Vervaeke's 4 Ps of Knowledge

• 2025-07-21
• Gemini:

Of course. Here is a summary of John Vervaeke’s “4 P’s of Knowing,” a central framework from his series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

Vervaeke proposes this model to counter the modern tendency to reduce all knowledge to a single type: facts. He argues that knowing is a multi-layered, embodied process. The 4 P’s are four distinct but deeply interconnected kinds of knowing.

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The Four Kinds of Knowing

The four types are Propositional, Procedural, Perspectival, and Participatory. They are best understood as a nested hierarchy, with each level grounding the one above it.

1. Propositional Knowing: Knowing That

This is the most commonly understood form of knowledge. It consists of facts, theories, and statements that can be held as beliefs and declared to be true or false.

• Nature: Abstract, explicit, and factual. It is knowledge that you can write down or state in a sentence.

• Examples:

  • Knowing that London is the capital of the United Kingdom.
  • Knowing that E=mc2.
  • Knowing that the Earth is the third planet from the Sun.

• Limitation: On its own, propositional knowledge can be inert. You can know all the facts about how to swim without actually knowing how to swim.

2. Procedural Knowing: Knowing How

This is knowledge as a skill or ability. It is the capacity to perform a sequence of actions fluently to achieve a goal.

• Nature: Embodied, implicit, and performance-based. It is a skill you demonstrate through action.
• Examples:
  • Knowing how to ride a bicycle.
  • Knowing how to play a musical instrument.
  • Knowing how to speak a language.
• Relationship: Procedural knowing gives context and utility to propositional knowing. The procedures of scientific experimentation, for example, are what allow us to generate reliable propositions (facts).

3. Perspectival Knowing: Knowing What It’s Like

This is the knowledge of what it is like to be a particular knower in a particular state or situation. It is about your point of view, your field of awareness, and what is relevant or salient to you.

• Nature: Situational, subjective, and contextual. It shapes what you notice and care about. Vervaeke calls this your “salience landscape”.
• Examples:
  • Knowing what it’s like to be a parent, which makes certain facts and skills immediately relevant that were not before.
  • Knowing what it’s like to feel grief or joy.
  • An expert chess player’s perspective, where they see the board in terms of threats and opportunities invisible to a novice.
• Relationship: Your perspective organises your skills (procedural) and prioritises which facts (propositional) matter to you.

4. Participatory Knowing: Knowing by Being

This is the most fundamental form of knowing. It is about the shared identity and reality between the knower and the known. You are transformed by the act of knowing, conforming yourself to a particular reality.

• Nature: Foundational, identity-shaping, and transformational. It involves deep identification and a mutual shaping process.
• Examples:
  • Knowing someone by being in a loving relationship with them. You and the other person are co-creating a shared reality, and your identity is partially constituted by that relationship.
  • Being a citizen of a country. Your identity is shaped by participating in its culture, language, and social structures.
  • A master craftsperson’s relationship with their material. They don’t just act on the wood; they feel what the wood “wants” to become. There is a deep structural and functional coupling between them and their craft.
• Relationship: This is the ground of all the other forms of knowing. Your identity (participatory) determines your point of view (perspectival), which organises your skills (procedural), which allows you to test and use facts (propositional).

The Interrelationship and Why It Matters

Vervaeke argues that the 4 P’s are not separate options but a deeply integrated system. The model flows from the bottom up:

Participatory → Perspectival → Procedural → Propositional

Our modern culture has over-emphasised propositional knowing, treating it as the only “real” knowledge. This creates a disconnect from the embodied, lived, and transformational aspects of knowing, which Vervaeke argues is a major contributor to the “meaning crisis”.

By understanding knowledge through all 4 P’s, we get a much richer picture. Wisdom, in this framework, is not just possessing many facts, but the dynamic integration of all four kinds of knowing to skilfully and appropriately realise relevance and live a flourishing life.

Summary Table

The ‘P’	Type of Knowing	Description	Example
Propositional	Knowing That	Abstract facts, beliefs, and statements.	”Paris is the capital of France.”
Procedural	Knowing How	Embodied skills and abilities.	Riding a bicycle.
Perspectival	Knowing What It’s Like	The knower’s point of view and salience landscape.	An expert’s view of a situation.
Participatory	Knowing by Being	Identity-level knowing through co-shaping with reality.	Being in a loving relationship.

The tyranny of the propositional