Know – directly perceived; immediate gnosis.

A friend is discovered to have lied. Your response: “I knew it!”

Directly perceived – “I have known her” – to have sexual intercourse with.

In each case the knowing is direct, immediate, incontrovertible.

In the Western tradition, the process of coming to knowledge may prevent the possibility of knowing.

In the Eastern tradition, knowing implies satori, enlightenment.

Four ways of knowing: Sensing and Thinking – the obvious and accepted ones; Imagination and Intuition – the less obvious and often unaccepted ways of knowing.

And then there is Emotion – not a way of knowing in itself, but rather the proof that one knows.

Creation – that which is known

Consciousness – That which comes to know

Decartes might have been closer to the truth if he had declared, “I know, therefore I am”. But of course, he couldn’t, because he didn’t know. He kept thinking and that prevented him from knowing in any other way.

These all seem to be “modal” verbs — basically, the equivalent of shorthand for a level of certainty about information — except that they are not on a numerical scale per se, but rather on a scale of different modes (hence “modal”) of acquired knowledge. For example: In this vein, “I think” would mean that the following information arises from “thought processes”.

:) nmw

As well, “clearly” is a word that *certainly* precedes some logic that is often anything but clear, even (especially) to the speaker. :)