The bisection is accomplished in the following way: saber is used when one wishes to talk about the retinue of accumulated facts - do you know which city is the capital of Chile? Is 7/24 greater than 15/47?
Conocer, meanwhile, indicates familiarity with another person. Do you know Reg Lightwriter?
My Spanish isn't yet advanced enough to have deduced which one I should use when I'm thinking about or discussing my own internal states: 'this much I am aware of....' Is it an established fact, or a question of knowing the self?
I'm certain I mentioned before that the Spanish also have two verbs which both translate as 'to be' - one (ser) emphasising that which is immutable; the other (estar) representing that which is transient. Again, my Spanish isn't yet at a level to answer the question, but is it permanent or transient when I declare that, for example, I am a person who hates music? Or loves a particular woman?
Regardless the Spanish way of constructing verbs, can the more general point be made that there is are psychological mechanisms which are triggered when language is left 'open' in this way?
If it is natural from a very young age that I state that my thoughts are subject to revision (estar) as opposed to recalcitrant (ser), would I hence be more willing to amend my point of view in the light of new evidence? Would regarding my internal states as mere fluctuations - I feel as though I hate music today, but that might change tomorrow - be healthier and more liberating than asserting that what stands now must stand forever?
How much energy do we expend holding onto views whose veracity seems to be receding with every passing hour? What psychological constructions do we build to support ideas whose time has come and gone - not a priori, but placed there arbitrarily? It is better, surely, to declare that our stances are estar. In so doing, we move a step further on the long, never-ending road marked freedom.
