Knowledge That Gives Us Facts While Other Provides Interpretations - Essay Example

Musa Muhammad Bala Academia-Research 27-2-2007 Is It An Oversimplification To Claim That Some Ways of Knowing Give Us Facts, While Other Provides Interpretations? According to wikepedia definition of Theory of Knowledge (TOK) states that “is a high school Epistemology course taken by all International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program students. The Course discusses how student is able to know something. The student is described as an actor of knowledge, where knowledge, as defined attempts to find knowledge, where knowledge as defined by Plato, is justified true belief”. (Theory of Knowledge) To this end, (TOK) explains thoroughly how knowledge is derived, and through which source. Additionally, for the IB, its states some ways of knowing which include perception, emotion, reason, language and authority, as the main pillars through which knowledge is derived, especially for the student. These ways moreover, are playing significant roles toward d inculcating sound knowledge to students, such as in the field of Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Human Sciences, History, Art, and Ethics. However, in the process of this essay we would discuss the ways of knowing one by one, and assess how relevant they are with the above educational subjects. Beginning with Perception as one of the key element of ways of knowing. In any subject matter being Art of Sciences, before students are able to begin understanding what their teacher is willing to teach them, they must be put on way to perception. In term of the studies of Natural and Human Sciences, perception plays major role in ensuring that student are fully understood the subject matter, including Biological Phenomenon. They should be given opportunity to perceive and see things physically in order to enhance their understanding and remain firm on what they might have seen. In an article titled From Percieving to Knowing, the writer has stated how important perception toward understanding a subject. Its says: “A low level of information reception in humans’ perception, the physical receipt of information about a state or situation occurring elsewhere. Perception, often understood to be a biological phenomenon, may involve substantial amount of processing by neural network. Visual perception, for example involve the sensing of light and dark images by rods in the back of the eye, with some animals detecting colors through reactions taking place within cones in their retinas. These sensors are linked through complex networks to portions of the brains”. (From Perceiving to Knowing) Moreover Perception is often linked with thinking and memories, which as result help students, especially those pursuing sciences, Mathematics and History to quickly remember how, and what they were told in terms of formulas and factors. One of the examples that ought to be sighted here in relation to the above statement, that if a student (like sciences student) is to detect motion or any change in position, then there is the need to observed the previous position of the object, through and initial perception. In the general term of knowledge, as long as knowledge is wanted to remains in the human brains, there is the need to allow him to perceive things and position them the way they are. Students were taken to Laboratories after they have received knowledge theoretically, in order to have a perception of what they were told or written in the blackboard. There perception will give them additional understanding of the knowledge which they were thought hitherto. Now that we have had a little content on Perception, its time to move to the next way of knowing, this also is among the key element on this topic, that is Emotion. We have to make a perfect assessment on the part of roles that Emotion is playing in inculcating knowledge to students and other individuals. This brings to a motion that human beings exist by actions and deeds and intermingling with others, exchanging views actions and debates. The way we inject knowledge to our fellow human beings move hand in hand with our emotion, while trying to make them understand what we have presented to them. John J. Ratey said: “Emotion is messy, complicated, primitive, and undefined because it’s all over the place, intertwined with cognition and cognition”. (Emotion and Creativity) How teacher’s emotion plays role in actualizing that student perceives knowledge accurately? This denotes that love, justice, truth and honors should come into our process of given knowledge to students, since they are the main roots of Emotion, being Sciences, Art, History and whatever, because is a general phenomenon. In fact, students and other individuals can push forward knowledgeably through emotion, because through it people are encouraged to understand knowledge perfectly. Additionally, emotion is stands as a fulcrum to the network of people’s brain. No matter how logical a teacher being while trying to give knowledge to his students on whatever subject, the attempt will fail as long as emotion is not involved in the process, which deals with softening love and care. Ralph Waldo has this statement to say that support the above assertion. “Great are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world” (Emotion and Creativity) It is indeed true that to give knowledge, we must adhere to emotion and motivation, transformative and other softening ways to achieve that goal. One of the ways of knowing is Reason, as human beings were created with reasoning mechanism (brain) which trough it they make assessment on whatever matter and workout a lasting solution to it. Brain gives human beings capability of understanding positive and negative, on what they should accept as knowledge and what they should not accept. “Man alone, however, has a conceptual faculty. A dog is limited to those things within the direct scope of its senses. A man can chart the operation of a computer system on the back of a napkin”. (Introduction to Objectivism) For student to have a perfect knowledge there is the need to give them chance to reason by them on what they are thought about. If any idea is given to them as knowledge, they should be allowed to make assessment. If student are shown different items, for example in the Biological laboratory, they see big and small Mangoes, they will reason on why the first Mango is big and why the other one is small. Or why the first Mango is green and why the other one is totally red, after that they are called Mangoes. To this end, they would have a perfect knowledge after they perceived and allowed to reason with emotional explanations. While Reasoning plays a vital role as one of the ways of knowledge, also, Language is another key factor in understanding knowledge. In this aspect, Chomsky’s Linguistic Theory comes in, which states that “the nature of knowledge, which is closely tied to human knowledge in general makes it a logical step for Chomsky to generalized the theory to the study of the relation between language and the world in particular, the study of the truth and reference”. (Philosophy of Language) In trying to give a sound knowledge, there is the need that students and other individuals targeted to have a particular knowledge should very understanding of the language through the knowledge is coming from. However, if there is lack of understanding of language, then automatically the learners can’t have the perfect knowledge needed. Since that is the case, there must be a foundation teaching of language from the childhood, by which when a students grow up cannot face problems in understanding knowledge. Some Philosophers even suggested that to natural language is very significant in that aspect. If a History student for example is thought on History of his country and forefathers with another language (that he/she have no background about it) that cannot fully understand, then a teacher should bear in mind that those students will never perceive and reason on the subject matter, no matter how emotional the teacher uses in teaching that, since they do not even understand the language as the first instance. But what about if the knowledge is thought in the natural or understandable language to the advantages of students? This answer is very simple; they would perceive reason and explains thoroughly. Finally in this essay, we then reflect back and analyze if the essay have answered the subject matter “it an oversimplification to claim that some ways of knowing give us facts while others provide interpretations? The response here is yes, since that we have seen that in some cases of studies being sciences or art, History and many more, in order to have a perfect knowledge, students must to be addressed with facts and interpretations. While in other subjects, students need no interpretations but only fact. Work Cited: Theory of Knowledge From Perceiving to Knowing http://www.ils.unc.edu/-losee/b5/node8.html Emotion and Creativity (John J. Ratey) http://itc.umanitoba.ca/KnowingKnowledege/index.php/Emotion_and_Creativity Introduction to Objectivism Philosophy of Language (Chomsky and Knowledge of Language) Read More