我最近为BBC的一个播客接受了说唱歌手兼作家德萨(Dessa)的采访。每当我接受面试时，我都喜欢事先对面试官做一些调查，了解他们的个性、兴趣和风格。在这种情况下，这样做需要我沉浸在Dessa的音乐中，我发现它非常强大和能引起共鸣。While listening to a particularly riveting piece called “Velodrome,” I was suddenly struck by the thought that listening to this piece is philosophically enlightening.

I felt that I came to know something that I hadn’t known before listening to it. True, the lyrics are philosophical—they’re about determinism, and they reference the medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas (not surprisingly, Dessa was a philosophy major in university). But that isn’t why I came away from the song with the deep sense that I gained some new philosophical knowledge from it.

我完全不知所措。如果有人问我这首歌教会了我什么，我会无语。一首歌怎么能增加我的哲学知识?我想我现在对音乐如何给我们带来知识有了初步的了解。我要说的东西很难说清楚，我担心它听起来像最糟糕的那种神秘的胡言乱语。不过，我还是要试一试。

Mostly, when people talk about knowledge they’re concerned with what philosophers call “propositional knowledge.”Propositional knowledge is knowledge offacts, and it can be clearly articulated in language. Knowing that Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system is an example of propositional knowledge. And it can be expressed precisely by the sentence “Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system.”

The knowledge that I’ve acquired from listening to “Velodrome” isn’t propositional knowledge. The song didn’t present me with any new facts, and the knowledge that it gave me can’t be expressed in sentences. “Velodrome” gave me a new experience of the world around me. It gave me newexperiential knowledge.

We usually acquire experiential knowledge of things by coming into contact with them. The first time you taste chocolate, you gain experiential knowledge of the taste of chocolate. After tasting it, youknow巧克力是什么味道，即使你无法用语言表达。如果一个来自遥远星球的外星人问你巧克力到底是什么味道，你根本不知道该说什么。你当然知道，但你不能把你的知识用语言表达出来。

Another important distinction between the two kinds of knowledge is that propositional knowledge requires what philosophers calljustification. A justified claim is one for which there is good evidence. The claim that Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system counts as knowledge because it’s justified by astronomical observations. But experiential knowledge doesn’t need justification. It’s self-justifying. If you ask me how I know that I’m having a certain experience—say, the experience of a chocolatey taste on my tongue—all that I can reasonably say to you is “I know because that’s my experience!”

Experiential knowledge is a two-way street. Experience gives us access to certain features of the world, but in experiencing these things we ourselves are modified by them. Experiences “make an impression” on us, quite literally by altering the neural connections in our brains. And these changes affect our capacity for further experiences. That’s why (for example) human relationships can have such a powerful effect, for good or for ill. A traumatic relationship—say, betrayal by a loved one—may change a person by sensitizing themto aspects of human behavior that otherwise wouldn’t have been on their radar.

现在，想象有一种装置可以让人们适应世界的某些方面。It enables them to experience familiar things in unfamiliar ways by adjusting their sensitivities rather than presenting them with newthings, and enlarges their stock of experiential knowledge by making them receptive to features of the world that were previously inaccessible or accessible only with difficulty. If such a device existed, would you use it? Of course, you would! In fact, the device exists, and you already use it. The device is called “music.”

Music gives us knowledge by deepening and expanding our capacity for experience. It somehow opens new channels in our mind, giving us access to features of the world that were previously inaccessible. The knowledge gained from music isn’t something that can be put into words (as the great jazz musician Thelonious Monk once remarked, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture”). And it’s pointless to demand justification for it (ask me how I know that “Velodrome” has given me new knowledge, all that I can say is “I just know”).

Even though I can’t explain how music leaves me with understandings that I didn’t have before, it’s plain to me that it gives me knowledge that’s different from but every bit as significant as, and almost certainly more impactful than, the knowledge that I glean from books, lectures, or arid reasoning from premises to conclusions.