So we arrive at the conclusion that Facts are the bases for judging what is right and what is wrong. Since facts make up knowledge, knowledge can also be used to define the clear cut between the true and wrong beliefs. But sometimes we receive wrong facts through the media. This essay is a reflection on my principled personality and absolutes, which are based on knowledge. However, the conclusion, which I came to, is influenced by my personal experience. This experience adjusted my way of thinking to incorporate my absolutes with areas of gray shades but however, experience may not be facts as they can be full of prejudice, misconception and ill judgments.
From my point of view, perception is the most effective way of knowing, discovering the truth and the ways of world around us. The senses of perception are smell, taste, hearing, seeing and touch. All of those can be integrated with each other for discovering the truth. Nevertheless, this way of knowing has its limitations as there is always a risk of losing one or more of those senses. This can be due to medical condition. The deficiency of one of the senses decreases the efficiency of receiving information. Also the fact that the human being is not a perfect creature should also be taken in consideration. People suffer from different health conditions; some people are blind and others are deaf. This has its effect on our sense and prevents us from working correctly. All of that create confusion between the belief and the truth. This leads us to the implication that this way of knowing is different from one person to another and so they tend to have a different perception of what is right and wrong truth just like the story of the poem “blind men and the elephant ‘’ by John Godfrey Saxe which is basically talks about six blind men who went to see elephant. The first man touched the elephant’s broad and sturdy side and he said its likely to be a wall, the second man felt the tusk, then he said “it Is very like a spear!", the third man approached the elephant and took the squirming trunk within his hands, then he said "It is very like a snake!", the fourth man reached out an eager hand, and felt about the knee. "This is clear enough the Elephant is very like a tree!" The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, and then he said "it is very like a fan!" The Sixth got the swinging tail and said "Is very like a rope”. At end, the moral form this story is that each of these men saw part of their truth.
The second way of knowing is emotion. Emotion is a word, which is higher than being described into words. It is not materialistic, but closely related to the feeling. Several people trust their emotions to guide them on searching for the truth. Emotions are countercurrent with logic and can lead to hasty generalizations. This was exemplified when I encountered a fight between two children. As I tried to understand the problem as having one way to solve it, each one of them gave me different story. Each took from his emotion a way to justify his opinion, without referring to a logical reason. I took from that a lesson; emotions can never be a way of knowing for me. As I mentioned before, emotion is the most mysterious due to the fact that emotion born with us, sometimes we can't control these emotions, also these emotions can play big role in believing things, leaving the knowledge to discover the right truth.
Another way of knowing is reason. It plays a big role in distinguishing between what is true and what is believed to be true. Each argument needs reasons. For example, things might change from country to country and from culture to culture. People give their own reasons to justify their opinion or their habits, which change what is true. Moreover, everything created for a specific reason. Kids tend to learn not to touch the electric heated again after they try it. Also there are relationship between religions and reason. Several religions can give some religious reasons to believe things around you and not allow you to search for the truth. In contrast, empiricism looks only to explain what is able to be observed, and applies those observations to a certain set of rules which mean that we based our knowledge on those observation which we test by using our sense and exclude any belief.
We try to see things how they actually are. For example, snow, we add salt to it as this brings down its melting temperature, it adds an impurity and pure water freezes at 0 degrees whereas salt would makes it freeze lower. We now see things, by combining reason with perception, things as they are, not what we think they would be.
The last way of knowing is language. In my opinion, it is the most important one due to the fact we can't learn the knowledge without a language, this can clarify the following question: “how do we really know what we know?” Language is the key for the knowledge. For example, in 21st century, most of the academic journals are printed in English. So it is good to be fluent in English in order to understand everything properly. Still, someone who is fluent can only be a master in certain areas – an Engineer may be terrible at biology and economics for example. Moreover, language can be translated; therefore the translation might change the meaning, which will lead to give a wrong meaning. Additionally, there are limitations for translation, for example, being an Arabic speaker in an international college I found difficulties in translation some of Arabic phrases to English, moreover I found out that if I translated some phrases from Arabic to English, it will not make sense at all.
In conclusion the key for distinguishing between what is believed to be true and truth is by using these ways of knowing. Although some of these ways of knowing are different from person to person, the use of all of them will lead to what is most likely true? Moreover, this issue is similar to that issue between science and religion. Which is right and which is wrong; take an example, recently a movie was made called "End of The World", which basically talks about specific day "21st December 2012”, which the world will end according to the Mayan calendar. Which makes a lot of discussions neither to believe this movie or not due to the fact that in many religions such as Islamic religion the time for the end of the world is something unknown. Talking from my own and Muslim's perspective, I believe in God and I believe that there will be an end of the world, and I am not against the 2012 idea because I have no way of knowing for sure. At the end, I can say that there is no such thing as true, it is true because we believe it is.
Word Count: 1504
Kierkegaard, Soren, 1992. Concluding Unscientific Postscript 1 : Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol 12.1.
