knower

A knower is a person or agent who has knowledge or awareness of something. In ordinary usage, the term refers to someone who possesses information about a fact, event, or proposition. The word derives from the verb know plus the English agent suffix -er.

In philosophy, the knower is the epistemic subject whose mental state—belief, justification, and truth—grounds knowledge claims. Analyses of knowledge often examine what makes someone a knower and what counts as knowing something. The distinction between being a knower and merely believing or being informed is central to discussions of justification and skepticism, such as the Gettier problem.

Religious and spiritual traditions also use the idea of a knower. In Hindu philosophy, a jnani or knower refers to one who has realized the true nature of reality, such as the self or Brahman. In some traditions, God is described as “the Knower” or “the All-Knower,” emphasizing perfect and comprehensive knowledge.

In logic and cognitive science, knower is formalized in epistemic logic using operators like K_i phi to denote “agent i knows that phi.” This formalism helps model knowledge distribution, inference, and information sharing in multi-agent systems.

Related topics include knowledge, epistemology, justified true belief, the Gettier problem, and epistemic logic.