Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Knowledge...

Issue at hand is whether or not we can achieve knowledge...
First of I suppose we need to figure out what we mean by knowledge? If I go by the dictionary's definition of knowledge then knowledge is acquaintance of facts, truths, or principles as from study or investigation.
And I think I will go ahead and just use that one definition of knowledge for the purpose of this blog because the question here is whether or not we can actually have knowledge, and based on that definition the answer would be yes, we can... however, is what we know as a fact or truth actually true?
In order for us to get to a "fact" first someone has to have had some perception of what they believed they could eventually prove as "factual" however, we tend to put so much energy and so much weight into the "facts" as we know them right now and create arguments to try and prove something is true forgetting that the "facts" we are using are just simple theories with, to put it simply, a lot of backing at the particular moment in time but nonetheless they are just theories.
Theories which can turn a simple conversation into a full blown and scary fight, the reality is that even though we can back a theory to the point of us calling it a fact so that we make ourselves feel better and give each other a bit of certainty, that is still just a theory, and the justifications we have used to be able to call it a fact can change at any point in time.
That is one of the reasons why we can never be certain of anything really, not even our own knowledge of things. Taking it one step further... In order for any of us to actually attain any "knowledge" we have to first be able to perceive something, in perceiving things each of use can have a different view of that particular something. All the "knowledge" we have was once someone else's perception, someone else who decided to call whatever it is we are perceiving whatever name it has. This goes even to any studies, we have a group of scientists who are following certain parameters in order to prove certain theories and then call those theories a fact. But the parameters that they are following, the rules one might say, were set up by someone else, someone that is not them, but that somehow got us to take those rules and use them as basis for any scientific study, and unless we look at how they came up with those parameters and actually are able to ask them what made them come up with this set of of rules (which really we cannot) we cannot possibly say with certainty that this is the best way, it is the best way that was adopted years ago and we just kept going with it.
And let's just say that way was in fact the correct way of proving theories as "facts" then those who are actually in charge of whatever "study" are writing their findings based on their perception of things, unless we are actually there, we cannot conclude with certainty that what they perceive is 100% correct, even if there was another group of people conducting a study in the same manner we cannot say that their findings are completely based on just their perception, we can argue that because there were a group of people who had done research on the same subject before that their perception of what they are working on might be skewed.
The point I guess I am trying to get to here is that it does not matter how much "proof" one has for a particular thing to be real or not real, that "proof" can change at any time, that "proof" is also based on someone's perception, a person or group of people who we don't know and could be essentially perceiving the world in such a different way than what we would perceive but yet they have found enough convincing evidence to make the argument that what they saw have made this theory of theirs a fact. And most times we don't even question it. We take it for what it is, we don't think about it, we just go with it. Our need for certainty, in a world where things are really extremely uncertain tends to lead us to believe things that are sometimes completely false. If we were to really think about this, it would lead us to the point where we would realize that we really don't know anything, and maybe that is a scary thing for the world to realize, to actually think about, we know it, we know that all we have is knowledge based on someone else's perceptions and we go on trusting that their perception will align with ours if we were to go ahead and follow what they followed to arrive to the conclusion they have and make that particular theory a fact, but the truth is that we don't know, and we can't find out, we just have to trust and if we don't trust in it then it becomes a really scary thing to think that what we know and claim certainty for is not really certain, which is what leads me to believe even more so in faith, whether it is on a higher power that is invisible and that is all mighty and powerful or whether it is on another human being, a group of people who have found a way to convince a significant amount of people that their theories are true.... And even when we find out that what we knew before and we thought of as an actual fact turns out by new evidence that was wrong we really don't think anything of it, we still keep everything else as certain, set in stone as some will put it, without the ability to change at all and therefore we assume and proclaim that it is the absolute truth, we don't leave the leeway that we should in order to learn to tolerate the beliefs of others, whether they can be proven or not, it might just mean that they can't be proven right now, but does not mean that they can't be "proven" in the future, nor does it mean that if it is "proven" in the future that later we won't learn something new and realize that what we "proved" was wrong.
So, can we ever achieve knowledge? Personally because knowledge is based on someone else's perception I don't think we can, but then again the more I think about it, the more I realize that we really don't know anything, it is that we think we know something that lead us to terrible arguments about what we think we know rather than wonderful conversations that could lead us to a different degree of understanding of each other. But hey! What do I know right? I just said we really don't know anything...

3 comments:

  1. Well, I had a fine comment about knowledge, truth, and the role that our personal paradigm plays -- including a conclusion about accepting this subjectivity while we continue to seek Wisdom. Google didn't like it, so ... oh well.

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    1. haha Google didn't like it? Google needs to chill maybe?

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