Knowledge is a justified true belief, and truth is given by certainty. Truth is independent, and simply believing that something is true, does not make it true. We acquire knowledge about the world through language, perception, reason and emotion, but none of these ways of knowing can give us certainty, which is what distinguishes knowledge from mere belief (Van de Lagemaat, 2008). On the other hand, knowledge can be confused with information, what people commonly do. But information is simply data that is non-corroborated with proof (Van de Lagemaat, 2008). Two preliminary criteria for deciding whether a knowledge claim is plausible are evidence and coherence. But, evidence can be biased, which is the lack of proof of something. The difference between knowledge and information is that knowledge is information organized into a meaningful whole. Therefore, we can say that knowledge is more than true belief, for your belief must be justified in the right way; however, there are disadvantages for beliefs.
A belief is the subjective requirement for knowledge. A common type of belief that in ancient times was given was the vague belief. An example of vague belief could be that in the ancient times in the coast of Ecuador, people believed that when appears in the beach the shell Spondylus, it was a good signal for coming rains to their crops. But, the justification for this belief was that the coming of this shell was given as a consequence of phenomenon “EL Niño” in the sea. Shell Spondylus starts to reproduce at this time because of the warm water that benefits springs to grow and develop (Ayala, 2008, p. 12). With this example, we may also understand that, apart that there is not a well justification given by the individuals that live in near the coast in Ecuador, just because the fact that the shell Spondylus appears before a rain, is enough to relate with their belief. The main thing that seems to distinguish an acceptable from an unacceptable justification is reliability. Whether or not you are justified in saying you know something depends on context. The exceed of believing in everything without justification, is called gullibility; therefore, it is necessary for people to believe in something with its respective justification.
Furthermore, the reason why commonly people start to believe in something without proving is because of not well acquired knowledge, which usually is given through schools, which is second hand knowledge. The problem that can face the second hand knowledge given in schools is that most of the information given by the teacher is indoctrinated, and the reason for it is related by culture (Lagemaat, 2008). If a student starts to ask about sex, if it is good or bad, then the teacher says that it is a topic just only for adults. Besides the reason of ethics, in the west, commonly people start to accept having sex when they become adults. But, human bodies are ready to have babies at the age of 15 maximum. So we can say that in that culture, the reason why they say that it is forbidden to have sexual relations when they are young, is just only because they may face problems with their studies, and the reason why they are in school, is for getting a good job with adequate preparation or well based knowledge. But, ¿How it could be explained to population in Samoa, which have different cultural rules from common Americans?
In Samoa, it is normal that teenagers have sexual relations since they are 11 or 12 years old. Also, at the age of 15, parents talk to them about marriage. Teenagers are obligated to abandon their studies at that age, but their rules of the culture have to be respected because it is a tradition for years ago. So in that case, for them it is normal to have sexual relations since you become a teenager, rather than the west, where sex is taboo for young people (Ember, 1997).
However, the moment when other cultures are accepting knowledge that is independent of our culture, even if it is second hand knowledge, it has a limitation. Since authority is not an original source of knowledge, our knowledge claims must ultimately be justified by such things as perception, reason and intuition. In other words, while such a division of intellectual labour makers obvious sense, it raises the problem of which sources of knowledge to trust and which not to trust. It is necessary to find the right balance between taking knowledge on authority and relying on our own resources. Also if people, for acquiring knowledge that is independent of their culture, have a lack of courage, resources, confidence to think things out for yourself, then it will be tended to take all beliefs from second-hand from other people. In other cases, when accepting many beliefs from other cultures carries to gullibility, it may end up with a distorted and fantasy-ridden picture of the world (Van de Lagemaat, 2008).
In conclusion, people decide what to decide or not, depending on their level of certainty. Also it depends on their knowledge that they have. If it is compared a person which doesn’t have a well based education, therefore we may say that he or she will be less willing to accept beliefs or knowledge that is independent from their culture. But instead of a person which doesn’t have a good education, is more willing to belief in something without a big number of evidence, or simply they are under the rules of their culture tradition. Beliefs may face cases in which they are related with the truth, but faith can be more powerful to control people’s mind, as in the case of religion. As a possible answer to the question established in the topic, it could be that is difficult that a culture can provide knowledge, because it have limits for second-hand knowledge. Nevertheless, more of them only give us beliefs, reason why the definition mentioned above that is the amount of people with common beliefs, but none of the cultures can provide us certainty at all. Therefore, because of these, we can acquire a lot of beliefs, with the disadvantage of non-corroborated information, rather than knowledge, that it can do. In other words, rather than say that belief and knowledge are two completely different things, it may make more sense to think of there being a belief-knowledge continuum, which says belief is differenced with knowledge, when it is probable, and the other is certain.
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Bibliography:
AYALA MORA ENRIQUE, BUSTOS GUILLERMO, LANDÁZURI CARLOS, MORENO SEGUNDO, TERÁN ROSEMARIE. Manual Historia del Ecuador, Tomo 1. Corporación Editora Nacional. 1era Edición. (Quito), 2008.
EMBER, CAROL R. & MELVIN. Antropología Cultural. Pearson. 8va Edición. (Madrid), 1997.
VAN DE LAGEMAAT RICHARD. Theory of knowledge for the IB diploma. Cambridge University Press. 5th Printing. (Cambridge), 2008.
Knowledge acquired during Antropology IB Programme class.
Example acquired during Antropology IB Programme class.
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norahs_moiia (student)
