Matheson asks a lot of questions, the most recent of which concerns the knowledge of persons.

The Brown University scholar, who joined Carleton’s department of philosophy as an assistant professor last July, says there hasn’t been a lot of research on this subject and he hopes to narrow the gap.

Matheson explains that one can know a lot about a person, but that this doesn’t necessarily add up to knowing the person. “I know a lot about our present Queen, for example,” he notes, “but it would be bizarre of me to claim to know her, as I might claim to know one of my close acquaintances. So what makes for the relevant difference?” The question bears important connections, he thinks, to various issues in his areas of specialization, which include privacy, human dignity, testimony, and social epistemology.

It’s easy to get the sense that life in our current society, with its wealth of informational networking technologies such as email and the Internet, has dramatically increased our knowledge of persons, and thereby the valuable interpersonal relationships typically carry. But Matheson is not so convinced. There’s a real danger, he thinks, that life in the networked society might be bringing with it a dramatic rise in such things as our mere knowledge of information about persons to the exclusion of the knowledge of persons themselves. “If we fail to be sensitive to the distinctive nature and worth of the knowledge of persons,” as he puts it, “the expansion of our knowledge about persons might lead us to become increasingly blinded to persons themselves.”

Students will have a chance to learn more about Matheson’s philosophical views and queries this year: In addition to a senior seminar on the knowledge of persons in the Winter Term (PHIL 4230), he will be teaching Critical Thinking in the Fall Term (PHIL 2003) and a full-year course in the History of Philosophy (PHIL 1600).