Captain Obvious, individual knowledge, common knowledge and social relationships
A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.
“The Emperor is naked,” he said.
“Fool!” his father reprimanded, running after him. “Don’t talk nonsense!” He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy’s remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:
“The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It’s true!”
The Emperor’s New Clothes, by Hans Christian Anderson
Some people might call the boy Captain Obvious, because he wasn’t telling anyone anything they didn’t already know. But what that boy did changed the state of knowledge of the crowd, because from that moment on, everyone knew that everyone else knew that the emperor was naked. And that transition allowed them to challenge the emperor’s dominance in a way that they couldn’t individually — with individual knowledge.
In individual knowledge, A knows X and B knows X.
In common knowledge, A knows X and B knows X, and A knows that B knows X, and B knows that A knows X, and A knows that B knows that A knows X, and so on, ad infinitum.
Common knowledge must be differentiated from individual knowledge because of its huge impacts on social relationships. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tells us:
Common knowledge is a phenomenon which underwrites much of social life. In order to communicate or otherwise coordinate their behavior successfully, individuals typically require mutual or common understandings or background knowledge. Indeed, if a particular interaction results in “failure”, the usual explanation for this is that the agents involved did not have the common knowledge that would have resulted in success. If a married couple are separated in a department store, they stand a good chance of finding one another because their common knowledge of each others’ tastes and experiences leads them each to look for the other in a part of the store both know that both would tend to frequent. Since the spouses both love cappuccino, each expects the other to go to the coffee bar, and they find one another. But in a less happy case, if a pedestrian causes a minor traffic jam by crossing against a red light, she explains her mistake as the result of her not noticing, and therefore not knowing, the status of the traffic signal that all the motorists knew. The spouses coordinate successfully given their common knowledge, while the pedestrian and the motorists miscoordinate as the result of a breakdown in common knowledge.
Common knowledge also applies to relationship types, and can maintain or nullify them depending on whether they are conflicting or not and if the individuals involved have a common knowledge of the conflict existing between the relationship type individual knowledge tells them they are in.
Another illustration of common knowledge in a social interaction together with an interpretation can be found on the common knowledge page of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The clumsy waiter:
A waiter serving dinner slips, and spills gravy on a guest’s white silk evening gown. The guest glares at the waiter, and the waiter declares “I’m sorry. It was my fault.” Why did the waiter say that he was at fault? He knew that he was at fault, and he knew from the guest’s angry expression that she knew he was at fault. However, the sorry waiter wanted assurance that the guest knew that he knew he was at fault. By saying openly that he was at fault, the waiter knew that the guest knew what he wanted her to know, namely, that he knew he was at fault.
Obviously, being Captain Obvious can be quite important. Maybe there is still hope for him to become a superhero.
Resources:
Steven Pinker - The Stuff of Thought
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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Article writing is more philosophic than descriptive. I have little pain to grasp it.
Very good content of article regarding the common knowledge and applications illustrated by the examples! Common knowledge plays a very important role in the social relationship, attraction of particular things. If two people have the same taste, they can easily make the relational bond. Common sense is very useful for daily life activities.