Sunday, October 24, 2010

How do I know what I know?

Knowledge, by the standards of the American dictionary, is defined as the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning. As such, it's safe to say that what one knows is subjective, and wholly depends on how much sense they can create from a given idea or result. People tend to question what they do not understand or know, and as such, knowing comes through understanding the answer.

How exactly can one know what they know? The simple answer therefore seems to be that they know a given piece of knowledge when an idea stemming from point 'A'  has supporting evidence to prove a point 'B'. When one knows something, they have all the planks necessary construct a complete rope bridge across. However, many times, people tend to mistake assumptions for knowledge; having some only some of the planks, which may seem complete, but provides instability when walked upon.

Even though knowledge may be subjective and assumptions for the most part, such as with cases regarding religion, society fortunately has come upon certain pieces of evidence that appeal to the majority of it's members. As such, subjective ideology becomes a more or less unanimous knowledge, simply because everyone has opted to accept it. It's never impossible to find or create gaps within bridges, thus it can be argued that as humans, true and absolute knowledge might just be assumptions in the end.

7 comments:

  1. I think that some knowledge is subjective and some is objective. There are facts that everyone knows and there are ideas that only some people know or believe.

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  2. i like how u strted of ur post with the definition of knowledge. and i like how u u said most of are knowledge are assumptions.. this is so true.

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  3. Do you think there can ever be an absolute answer, something we know for sure or will we never be able to complete the bridge to the answer?

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  4. Interesting philosophy that is sort of mixed with psychology. You have a very clear message of what many philosophers believe in, that everything is based off assumptions.

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  5. you give good examples, assumption of knowledge yeahhhhhh

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