Hi, I can't 'set you straight' on your question but the following came to mind. You could ask a meteorologist what the weather on March 3 2012, was like. But, on receiving a truthful reply, you would not be "in a position to know" that weather from personal experience. Instead, you would have access to what might be called hard facts. You would have no personal, empirical experience of the weather on that date. It would not be necessary for the provider of the facts to have experience (He might have been out of the country at that time, and simply checked the data to ensure a reply to your enquiry.)  Therefore you would be, in an indirect way, "in a position to know" what the weather was like. However, the new factual knowledge that you have is not founded on your observation of the world, but on the experience of someone else. Bert