To understand something you need to rely on your own experience and culture. Does this mean that it is impossible to have objective knowledge?
To understand something you need to rely on your own experience and culture. Does this mean that it is impossible to have objective knowledge?
How humans understand different events in their life varies. This topic suggests that people mostly rely on their experience and culture to comprehend their surrounding. They use subjective knowledge, which is based on personal opinion and a personal interpretation of events, such as ethical issues. However, the question is if objective knowledge is possible. I would argue that it is. Mathematics, for example, can be understood through objective knowledge, facts and impersonal judgement, because the subject is not influenced by people’s subjective desires or perception. Science, Art, and history, on contrary, can be comprehended by subjective or/and objective knowledge. In this essay I will explain with different examples that humans sometimes use subjective or/and objective knowledge to understand the world around us.
People understand events in different ways. There are things in life that humans need to experience to understand it, for example not touching a warm stove. Most children, as I did, touch the warm stove despite their parents’ warning, and after they have been hurt, they learn from their experience not to touch it again. Another way of obtaining an understanding is through culture. How people interpret events has been influenced by their culture. A western man would probably think, that if he saw a young girl in a white wedding dress, she is getting married; whereas I, as a Peruvian, could think that the girl was going to celebrate her fifteen year old birthday. In Peru girls wear a white dress, which is similar to a wedding dress, at the celebration of their fifteenth birthday. However, both the western man and I can know objectively; we know by authority that the capital of England is London; it is a fact, objective knowledge. This example implies that some thing in life can only be explained through objective knowledge.
Science is not solely based on objective knowledge. From my experience I think that a disabled child can only be understood through experience, subjective knowledge. Doctors have performed different scientific tests on my little brother that is disabled and reached the conclusion that he cannot communicate with others. Therefore, the personal assistants that take care of him had immense difficulties in understanding what he wanted when they started to look after him. However, our family is able to communicate with him. Living with him has given us the advantage to become aware of what different expressions and sounds he makes means. We can, therefore, reason what he wants and notice that how we perceive his actions is completely different from how the assistants perceive it. We tried to explain to the assistants what his actions meant in vain, because they would not understand, the facts we gave them where not enough, they needed to experience being with him. Science seems to be based on objectivity. Most scientists would perceive that their experiments are neutral since they work with constant variable. However, I think that scientists as any other human being are influenced by their emotion, which can affect how they perform an experiment and how they perceive it. Scientists can manipulate variables in their experiment, so that the result is as they prefer, which would be subjective knowledge. Therefore, that science is based on objectivity is questionable and can be the reason why the doctor’s diagnosis about my little brother was incorrect, because he can communicate. Another reason that I consider the doctors diagnosis to be “incorrect” might be because my interpretation of the word communication. Every human being interprets words differently that is the bewitchment of language. The doctor probably meant that my little brother cannot communicate since he cannot speak, but for me he does not have to speak to be able to communicate. I consider that understanding a disabled child is only possible through experience is because my own experience in the event.
