"How Do I Determine What is Knowledge?"
To answer this question we first have to answer the question "Where does knowledge come from?", and to do so, we come up with some general sources of knowledge, for example:
- Parents
- Teachers
- Belief System
- Books
- Websites
Ultimately, I decided that the Belief System is one of the most influential factors to determine where knowledge comes from because it involves the four ways of knowing: Sense Perception, Reason, Emotion, and Language (some more than others).
In the "Allegory of the Cave", the prisoners have a distorted System of Belief. As their reality is the shadows created by the fire, they live in a "false" System of Belief that relies only on their Sense Perception; the shadows they see and the voices they hear. Most importantly, "Allegory of the Cave" illustrates how difficult it is to change one's System of Belief. When one of the prisoners escapes, leaves the cave, discovers the sun, and comes back to 'illuminate' the others, he ends up dead.
Going back to the initial question posed, the "Allegory of the Cave" shows how Subjective knowledge is perceived in a stronger way than Objective knowledge, even it being Factual knowledge. So, "How Do I Determine What is Knowledge?" I would like to argue that we simply do not determine what is and what is not knowledge, yet, what indirectly determines this is the balance of the four ways of knowing [Sense Perception, Reason, Emotion, and Language] combined with the balance in the willingness of a person to accept or reject knowledge [Objective or Subjective Knowledge]. This two create a close estimate of what can be considered as "Knowledge".
Francesco Mollinedo
IB Theory of Knowledge
February 2012
To answer this question we first have to answer the question "Where does knowledge come from?", and to do so, we come up with some general sources of knowledge, for example:
- Parents
- Teachers
- Belief System
- Books
- Websites
Ultimately, I decided that the Belief System is one of the most influential factors to determine where knowledge comes from because it involves the four ways of knowing: Sense Perception, Reason, Emotion, and Language (some more than others).
In the "Allegory of the Cave", the prisoners have a distorted System of Belief. As their reality is the shadows created by the fire, they live in a "false" System of Belief that relies only on their Sense Perception; the shadows they see and the voices they hear. Most importantly, "Allegory of the Cave" illustrates how difficult it is to change one's System of Belief. When one of the prisoners escapes, leaves the cave, discovers the sun, and comes back to 'illuminate' the others, he ends up dead.
Going back to the initial question posed, the "Allegory of the Cave" shows how Subjective knowledge is perceived in a stronger way than Objective knowledge, even it being Factual knowledge. So, "How Do I Determine What is Knowledge?" I would like to argue that we simply do not determine what is and what is not knowledge, yet, what indirectly determines this is the balance of the four ways of knowing [Sense Perception, Reason, Emotion, and Language] combined with the balance in the willingness of a person to accept or reject knowledge [Objective or Subjective Knowledge]. This two create a close estimate of what can be considered as "Knowledge".
Francesco Mollinedo
IB Theory of Knowledge
February 2012
