2025-05-31 ways of knowing

Different ways of knowing: your key out of the "am I valid" jail.

written by: Brick
first posted: May 31, 2025
Audience: whoever wants to look at or know things differently, learn differently, learn to trust themselves, or help someone(s) else do that.
FYI: This one's a little academic. I cite some sources. Don't get put off by that, please. It's to let you know I'm not talking out of my ass.

I experience this thing -- is it real? Is this a thing? What's the word for my experience?
How do I know this is real? Is there evidence? Is there proof? Is there an external, observable, objective "real" thing that shows others this is true?
Am I valid?

Quick disclaimers: Evidence is awesome. Research is awesome. The scientific method is critical to societal shared knowledge in a lot of ways. It's very cool and good to look for evidence. Shared language is a way to connect with others as a shortcut for conversation, as is also rad.

Before I dive in, I'll let you know I am writing this from these positionalities:

I live in the United States, an industrialized Western colonial power.
I am brown, queer, trans, crazy, fat, and AuDHD. I (Brick) specifically am a trans man.
I have an advanced degree.
I am plural.
I am nonhuman.

Let's back up. How do you know that you know something? How do you know that something is true? How do you know that whoever/s you're talking to also knows that the thing you know is true... is true? How do you know what truth is? I can't predict how you(s) might answer that question. I don't know who you are, where you're from, what your lived experiences are, or why you're even reading this. What I can say based on my own lived experience is that when people start arguing about what's real or true, they reach for: rationalism, empiricism, and logic.

Now, all of those things are great. Those ways of knowing are great for doing research, experimentation, scientific inquiry, policy making, policy analysis, medical diagnoses, and all kinds of stuff that needs to be observable and generalizable.

Is your personal, internal, subjective experience something that needs to be observable and generalizable? Is it being used to prescribe medicine? Write policy? Apply for a grant? Build a space ship? Write code? I really hope not. So why would you look solely at rationalism, empiricism, and logic when trying to understand your own experiences and relate to others?

What are ways of knowing?

There isn't a short and sweet one sentence way to summarize this. So here are a few that do. Ways of knowing are...

Interactive processes by which knowledge is created, organized, used, and reproduced (Orlove et al, 2023)
Systems beyond facts and methods that characterize knowledge, including the institutions, practices, and values that inform it (Stuckey, 2009)
Coherent, dynamic sets of practices, values and worldviews that people adapt to their ever-changing realities (Orlove et al, 2023)

An aside for Indigenous Knowledges

Since I can't talk about ways of knowing without including indigenous knowledges:
Indigenous knowledges (yes, plural) are diverse, sourced and made sense of in their specific cultures, holistic, and subjective (Tassell-Matamua, 2025). They are place-bound created by the web of community and networks of relational meaning-making (Arjaliès and Banerjee, 2024). They encompass (Cadman et al., 2023):

All cultural and spatial contexts that make up the ways people understand and interact with the world
All laws, morals, and ethics that guide proper conduct
The social, legal, and economic institutions that guide the way communities and societies operate, also called governance value.
Very likely more that I haven't listed, because I'm not Indigenous and don't actually embody or have access to or any understanding of Indigenous knowledges. No Indigenous communities have taught me, and even if they did, I didn't grow up with them, so there's a lot that's not going to be intelligible to me anyway.

Here are a couple to get you started learning more:

Notice how in all of those explanations, including my aside about Indigenous Knowledges, "an external objective thing you can measure" is not at the core of any of them. Neither is "neutral." Notice how almost all of them include things like values, relationality to others, community, and things you do.

Rationalism, empiricism, and logic are all ways of knowing, but they're not the only ones. Deciding that they are the only ones is a great way to maintain the (oppressive) power of those who have access to the institutions, practices, and values that inform it, and those who benefit from that. But what about experiences and truths that can't be explained neatly in words or numbers? What about the abstract, squishy relational stuff that you can't calculate or repeatably prove? What about the stuff that's going on in your head, in your body, in your memories and your life history?

Different ways of knowing

(Title drop, roll credits.) That's what you call the ways of knowing that uphold and reproduce power structures. At least, that's the working definition I'll use for now. Let me know if you find a better one.

Yet another disclaimer: rationalism, empiricism, and logic being institutions that uphold power doesn't make them "inherently bad." See previous disclaimer about building spaceships.

Here are some other terms I'm going to use that I learned from science education research:

Cognitive: your brain reasoning out the thing.
Affective: your feelings, values, and emotions about the thing.
Spiritual: your woo-woo learnings about the thing.
Somatic: what you feel in your body or experience subconsciously about the thing.
Imaginal: what happens in your imagination about the thing. Play is one example.

Have you ever asked someone if a certain word or term applies to you, and gotten the response, "well, you're the only one who would really know." There's a good reason for that. Whoever responded knows the intellectual, agreed upon meaning of the word cognitively, but they have no way of knowing how your experience relates to that word. They did not experience your emotions, physical feelings, unconsciousness realizations, imaginings, relationship to morals and ethics, or anything that is subjective to you when you encountered the word.

Here's a more grounded example.

How do I know it's hot outside? I know because I stepped outside earlier and felt uncomfortable heat on my skin. I also know because when I checked the weather app on my phone, it told me that the high would be 86 degrees Fahrenheit. I know from past experience that my house will become uncomfortably hot if I don't take climate control measures when it is that temperature or higher.

The objective measure of the temperature outside was 86 at the hottest point. Now people who don't live in my house or in my area or have my body might say, "hey, you're a wimp, that's not that hot! Where I live, a hot day is like, 95 or 100+!" I would say, "damn, that's really hot. And where I am right now, in my current environment, in my body, in these material conditions, 86 is hot."

I don't decide it's hot only based on the number (cognitive knowledge). I have to factor in:

I feel physically uncomfortable at that temperature (Somatic).
I can predict how I’m going to feel an act when I’m uncomfortable (imaginal).
I feel shitty when I’m at that temperature. Therefore I won’t be able to do what I want or need to do (affective).
My house gets stiflingly hot at that temperature (Somatic).
My house is old and badly insulated (Cognitive).
Therefore I need to implement temperature control measures like AC, window shades, fans, and other equipment (taking action based on my knowledge).

It does not matter if you tell me that it is not objectively hot because the number is not as high as it gets where you are. I feel uncomfortably hot. Therefore it is hot. Therefore I do what I need to do to take care of myself when it is hot, regardless of what your criteria of hot happens to be. I do that because I trust myself to know what I have to do to take care of myself in my current context, my body, my location, and my lived experience.

Now let's zoom out to more complicated stuff. If you're reading this, chances are, you're probably plural, alterhuman, nonhuman, otherkin, or know folks who are. You might be queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent (in a way that may or may not be disabling for you), fat, BIPOC, insert experience that is marginalized by the overculture here. So you might also have experience being in the position of asking, "how do I know?" Or you might have encountered others asking, "how do I know?" or, more painfully, "am I valid?"

Only you can know.

What are your emotions about it? How does this align with your values? The experiences of people whose values align with yours? What memories, sensations, or feelings surround it? When you imagine that you might be X thing, what do you imagine and how do you feel about it? Most importantly, how does the answer serve you?

But what about diagnostic criteria?

What is the purpose of diagnostic criteria?

A framework for a clinician to understand what you're experiencing, to guide them on how to help you
A set of words for an insurance company to decide whether or not to pay for said help
A set of words for you to use to find a clinician who can help you
A set of words for you to learn more about treatment modalities, medicines, and other interventions that could help you

What is diagnostic criteria not for?

Learning more about the experiences of the thing
Learning from the communities and folks who experience the thing
Applying your learnings to your own life to see if it helps you

So I reiterate this question: how does the answer serve you?

But what about co-opting language that people don't want you to?

That's a very context specific thing. I cannot, nor should I, try to give you an easy answer. I do feel confident giving you some questions to start with, so you can factor in your context to find an answer.

Does adopting that language harm any individual, community, or social movement? Material harm? A different kind of harm? (There's a very real possibility that the answer is "yes," so take that seriously.)
Who is using this language? What are their politics? Their values? Do they align with yours? What is their relationship with this language?
Are there folks pushing back on you using this language? Who are they? What are their politics? Their values? Do they align with yours? What is the nature of the pushback? Do they use this language to describe themselves or not?
If you find that these questions don't seem to fit your context, why do you think that is?

But getting input from others is helpful.

Of course it is, because ways of knowing are relational. That doesn't mean you have to give up your agency or your trust in yourself to relate to others.

Here are some ways to invite relational learning from others without sacrificing your agency. Use your own words, of course.

I'm wondering about X and if it might apply to me. Can folks tell me about their experiences with that?
I had X happen to me earlier and I'm having (feeling/emotion/somatic response/whatever). I need help making sense of X and reconciling it with what I know about myself/ves already.
Whenever I see/hear (something) I have (somatic response). Have other folks experienced it? How did you make sense of it?

Understanding your own experiences is not about fitting it into objective, observable, measurable criteria. It's about figuring out what kinds of frameworks, language, practices, and institutions serve you in understanding your own experiences.

Trust yourself

It doesn't have to be rational, empirical, or logical to be real. It doesn't have to check all the boxes. It doesn't have to be observable or measurable.

Citations

Arjaliès, Diane‐Laure, and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee. “Let’s Go to the Land Instead’: Indigenous Perspectives on Biodiversity and the Possibilities of Regenerative Capital.” Journal of Management Studies, October 3, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13141.
Cadman, Rachael, Alanna Syliboy, Michelle Saunders, Shelley Denny, Mary Denniston, Eleanor Barry, Breanna Bishop, Shannon Landovskis, and Megan Bailey. “Using Positionality and Reflexivity to Support Equity in partnership‐Driven Research.” Conservation Biology 38, no. 6 (May 1, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14396.
Cadman, Rachael, Megan Dicker, Mary Denniston, Paul McCarney, Rodd Laing, Eric C.J. Oliver, and Megan Bailey. “Using the Framework Method to Support Collaborative and Cross-Cultural Qualitative Data Analysis.” FACETS 8 (January 1, 2023): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2022-0147.
Orlove, Ben, Pasang Sherpa, Neil Dawson, Ibidun Adelekan, Wilfredo Alangui, Rosario Carmona, Deborah Coen, et al. “Placing Diverse Knowledge Systems at the Core of Transformative Climate Research.” Ambio 52, no. 9 (April 27, 2023): 1431–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-023-01857-w.
Stuckey, Heather L. “Creative Expression as a Way of Knowing in Diabetes Adult Health Education.” Adult Education Quarterly 60, no. 1 (August 19, 2009): 46–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713609334139.
Tassell-Matamua, Natasha. "Indigenous knowledges. What they are and why they matter." Explore 21, no. 3 (March 5, 2025). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2025.103144.

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