[enLight]

This is an essay I wrote for my philosophy class. Let me know what you think! Do you agree or disargee?

The Nature of Knowledge

Knowledge, by definition to most people, is a collection of facts that are considered true. But how does one acquire knowledge? Most people would say that all knowledge is gained through perception: the five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and scent. But then how does one explain natural instinct that humans are born with or child prodigies that can do things no other child their age can? Does knowledge come from the outside through perception or does it come from the inside through the mind? These are pressing questions that inevitably lead to the questioning of our very reality. Do we recognize reality through observation or do we construct it to fit our own version of knowledge?

To say that knowledge comes completely from the inside or the outside would be immature. Instinct, belief in God, and the conscious that directs everyone’s behaviors are all methods of knowledge that come from the inside. There is no physical perception to learn them. They are inferred through thinking and reasoning. On the other hand, we have knowledge like the sky is blue, that garbage smells bad and that fire is hot – all knowledge that can only be discerned through perception of the outside.

Since both inside and outside methods are used to achieve knowledge, what really matters is our relationship with knowledge. Some would say that humans merely recognize or observe the world through the medium of knowledge, as if it were some kind of sovereign entity that we acquire pieces from. But humans and knowledge are not two separate bodies independent of each other. Knowledge cannot exist if there is no being to acknowledge it. It is similar to the old maxim: if a tree falls in a distant forest and no one can hear it, does it make a sound? If knowledge exists and nothing can obtain or perceive it, does it really exist?

While this concept may verge on the level of abstractness, the main point to understand is that knowledge is not separate from, but instead part of, humankind. Knowledge is an invention of the human mind, it is how we organize and comprehend everything we regard as the truth. That is why knowledge is not a constant notion; it is always relative and always subject to change. So in a way, humans construct reality according to what they consider the truth. A simple example is that there was a time when general human knowledge believed that the Earth was flat. But as discoveries were made that knowledge changed.

A common question that is asked at this point is: If the Earth is round, and that is true no matter what humans believe, then wouldn’t knowledge be in fact a constant? But there is a vast difference between human knowledge and the truth. Scientific, religious and philosophical human knowledge is subject to change at any moment. If the concept of truth is constant, then why would knowledge (which is relative) be considered one-and-the-same? Theoretically it cannot.

When people come to this realization, the result is a very unsettling feeling – to finally understand that everything we perceive to be true could be absolutely wrong and that there is no humanly possible physical or mental process to escape this. The ultimate irony is that truth, which humans so passionately pursue, seems impossible to acquire. The reason for this is that we have no objective truth to compare our knowledge to. We are human and can only understand things on a human level. Even if there was an objective truth, we could only perceive it through the same means with which we gain knowledge, which would defeat the purpose of even comparing it to knowledge in the first place.

It would appear now, that humans are doomed to live a life of ignorance, humble to the fact that we will never ever positively understand the truth of the nature of reality. So what are we to do? What is our purpose in life? These are questions that the greatest human minds have contemplated and still even after thousands of years of human existence, we have not arrived at a definite answer. What can be acknowledged, on a more optimistic note, is that at least humans have understood the bizarre relationship between human knowledge and truth. Maybe some day humans will ascend to an elevated level of spiritual and intellectual understanding of reality, or maybe such a state exists after death. All we can really do at this point is the same thing humans have been doing since day one: keep on thinking and questioning.

[whl626]

As long as what we can define as knowledge is that we only see part of the facet of things . Even one day scientists can come up with some explanations from the DNA about how brain works. I believe it is not the source of how knowledge comes about anyway

[Comrade Ogilvy]

All we can really do at this point is the same thing humans have been doing since day one: keep on thinking and questioning.

Exactly!

"When you are finished changing, you are finished"
- Benjamin Franklin

I think the biggest obstacle in human development is when we believe we have all the answers, the wisest people are usually the ones who believe they are the biggest fools.