Language helps us to acquire knowledge

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IB Theory of Knowledge 2005                                  Max Smith

- Does Language help or hinder the way we acquire knowledge?

Language is something that humans have used almost since their beginning. It is formation that is used to communicate between people - an institution of a community. It is something that is incredibly meaningful to us. Our language allows us to do many things. We use it to express our thoughts, connect with others and also for our knowledge. In these ways, language is crucial in facilitating our thoughts and helping to develop them as well. In fact, it can be argued that thinking requires having a natural mental language, such as English. We think in this language, and without such a language, much of our thought would make no sense. Hence, much of our knowledge acquisition is heavily reliant on our language.

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The fundamental question of knowledge is how we attain it. Essentially, language is what we base most of our knowledge on. We acquire knowledge through the guidance from parents, role models, school and teachers and life experiences. However, learning from one’s own experience is only part of how we learn and acquire knowledge, the rest is mainly language based. The majority of our knowledge is actually acquired from communication with others. Much of what we learn is in fact knowledge passed down or taught to us through language. Hence, language is something used by humans as a means to ...

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