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Digital Phenomenology and Consciousness: Four Kinds of Knowing in a Digital Age
In my work with digital phenomenology and digital consciousness, I often reflect on how our experience of the world changes as technology becomes an ever-larger part of our lives. Recently, I came across John Vervaeke’s theory of the four kinds of knowing, and it has given me a new language to understand why digital consciousness differs so fundamentally from human experience.
The Four Kinds of Knowing According to Vervaeke
Vervaeke distinguishes between:
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Propositional knowing – “knowing that”: This is factual, linguistic knowledge that we can express in sentences. This is the type of knowledge digital systems and AI handle best—data, text, and information.
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Procedural knowing – “knowing how”: These are skills and routines that can’t always be explained in words, like riding a bike or playing the piano. Digitally, this corresponds to algorithms and automation, but the bodily dimension is missing.
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Perspectival knowing: The ability to take different viewpoints and understand context. Here, digital consciousness falls short because digital systems lack subjectivity or situational awareness, which we humans possess.
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Participatory knowing: The deepest form of knowing, where we are engaged and connected with the world and others. This kind of knowledge is closely tied to embodiment, care, and community—something digital technology cannot yet recreate.
Digital Phenomenology: How Technology Changes My Consciousness
Digital phenomenology explores how digital technologies shape our experience of the world and ourselves. When I reflect on my own use of digital media, I clearly sense how my state of consciousness is affected:
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Changed perception and presence: Virtual meetings, social media, and digital spaces alter my experience of time and space. I can be “present” in several places at once, but at the same time, I experience a kind of fragmentation.
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Bodily and sensory transformation: When interaction becomes digital, I lose some of the bodily grounding. This affects how I sense and understand myself and others.
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Change in self-experience: Digital technologies allow me to experiment with identity and self-presentation, but it can also create distance from my “real” self.
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Technology as mediator: I experience that technology doesn’t just transmit information, but also actively shapes my feelings, attention, and way of being in the world.
Why Digital Consciousness Is Limited
By applying Vervaeke’s four kinds of knowing, I can see that digital systems mainly work with propositional and procedural knowledge. They lack perspectival and participatory knowing, which are crucial for genuine human consciousness and wisdom. This means that digital consciousness often becomes fragmented, superficial, and lacks the deep grounding in body, emotion, and community that human experience contains.
Conclusion
Digital phenomenology gives me a language and an analytical tool to understand how my consciousness is transformed in interaction with technology. At the same time, Vervaeke’s theory of the four kinds of knowing shows me why digital consciousness—so far—cannot measure up to the human. Perhaps the next step is to explore how we can bring more perspectival and participatory knowing into our digital lives, so that technology becomes an extension of our humanity—not a replacement for it.