What do I mean when I say, 'I know', and why should anyone believe me?

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Alex Cunningham 31/8/03

11 SS

Theory of Knowledge Weekly essay:

Due: Wednesday, 3rd of September

What do I mean when I say, ‘I know’, and why should anyone believe me?

If I said I know something, it means I have knowledge of something or someone. But why should anyone believe me? Ultimately, there are only two ways in which my knowledge can be trustworthy: from personal experience that the person has also personally experienced or from proven facts. I could say I know something because I have personally experienced it. But how would anyone know that I am not lying? They haven’t experienced my personal experience. They could have a different interpretation, but as long as their experience is similar they will consider what I know as right, because they can relate to it, and therefore they can believe me. This applies when sharing personal knowledge.

When I say I know, I am saying I am a knower. I am a knower because I have my own experiences. Everyone who has experiences is a knower. Rights and wrongs are only because of our interpretation from personal experience through our reason because of morals and ethics. It is impossible to prove what is right and wrong with reason, unless we can relate to it through personal experience. So morals and ethics are experiences in themselves. We all know for example that it is wrong to hurt someone, but a young child might think it is funny to hurt someone and not think that inflicting pain is right or wrong. The child’s parents will make sure that the child understands that it is wrong to hurt, by punishing him/her, so that the child connects hurting someone with being punished. Therefore morals and ethics are human, therefore experiences.

Morals and ethics help us see our experiences, but just like the child learning that it is wrong to hurt, morals and ethics are experiences in themselves. So experiences influence every other experience we have. We can assume therefore, that a baby isn’t born with any reason and that reason, (because it only exists because of morals and ethics.) is in itself something learned, something experienced. The baby is born with human conscience, which is the base for experiences and how they are inter-connected and affect each other, which is the base for all knowledge.

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Morals and ethics help us see our experiences, but just like the child learning that it is wrong to hurt, morals and ethics are experiences in themselves. So experiences influence every other experience we have. We can assume therefore, that a baby isn’t born with any reason and that reason, (because it only exists because of morals and ethics.) is in itself something learned, something experienced. The baby is born with human conscience, which is the base for experiences and how they are inter-connected and affect each other, which is the base for all knowledge.

There is a main type of knowledge which is reliable to a person when you tell them you know something or someone. That is directly experienced knowledge. By this I mean direct knowledge, or a direct experience, not something someone has told you or that you have read in a book, (because that is also a form of experience.) but something that has happened in front of, or to you. The person you are telling you know something needs to be able to directly relate to their own experience of something. For example if I was dissecting a heart, it would be directly experienced knowledge. But if my biology textbook tells me a heart looks like that, it is indirect experience, and therefore not as reliable as my direct personal experience. You might be thinking: ‘why would the textbook be wrong if we are supposed to learn what a heart is like, surely the school wants us to learn what things really look like?’ but there is still –however slim– chance that the school is trying to teach you lies.

There is also proven knowledge. Proven knowledge can be both direct and indirect experiences if you tell someone ‘I know water boils at one hundred degrees Celsius, anyone who thinks science has some truth to it will agree with you because science has a believable proof. Why would the Celsius temperature scale be so popular if it wasn’t for being based on the different temperatures water changes state? Logically it must be true if I say I know water boils at 100°C. More reliable would be the direct experience of seeing water boil with a thermometer stuck in it showing 100°C on its scale, than having someone telling you they know that water boils at 100°C.

Theoretical knowledge is tricky to categorize. If we take the atom theory, no one can prove that it is real, but it seems to be the most reliable and therefore the most accepted idea. Theoretical knowledge is never directly experienced knowledge. Even if you come up with the theory, a theory stays an idea created by the mind due to our reason, which is a result of many experiences. Theoretical knowledge is more or less reliable depending on how many things obey the theory, or that have been proven to be reliable due to the theory.

We need to decide for ourselves whether we trust someone saying that they know something or if we don’t. We have to keep in mind that direct experiences are more reliable than indirect experiences. We do also need to remember that the direct experiences we have can be fooled with illusions to our senses. No experience is 100% reliable, but ideas and morals which make sense to us or which work for us are usually the ones we accept.

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