"All of the other Ways of Knowing are controlled by language." What does this statement mean and do you think it is a fair representation of the relationship between perception, emotion, reason, and language?

So, how are others supposed to know how you are feeling (emotion) without using any of the types of languages I described? You really can’t. You could possibly guess how they are feeling, or maybe your conscience can help you to understand how they feel, but these methods of finding out their emotional state are not concrete. To know, or at least think we know how the other is feeling is for us to interpret their verbal and, or body language, or any other ways they express themselves. By doing this, we can justify why we think they are in that particular emotional state by means of the “justification chain”. Jeffrey Olen states that,

“In the ordinary course of events, the question ‘How do you know?’ is usually given a short answer. How do I know the time? By my watch. How do I know that my sister is planning to visit me? She told me so. How do I know that Japan is in Asia? I learned it in school.”

Similarly, using the emotional state of being sad, we can say, “How do you know she is sad?” … because she looks sad (body language). “How do you know that she is crying because she is sad, and not happy?” … because she told me (verbal language).  “How do you know she looks sad?” … because she is crying (body language). As you can see, the only way to justify her emotional state is by observing her actions. Although these answers do not completely justify her being sad, it is as close as we can get because everything we use to justify, is justified by something else, thus it creates a justification chain.

Another way of knowing is reason. The definition of reason, according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, states that reason is:

“1 a: a statement offered in explanation or justification b: a rational ground or motive. c: a sufficient ground of explanation or of logical defense; that supports a conclusion or explains a fact d: the thing that makes some fact intelligible : .” 

This definition is quite plausible because it covers three main areas: explanation/ justification, rational, and sufficient grounds of evidence (a, b and c).

        For the area of explanation/ justification and sufficient ground of evidence we need language to prove our reasons. For example, how am I supposed to tell my friend that she should help her mother, while she’s still alive? I cannot just stand there and expect her to guess what I want to tell her, and furthermore for her to guess my reasoning. Instead, I tell her verbally, “You should help your mother because you will regret not helping her in the future when she’s sick.” First of all, I’m communicating this to her using verbal language, and using facial expressions (body language) to convey my feelings in a more concise manner. Moreover, we acquire reasons from, perhaps, past experiences, elders, role models, books, school etc. and of these are all from the fundamental basis of language. Where do we get our experiences? We get them from incidents that happened. They “happen” using language; for instance, I know not to put a glass near the edge of a table because the last time I did so, my sister accidentally tilted the table, and the glass fell. I know not to do that anymore because I saw what happened. By seeing her, I saw her leg tilt the table slightly, thus her body language told me why that happened. As for books, like text books- the author gets their information from another source, and that source gets information from another source and so on, all from the fundamental basis of language.

        It is possible for one to use the reason, “I just know it” or “I just have a gut feeling”. So where exactly does this so-called “I just know it” or “gut feeling” come from? It comes from the basis of language. We have this “gut feeling” because we’ve experienced a similar incident before. For example, my friend was going to steal something, and I told her, “You shouldn’t steal that because I have a gut feeling that you will get caught.” We only have this “gut feeling” because we’ve seen what happens when people get caught, and we are afraid that this will happen, so we get a feeling that is merely based on what we’ve previously experienced. I’ve seen people get caught for stealing on the television show Bad Boys, it was described verbally, and I watched their body language, which suggested they were being arrested. The police knew to arrest him because they were trained to do so, and they saw him stealing something, they saw his hand physically grabbing an item and putting it in his pocket, and then leaving without paying. His body language told the police what he was doing. Without language, we would not “just know it” or “have a gut feeling” without relying on something we’ve experienced and ultimately relying on language to tell us so.

        The last “Ways of Knowing” is perception. We can only perceive something to be from influences, because we are all bias. Our parents, or guardians raised us, and if we didn’t have guardians, we were raised somewhere, where we saw things, that ultimately influenced our perceptions. It is understandable that our influences on perception come from culture, society, authority, religion, education, sex/gender etc. Let us take education for an example. How do we get “educated”? We hear the teacher speaking to us and we see our teacher illustrate the lesson on the chalkboard, and they learn that information from someone else, as discussed before- a “justification chain”. We use language, whether it be sign language for the hearing impaired or verbal language, to communicate information to one another. If we can only perceive something to be from our influences, and we get our influences from a variety of sources, all from which we acquire this knowledge by hearing, observing, and feeling, then without language we would not be able to acquire such influences, thus not being able to have a perception.

        As Jeffery Olen said, “thus, all of our beliefs are connected to our observations of the world”, then if we observe things through watching, their body language tells us knowledge, and therefore language dominates and controls all of the other “Ways of Knowing.” If it controls all the “Ways of Knowing”, then it also controls “All Areas of Knowledge”. Without language to describe and illustrate “Ways of Knowing” and “Areas of Knowledge”, we would not be able to communicate, and therefore there would be no basis for knowledge.

Bibliography:                                                                

Merriam-Webster online dictionary.  (2004).  U.S.A: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Retrieved January 28, 2004 from the World Wide Web:

Merriam-Webster online dictionary.  (2004).  U.S.A: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.  Retrieved January 28, 2004 from the World Wide Web:

Olen, J.  (1983).  What can we know?.  Persons and their world (p. 293). USA: McGraw-Hill Inc.

Olen, J.  (1983).  The Justification of Our Beliefs.  Persons and their world (p. 301). USA: McGraw-Hill Inc.

Olen, J.  (1983).  The Justification of Our Beliefs.  Persons and their world (p. 313).  USA: McGraw-Hill Inc.